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Whirligig TV News Archive

Slapstick comic Charlie Drake dies at 81 (24 December 2006)
Actor and comic Charlie Drake will be best remembered for his slapstick comedy and his catchphrase "Hallo, my darlings!" He also enjoyed late success in straight theatre. From being the uneducated son of a south London newspaper seller, Charlie Drake went on to become to a multi-millionaire entertainer and one of Britain's best-loved comedians. After serving in the RAF in World War II, Drake turned professional, becoming a noted knockabout comedian, and made his first television appearance in the mid-1950s.
He was in the slapstick children's show Mick and Montmorency and then several of his own shows, including The Worker.
Before long, Charlie Drake was one of television's most popular stars. His catchphrase, "Hallo, my darlings," delivered in his trademark high-pitched voice, was soon to be heard around the country. Gradually the money started rolling in. Drake was starring in films, back-to-back television series, appearing in pantomimes and summer seasons around the country and regularly topping the bill at the London Palladium.
At the 1968 Montreux festival his TV show, The World of Charlie Drake, won the Charlie Chaplin award as the funniest show. The programme included a comic sequence in which he played numerous parts in a comic version of the 1812 Overture. Charlie Drake also made a number of film comedies in the 1960s, most notably Sands of the Desert, Petticoat Pirates and The Cracksman.
The 1980s saw Charlie turn to straight acting, with some success. He was a perfectionist. He wrote many of his own scripts, and would rehearse again and again until he'd got what he wanted.
And, on more than one occasion, he was injured during a slapstick routine. When, in 1961, when he was knocked unconscious during a television sketch, 2,000 people telephoned to see if he was all right. more....

Joseph Barbera, animation producer has died aged 95 (20 December 2006)
Barbera was, with his partner William Hanna, the only rival to Walt Disney in the art of making animated cartoons; his creations included Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, Scooby Doo and Yogi Bear. They began their association at MGM's fledgling animation unit in 1937. Hanna's precise comic timing and technical skills were the ideal complement to Barbera's genius as a storyboard artist and animator.
In 1957 Hanna and Barbera were told by MGM to disband their unit. Instead the pair resigned and set up their own company (H-B Enterprises, soon changed to Hanna-Barbera Productions) to make cartoons specifically for television. In order to do this successfully, they had to cut corners by developing ways of creating animated pictures more quickly and cheaply, using less detail and movement, more stock footage, and fewer drawings – 300 for a minute of film rather than the 1,000 they produced for MGM.
Hanna-Barbera's first offering for television was Ruff and Reddy, a tale of a cat and a dog, but they made their fortune in 1958 with the first-ever animated children's television series, The Huckleberry Hound Show. Its mildly satirical tone attracted adults as well as children and the series was so successful that one of its regular characters, Yogi Bear, was soon given his own show. more....

Ronnie Stevens, actor, has died aged 81 (15 November 2006)
Ronnie Stevens possessed the sort of lantern jaw and mobile features that lend themselves to comedy, and enjoyed a versatile and prolific career on television, in films and on the West End stage. After making his film debut in Scarlet Web (1954) and his television debut in Dick and the Duchess (1957), an American sit-com set in London, he continued to take character roles on television and in films into the 1990s.
His first appearances were in intimate revue, and he performed frequently in Peter Myers shows in the West End alongside Joan Sims, who became a life-long friend. He went on to play comic character roles in some 40 films, including I'm All Right Jack (1958, with Peter Sellers), Dentist in the Chair (1960, with Bob Monkhouse) and Carry On Cruising (1962). In the 1970s and 1980s he was a leading member of the Prospect Theatre Company, playing the Fool in King Lear (1972) and Sir Nathaniel in Love's Labour's Lost (1984). He was also a founder member, with Ian McKellen, of the Actors' Company. On television he appeared in numerous drama and comedy series, including The Goodies, Hi-di-Hi!, Yes, Prime Minister, Goodnight Sweetheart, Rumpole of the Bailey and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. more....

