The theme music to television crime drama Morse is Britain’s favourite, reveals a poll.

More than 20,000 Classic FM listeners and Radio Times readers voted it their number one.

The Morse music has been in the top five twice before – but this time it was the outright winner.

Barrington “Barry” Pheloung from Australia composed the music.

The haunting piece includes the Morse code to spell out “Morse”.

Kevin Whately, who played long suffering detective sergeant Robbie Lewis to Morse – played by John Thaw – said:

“It’s an honour to the memory of Barry to know that it has such a place in people’s hearts.

“The theme was carefully produced to reflect Inspector Morse’s character, which was threaded throughout the music with an incredible attention to detail.”

Pheloung died in 2019 aged 65.

His widow Heather said:

“Barry would have been overjoyed and honoured that the Inspector Morse theme has been chosen as the UK’s number one favourite TV theme of all time”.