Terry Collier was of course one of the Likely Lads. This nugget of information (about his address) is inferred from some dialogue in the classic episode No Hiding Place – the one where Terry and Bob (Ferris), in order to win a bet with their acquaintance Flint (played by Brian Glover) are desperately trying to avoid hearing the result of an England football match, before watching the highlights on television. This was Episode 7 in the first series of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?
Terry is in one of his misanthropic moods, and has expressed his distaste for just about every one of the world's races, creeds and nationalities, not to mention the rest of the citizens of the United Kingdom – the Welsh, the Irish, the Scots ("worse than the Koreans"), Southerners, "anybody ... outside this town", and "a lot of people in our street". "Come to think of it," he adds,"I don't even like the people next door."
The warm–hearted Bob, not for the first time, is irked by his friend's lack of good grace. "I see," he says, "so from the distant blue Pacific, through the barren wastes of Manchuria, to 127 Inkerman Terrace, you can't abide anyone."
Question setters tend to infer from this that Terry lives at No. 127 Inkerman Terrace. Now ... you can call me a pedant (you wouldn't be the first, and this isn't even the first time I've made that observation on this website) but it seems to me that when Bob refers to No. 127, he means "the people next door". This would seem to suggest that Terry actually lives either at No. 125 or No. 129.
If you're ever asked what Terry's address was (and I have to admit that this is unlikely, unless you're doing The Likely Lads as your specialist subject on Mastermind), I suggest you answer "127 Inkerman Terrace". But if it were me, I would feel compelled to point out afterwards to Mr. Humphrys (or whoever might replace him at some point in the future) that the correct answer is either No. 125 or No. 129 – we don't actually know which.
To be honest, I'm not even sure we're right to assume that "this town" actually means Newcastle–upon–Tyne. It probably does, but I don't know whether the Likely Lads script ever explicitly states that Terry lives in Newcastle, and not (for example) Wallsend, North Shields or Tynemouth.
© Haydn Thompson 2016