Diana Coupland, singer and actress, has died aged 74 (11 November 2006)
She began her career at the age of 11 when the BBC producer Barney Colehan heard her sing and gave her a spot on one of his radio shows.
By the time she was 14 she was singing full-time at the Mecca Locarno in Leeds, and a year later moved with her parents to London, where Mecca gave her a job as resident singer at their ballroom in Tottenham Court Road.
During the 1940s she worked with many big name bands, including those of Teddy Foster, Geraldo, Cyril Stapleton and Stanley Black.
She established herself as one of the leading singers of the day, with seasons at the Dorchester and Savoy hotels and bookings at London's leading nightclubs. These led to appearances on BBC Television: Diana Coupland starred in the series Hit Parade, and continued to sing professionally until the 1960s.
But her career took an unexpected turn when Joan Littlewood cast her as Sally in Wolf Mankowitz's musical Make Me An Offer (1959). more....

Nigel Kneale, Creator of Quatermass, has died aged 84 (2 November 2006)
During the 1950s and 1960s, the writer Nigel Kneale bestrode the world of British television like a colossus. At a time when the wildest science fiction, in books, magazines and on the big screen, seemed in imminent danger of becoming scientific fact, Kneale's clever and terrifying imaginings became obligatory viewing for a TV audience which had only just recovered from the shock of watching the Coronation.
Kneale wrote many television plays and serials, as well as film scripts, including the ground-breaking and highly controversial small-screen version of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (1954).
Kneale's greatest achievement as a melder of science fiction and horror was undoubtedly Quatermass and the Pit, which kept people out of the pubs while it was running. He cheerfully threw aliens from Mars, pagan rituals, the "Horned God" and race memory into the mix and scored a huge popular success. more....

William Franklyn, suave TV and Film actor, has died aged 81 (31 October 2006)
William Franklyn, was probably best-remembered as the voice of the "Schhh... You Know Who" Schweppes adverts. He did his first TV work at Alexandra Palace in 1952 as the villain in a John Slater serial before going to the Theatre Royal, Windsor. From there his TV, film, and the theatre career blossomed. It was during the 1960s that Franklyn landed the role in the adverts for Schweppes tonic. During the '50s he appeared in episodes of Dick and the Duchess, Quatermass II, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Presents, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Scarlet Pimpernel amongst others. more....

ITC at the NFT
On Saturday 4th. November 2006, the National Film Theatre in London will be celebrating the release of Robert Sellers' new book on ITC with two events looking back at Lew Grade's groundbreaking company.
At 4pm Richard Holliss will interview Gerry Anderson on stage about his career with particular reference to his work at ITC (illustrated with clips). This will be followed at 6.30pm by Robert Sellers' 'Gallop Through the Archives', an illustrated look at the cult history of ITC with lots of clips and contributions from those that worked both sides of the screen for ITC. There are still (a few) tickets available for each event or reduced priced joint tickets are also available. Further details here http://www.bfi.org.uk/incinemas/nft/film/6935

Actress Phyllis Kirk, famous for her role as the damsel in distress in the 1953 3-D horror classic "House of Wax," has died at age 79 (27 October 2006)
Phyllis Kirk is best known for her many television and film roles throughout the 1950s. She appeared with Vincent Price in the 3-D horror film House of Wax in 1953. Her most notable television role was opposite Peter Lawford in The Thin Man (1957-1959), where they played Nick and Nora Charles. She also appeared with Jerry Lewis in his 1957 film The Sad Sack, with Robert Ryan, Anita Ekberg, and Rod Steiger in the 1956 film Back from Eternity. Kirk was also a regular on The Red Buttons Show. Kirk appeared as a guest on some television programs, including an episode of The Twilight Zone, and was a panelist on Mantrap in 1971.
Kirk then returned to the stage before leaving show business altogether to enter public relations, working as a publicist for CBS News, retiring in 1992. more....

