Andrew Payne, who has died aged 74, was a television scriptwriter who did much to contribute to the popularity of Minder, the comedy-drama featuring George Cole as the dodgy used-car dealer Arthur Daley, but he found great personal success with his own creation, Pie in the Sky, which starred Richard Griffiths as a sleuthing chef, Henry Crabbe.
The programme, which ran for five series from 1994 to 1997, took its title from the name of the restaurant opened by Crabbe, a retired detective effectively blackmailed into returning to police work on tricky cases with the fictional Westershire force by Assistant Chief Constable Freddy Fisher (played by Malcolm Sinclair).
