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Watching the pilot episode of “Columbo,” my mother turned to me after fifteen minutes and posed the same all important question on the minds of millions of Tv viewers that evening – “How on earth are they going to fill the next eighty minutes? We already know who’s done it!!!”

And then he ambled onto the screen, this shrewd but inelegant blue-collar homicide detective whose trademarks included his rumpled beige raincoat, unassuming demeanor, cigar, old Peugeot 403 car, and an unseen wife whom he mentioned frequently. Often leaving a room only to return with the catchphrase “Just one more thing,” he could be extremely irritating, but then only if you were guilty.

Peter Falk was already a twice Oscar nominated actor before he found small screen immortality. Syndicated between 1968 and 2003, “Columbo” is still regularly re-run throughout the world. Few would have foreseen the New York born actor’s future success during his formative years; in fact he was advised to park any notion of a career in the theatre as a result of having his right eye surgically removed when he was three. Contracting retinoblastoma at such a tender age must have been a traumatic experience, but children are unbelievably resilient and the youngster was soon an active participant in school sports. There would be numerous further challenges before finding work in the fledgling television medium and his big screen breakthrough in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”