Special Branch tagged Tomlinson 'a thug'

The security services kept files on Ricky Tomlinson, star of The Royle Family, describing him as a "political thug".

Tomlinson shows he is not far from his sitcom character when a BBC2 documentary to be screened this autumn confronts him with the news that Special Branch considered him subversive and a thug. A gobsmacked Tomlinson responds: "Subversive – my arse!"

The series, True Spies, speaks to Special Branch officers and MI5 agents to expose the shadowy world of surveillance on anyone thought to be a political threat.

It also reveals that security services infiltrated the BBC. The investigative reporter Peter Taylor said yesterday: "We couldn't afford not to turn over our own stones."

MI5 staff were cleared to speak to the production team without fear of breaching the Official Secrets Act.

Tomlinson earned political notoriety when, as one of the "Shrewsbury Two", he was jailed for his part in the 1972 builders' strike.

Other prominent figures on file include the late Labour left-wing MP Eric Heffer, the Liverpool councillor turned broadcaster Derek Hatton and the former activist turned writer and broadcaster Tariq Ali.

Returning as part of the new BBC2 season is the comedian Steve Coogan's creation Alan Partridge. He will plumb new depths when the chat show host suffers a nervous breakdown and finds himself back on Radio Norwich.

Cult comedies The Office, Happiness, starring Paul Whitehouse, and The League Of Gentlemen will also be back. Dramas for BBC2's £106m season include Wit, with Emma Thompson as a university professor who finds she has cancer, and Tipping The Velvet, a three-part lesbian love story starring Keeley Hawes and Anna Chancellor.

Flesh And Blood stars Christopher Eccleston as a man trying to trace his father after the birth of his own daughter. His parents are played by two people with learning disabilities.

BBC2 is staging its first disability season, featuring a series of short films and documentaries on deafness, blindness and dealing with the effects of thalidomide.