Peter Barkworth, actor who brought great subtlety to stage and screen roles, has died aged 77 (26 October 2006)
Throughout his most fruitful decades — the late 1950s through to the 1980s — he became one of the small screen’s busiest actors, starring in a wide variety of productions from the title role in the BBC’s Czar Nicholas II, to playing the sleuth in Francis Durbridge’s The Passenger.
When not before the cameras he was on stage, where he frequently earned critical approval. In one memorable West End success early in his career he played Bernard Taggart-Stewart in Roar Like a Dove at the Phoenix Theatre (1957). It ran for more than 1,000 performances. Fifteen years later he was celebrated for his uncannily accurate portrayal of Edward VIII in Crown Matrimonial at the Haymarket, a role he was to repeat on television.
His stage reputation began building in the early 1950s in spite of being roundly booed in his West End debut, in A Woman of No Importance. An early success in 1956 was at the Lyric Theatre where he played Captain Christopher Mortlock in South Sea Bubble which came just before his Roar Like a Dove triumph.
Early television included appearances in the pioneer medical soap opera Emergency Ward Ten. His first recurring character was in the popular 1960s drama series The Power Game in which he was cast as Bligh, a business executive with a drink problem. A modest drinker himself, Barkworth got into the part by going home and getting drunk several nights running. He discovered that far from merely becoming slurred and unsteady in speech, drunks “achieve moments of great clarity”. more....

Jane Wyatt, actress, has died aged 96 (26 October 2006)
Jane Wyatt was a noted actress on Broadway but became best known for her work in films and on television.
Usually cast as what she described as the "good wives of good men", she appeared in more than 25 pictures (most famously opposite Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon in 1937) before landing the role of Margaret Anderson in the sitcom Father Knows Best in 1954; she later portrayed the mother of Mr Spock (Leonard Nimroy) in the original series of Star Trek.
It was, however, Father Knows Best, first screened in 1954, which made her name. She once remarked: "I did not want to be in a TV serial. But there was nothing else on offer, and after my husband pushed me I succumbed."
The programme charted the fortunes of a midwestern family, with Jane Wyatt playing the mother of three children, two of them teenagers. She came to be seen as the exemplary suburban housewife, the New York Times observing that the show "restored parental prestige on TV". Father Knows Best was televised until 1963. Jane Wyatt won three consecutive Emmys as best actress in a dramatic series in the years 1958-60. more....

Derek Bond, the actor, has died aged 86 (26 October 2006)
Derek Bond enjoyed a brief period of film stardom immediately after the Second World War but found new prominence in middle age, when he was an outspoken president of the actors' union, Equity.
In 1947 Bond played the lead in the film of Nicholas Nickleby, with Sir Cedric Hardwicke in a supporting role. After Nicholas Nickleby Bond played Captain Oates in Scott of the Antarctic and a young lover in Uncle Silas, then appeared in the unsuccessful Christopher Columbus and the comedy Tony Draws a Horse.
After going to Dublin in 1950, where he polished his technique in Gaslight and Dial M for Murder, Bond found some falling-off in the number and size of parts. He was happy enough in 1959 to appear in Your Obedient Servant at the Richmond Theatre as a "resting" actor who goes out charring, but he also had to take such films as Secrets of a Windmill Girl.
He wrote a stage play called Akin to Death (1954) and a television drama Unscheduled Stop, which in 1968 proved a fine vehicle for James Villiers as an amusing drunk. During this time he was sustained by television, which was growing as a medium, as well as by the theatre. His wooden quality went well in such parts as the wealthy peer in the short-lived soap opera 199 Park Lane, a straight man in Tommy Cooper's Cooperama and the intelligence chief in Callan. He also enjoyed the lead in touring productions of The Deep Blue Sea and The Sleeping Prince, and was in Murder at the Vicarage, The Mousetrap and No Sex Please, We're British in the West End. more....

Canadian-born television personality and songwriter, Jackie Rae, has died aged 84 (17 October 2006)
In 1958, Rae moved to London, and made a good start, hosting his own variety show and appearing on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. The following year, the well-groomed performer hosted ITV's Spot the Tune. Contestants had to recognise a song from a few notes of music, usually performed by Marion Ryan who added the glamour; if they claimed, "I'll name that tune in two", they were given two notes. It was an era of popular quiz shows and its viewing figure of five million homes was not far short of Double Your Money, Take Your Pick and Dotto. A decade later he was compering 'The Golden Shot.' He also wrote songs with Roger Cooke and Roger Greenaway.
Rae was a soft-voiced singer, best suited to romantic ballads. Although he never had a hit record, he made several singles including "More Than Ever" (1958) and "Theme From a Summer Place" (1960). He took part in the 1961 Royal Variety Performance. In 1959 Rae married Janette Scott, the actress daughter of Thora Hird. more....

