Southend Pier - in Fiction

In Fiction

• Southend Pier featured in the end credits of the British television series Minder. The sequence showed unscrupulous businessman Arthur Daley and his bodyguard (or "minder") walking down the pier. When they reach the end Arthur realises that he has left his lighter at the far end and they proceed to walk the return journey. The comic implication is that he is too mean to pay for the train ride.

• The pier is mentioned in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; after Ford and Arthur are thrown off a Vogon construction ship and are picked up by the starship Heart of Gold, Arthur remarks that it looks as though they're standing "on the seafront at Southend"; however, in the 1981 BBC TV adaptation neither the set used for the pier nor the view of the buildings on the shore look anything like Southend.