ABOVE: Maxwell Caulfield and Juliet Mills talk about performing in Bedroom Farce at Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn, being in Shropshire and Captain Webb

Actor Maxwell Caulfield has spoken of his long-held desire to make a film about Shropshire hero Captain Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel.

Mr Caulfield, who is this week performing with his wife Juliet Mills in the comedy Bedroom Farce at Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn, said he had long been fascinated with the story of the Dawley-born adventurer.

He described Captain Webb as “a 20th century hero because of the feats he attained at the tail end of the previous century. But now he’s really relegated to the margins of history and I just think it would be great to elevate him back to the place where he should be.”

Webb swam the channel on 25th August, 1875. The feat took him 22 hours and made him a national hero.

However, eight years later he tried another daredevil feat – to swim across the rapids at Niagra Falls. The attempt was to cost him his life.

Mr Caulfield, who has had lengthy stints in TV soap operas Dynasty, Emmerdale and Holby City, as well as film roles including Grease 2, said he had been developing the project for a number of years, although he was still looking at financing and finalising a script, either for television or cinema.

Captain Webb

“I’d love to do it, I’d love to see it, not play the role, obviously, I’m too old for the part, and anyway I’m not physically right for it, but I’d love to find the right guy to do it.”

Mr Caulfield said if the project did come to fruition he would consider a cameo role for himself and his wife Juliet, the daughter of the late Sir John Mills, and had hopes of directing it himself.

He added: “This is something I’ve been nursing for a long time, and coming back here to the area now is kicking me back into gear.

“It’s a tragic story, too, and yet he was in many ways one of the world’s original daredevils and he paid a terrible price for it.

“As far as I understand he had lost the plot a bit by the end, he wasn’t being realistic and he wasn’t listening to what people were telling him about swimming the rapids.”

Mr Caulfield said Captain Webb could be described as “the father of endurance sports”, and his influence lived on in people who pushed themselves physically.

“I think it’s an eminently suitable piece of specifically British history that deserves to be championed all these years later,” he added.

Mr Caulfield said he also had plans for a stage presentation on the life of Captain Webb.

“That’s something that would give me enormous pleasure to do the world premiere here at Theatre Severn. Maybe in the 2011 season, and who knows, ride it all the way to Broadway.”