Sir Malcolm Arnold, composer and trumpeter, has died aged 84 (25 September 2006)
Sir Malcolm Arnold had been composing since childhood, inspired, he once said, by a chance meeting with Duke Ellington in a Bournemouth tea room. Louis Armstrong was another influence. He wrote something like 130 film scores, ranging from his first. Avalanche Patrol, in 1947, to David Copperfield in 1969. Along the way, he collected a Hollywood Oscar, for his score for David Lean's film of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Other films on which he collaborated were I Am a Camera (1955), The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), The Angry Silence (1960), Tunes of Glory (1960) and Whistle Down the Wind (1961).
He once claimed that he only wrote film music so that he could conduct it himself and so gain experience in this area. He may just have been teasing, because many of these scores were highly effective. During this period he also composed three operas and three ballets as well as a quantity of works for the concert hall. more....

Peter Ling, television scriptwriter and novelist, has died aged 80 (21 September 2006)
Peter Ling, television scriptwriter and novelist, has died aged 80. Peter Ling was one of British television’s most prolific scriptwriters. He started out writing scripts for radio but then moved over to television scripting the children’s show Whirligig (1950). He also wrote the children's sitcom Happy Holidays (starring Hattie Jacques and John Le Mesurier, 1954). When ITV was launched, Ling became script editor of children's programmes for the London weekday contractor Associated-Rediffusion, responsible for shows such as Small Time, which started that year, and the sketch show Rumpus Point (1955).
During his long career he wrote scripts for many successful series, including Dixon of Dock Green, Sexton Blake, The Avengers and Doctor Who. He also wrote episodes of the crime series Murder Bag (1957-59) and Crime Sheet (1959), which introduced Detective Superintendent Lockhart in the forerunners to No Hiding Place (for which Ling did not write).
With Hazel Adair he created Compact (1962-65), a twice- weekly BBC soap set in the offices of a women’s magazine, but the pair’s most famous creation was ITV’s long-running soap Crossroads (1964-88), starring Noele Gordon as the owner of a Midlands motel.
Ling was also the originator of the BBC Radio 2 soap Waggoners’ Walk, a series which reflected the swinging Sixties and featured three young women sharing a flat in Hampstead. more....

Ed Benedict, animator for Hanna-Barbera, has died aged 84 (19 September 2006)
The animator Ed Benedict designed some of television's most famous cartoon characters, from Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear to Fred and Barney of The Flintstones. He was noted for drawing heavily outlined figures, with unusual asymmetry and flat geometric shapes - almost like Picasso in style. Benedicts distinctive designs provided characters whose body movements were kept to a minimum and lip movements reduced to a simple, vowel-by-vowel cycle.
The Hanna-Barbera team soon had a hit with The Huckleberry Hound Show (1958-62), featuring the slapstick adventures of a naïve dog who turns up in a different disguise each week. It became the first animated series to win an Emmy Award, for Outstanding Achievement in Children's Programming (1959). more....

TV presenter Raymond Baxter dies aged 84 (15 September 2006)
He presented "Tomorrow's World" for its first 12 years, but also commentated on the Queen's coronation, Churchill's funeral and Concorde's first flight. He was the BBC's first motoring correspondent and covered 14 Monte Carlo Rallies. He was the voice of the Le Mans 24 Hour race and of 30 Farnborough Air Shows, as well as the annual British Legion Festival of Remembrance, military displays of all kinds and, of course, "Tomorrow's World." He was on air for for Concorde's first flight in 1969 and, fittingly, for her last scheduled arrival at Heathrow in October 2003 and was also the founder of the Dunkirk Little Ships organisation. more....

Frank Middlemass, character actor, has died aged 87 (12 September 2006)
Florid-faced, bewhiskered and with a rich fruity voice, Frank Middlemass was one of Britain’s finest character actors. In a career that spanned more than 50 years, he appeared in seasons with the Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare companies, starred in numerous TV dramas and was best known on radio as Dan Archer in The Archers.
His television career began in the early 1950s in series such as Dixon of Dock Green and Z-Cars, and he also starred in early live TV dramas. By the 1980s he was one of television’s busiest actors, appearing in a host of series including The Avengers, Soldier Soldier, Dr Finlay, Miss Marple and others. In 1992 he was one of the original cast of the crime series Heartbeat, playing Dr Alex Ferrenby for 21 episodes. "I very much regret being killed off in Heartbeat," he said. "It was one of my favourite roles." In 1993 he played Clive Parrott in the series A Year in Provence, opposite John Thaw.
Middlemass’s film appearances were few but they were usually in distinguished productions such as Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), in which he played Sir Charles Lyndon, and the award-winning Second World War drama, One Against the Wind (1991), starring Judy Davis. more....

