The 1980's were 40 years ago. The tax man took most of his money. High earners were crippled with 98% rates of taxation under Labour.
This one-sided feud cost Bewes dearly, as Bolam refused to sanction re-runs of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, denying him years of TV repeat fees of up to £4,000 an episode that would have radically changed his financial circumstances.
In 2010, he commented sadly that here he was, an old man in his 70s, still with a mortgage and an overdraft — which could have been wiped out by a single run of their 26 classic Seventies episodes together. (Only eight episodes of the original mid-Sixties series, simply called The Likely Lads, survived.)
At the time, viewers never suspected the resentment might be real. Yet to watch the show now — and some episodes are timeless — it’s possible to detect a genuine nastiness in Terry’s jibes.
Bolam did his oblique best to hint at his dislike for Bewes. He told one interviewer: ‘Just because one played great friends, it doesn’t mean that you are great friends.’
When fans called out in the street, ‘Hey Terry, where’s Bob?’ Bolam would snarl: ‘He’s dead!’
Bewes never understood it. He truly thought they were friends, recalling with fondness how they would go out for meals together with their wives after the show.
He commanded big fees for voiceovers, for Birds Eye TV advertisements among others, and at his peak earned £250,000 in a year — nearly £2 million today — though back in the mid-Seventies, the taxman took nearly all of it.