PETER POPS UP IN THE BILL (14/4/04)

From the BBC's Pure Soap website.

Strewth! Ramsay Street's much-missed Shane Ramsay will soon be throwing his lot in with the regulars down at Sun Hill.

For soap fans with long memories, the image of the mullet-sporting handyman and would-be Olympic swimmer is synonymous with the early days of Aussie soap Neighbours. However, when actor Peter O'Brien left Ramsay Street in 1987, the show lost one of its original and best-loved characters.

Thankfully, O'Brien hasn't been sitting at home bored since his departure - he followed up Neighbours with a stint in Flying Doctors and a regular role in the mid Nineties hospital drama Cardiac Arrest.

News that the Aussie hunk is to join the line-up at The Bill's Sun Hill nick from April 29 as DI Peter Cavanaugh will please his fans on both sides of the globe - Down Under, The Bill is almost as popular as it is in Britain.

Unfortunately, there is some bad news. O'Brien has initially only been signed for a six-episode run.

Nevertheless, the omens are good for the erstwhile Ramsay Street regular, who's notched up an impressive track record already in police dramas. In 1998, he cropped up in an episode of Australia's own police precinct soap, Blue Heelers, and over the last couple of years he headed up the cast in the hard-hitting but short-lived Aussie drama White Collar Blue where he played shrewd, streetwise detective Joe Hill.

With a police record like that to his name, perhaps O'Brien does have what it takes to turn his short stay at Sun Hill into a nice long sentence after all?