Archie Andrews is to make comeback (9 September 2006)
Legendary ventriloquist’s doll Archie Andrews is set to return to the stage for the first time in nearly four decades, after his new owner revealed he is scripting a stage play charting the puppet’s life story.
Colin Burnett-Dick, who bought Archie at auction for £34,000 last November had already also found a new ventriloquist to perform as part of the show - Eastbourne-based entertainer Steve Haylett.
According to Burnett-Dick, the newly-announced production will be “a celebration, a tribute, a walk down memory lane” into the puppet’s past and will feature actors playing many of the famous names who appeared on Archie’s radio show in the forties and fifties, including Tony Hancock, Max Bygraves and Julie Andrews.
He added: “We’re at the writing stage now. It’s going to be an autobiographical journey. It starts at the auction house where I bought Archie and will look back on his career up to then with ventriloquist Peter Brough.”
The show will also include the performance of a complete episode from the Educating Archie radio series. Burnett-Dick is now looking for a producer for the show, which he hopes to have up and running in 2007 more....

Carol Kaye, a member of the famous Fifties and Sixties girl band the Kaye Sisters, has died aged 71 (23 August 2006)
Carol joined the blonde trio - which was well known for close harmony numbers - in 1955. When they split up, she became an actress and understudied Doran Bryan who became her good friend.
Young people may not know who the Kaye Sisters were, but in their day they were as famous as the Spice Girls.
Carol's career in showbusiness started when she was a youngster. Then called Carol Mayall, she was one of Grace McKenzie's Juveniles at a talent school.
She appeared in panto and revues, and toured the Continent and North Africa as a youngster, with her first all-girl trio, the Three Tunettes.
Then came the Kaye Sisters, who were not related at all. But Carol, Shan and Sheila wore matching outfits and dyed their hair blonde.
They became regulars on television programmes such as "Sunday Night at the London Palladium", and also appeared on Royal Variety Show. Their chart hits included "Paper Roses".
The Kaye Sisters split after 21 years when Sheila married Bob Wragg, one of the Dallas Boys - a male group also popular in the Fifties and early Sixties - although Carol and Shan continued in cabaret until 1976.
But the trio reformed in 1988 for a nationwide tour and appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall alongside the Dallas Boys.
Carol became an actress and appeared in TV series such as "County Hall". She had a short stint in "Coronation Street" in 1983.

TV actress Joyce Blair dies at 73 (22 August 2006)
Joyce Blair was best known for appearing in shows such as Morecambe And Wise and The Benny Hill Show. She had been diagnosed with cancer five years ago.
Blair is survived by a daughter, a son as well as her brother Lionel.
She started her showbusiness career while still a child by entertaining people in London air raid shelters during World War II.
After cropping up briefly in long-running series The Adventures Of Robin Hood, Blair's first major TV appearance was in talent show New Look, which introduced stars including Roy Castle to the screen.
Although more famous for her appearances in light entertainment - often alongside her brother - she also had roles in drama series such The Saint, Z Cars and The Last Days of Pompeii. more....

Patrick Allen, dashing and industrious actor, has died aged 79 (8 August 2006)
Allen was well known for his resonant voice, which was a feature of many television advertising campaigns from the 1960s - at one time he was known as "The King of the Voice-Over".
Allen came to prominence in the early 1960s in the television series Crane, in which he played a Morocco-based adventurer and smuggler who, with his sidekick (Sam Kydd), eluded the investigations of the local police inspector (Gerald Flood) whilst enjoying the attentions of a voluptuous barmaid (Laya Raki). Allen also achieved popularity on the small screen as the eponymous hero of Brett (1971), a drama about a business tycoon.
He was nothing if not versatile: he gave a powerful performance as Thomas Gradgrind in Hard Times and appeared as Auchinleck in Churchill and the Generals. He had parts in Bergerac and The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Trial of Lady Chatterley and The Dick Emery Show, and featured as narrator for the first series of Blackadder. He was the voice-over artist for the comedy series The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and for Vic Reeves Big Night Out. more....

Peter Hawkins, inventive TV voice-over artist, has died aged 82 (15 July 2006)
Spotted by the presenter and puppeteer Humphrey Lestocq, Peter Hawkins joined the children's variety show Whirligig (1950-56), appearing in front of the camera and providing voices for two puppets, the obnoxious Mr Turnip and the mischievous parrot Porterhouse.
It was also Hawkins' inventive voice-play that made The Flowerpot Men (1952-54) so distinctive. Hawkins improvised Bill and Ben's scripted lines in a gibberish fashion that has been likened to the technique employed by the nonsense-spouting comedian Stanley Unwin - an icicle was an "ickle-kickle", for instance - while giving Bill a high-pitched squeak and Ben lower tones to differentiate them. "Flobbadob" was the pair's word for "flowerpot". Hawkins called their language "Oddle-poddle" and, although concerns were voiced about it holding back children's development, The Flowerpot Men became one of the best-loved programmes from the so-called Golden Age of television and continued to be repeated for two decades.
Hawkins followed The Flowerpot Men by becoming one of the voices in The Woodentops (1955-58), the adventures of a family of wooden dolls living on a farm, also in the Watch With Mother slot.
When Captain Pugwash (1957-66) came to television, Hawkins was responsible for all the voices, from the blustering pirate and his work-shy crew on the Black Pig to the various rogues and vagabonds they encountered on the high seas, such as Cut-Throat Jake. Pugwash's creator, John Ryan, devised a form of animation using cut-out puppets with cardboard levers to move their eyes, mouths and limbs, as well as to rock the boats. "Almost as important as the pictures is the sound," explained Ryan.
Hawkins was also in demand to dub voices in English-language versions of foreign animation, most notably Hergé's Adventures of Tintin (1962-63), 50 fast-moving, five-minute episodes based on the newspaper comic strip created by the Belgian writer-artist Georges Remi, featuring the boy reporter and his faithful dog Snowy, along with their seafaring friend Captain Haddock.
With David Graham, Hawkins shared the original voices of the Daleks (1963-67), who made their dramatic entrance in the science-fiction serial's second, seven-episode story, written by Terry Nation and set on the planet Skaro. The pair's voices were processed electronically at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to give a distinctive sound and the Daleks quickly became the Doctor's No 1 adversaries, helping to make the programme popular with viewers. Indeed, many children could be seen going round with saucepans on their heads at the time. Hawkins and Graham also voiced the 1965 film spin-off Doctor Who and the Daleks. Hawkins then became the first voice of the Cybermen (1966-68), the shiny, cybernetically augmented humanoids, with their distinctive sound created by fitting him with a dental plate containing a microphone, originally designed for people who had undergone laryngotomies.
When John Ryan, the Captain Pugwash creator, launched The Adventures of Sir Prancelot (1972), about a heroic knight and his household setting off to the Holy Land for the Crusades, Hawkins provided all the voices. He was also heard as Zippy in the first series of Rainbow (1972) and, among dozens of productions, later narrated SuperTed (1982-86, commissioned by the Welsh channel S4C) and the Spot the Dog sequel It's Fun to Learn with Spot (1990).
Although seen in front of the camera less frequently over the years, Hawkins appeared in three series of the sketch show Dave Allen at Large (1972-75), playing characters such as a cone-headed bishop, Friar Tuck and the captain of a Mexican firing squad.
Independent obituary
Daily Telegraph obituary

Comedian Red Buttons dies at 87 (14 July 2006)
Red Buttons' career spanned 60 years and took in all forms of performance from comedy and theatre to television and cinema. Famed for his red hair, his career began in the 1930s on stage before he landed his own television programme, The Red Buttons Show, in 1952. It ran for three seasons, making him a household name. A move into cinema brought him a 1957 Oscar win for best supporting actor as Sgt Joe Kelly in the film Sayonara, starring Marlon Brando. His last screen appearance was in a recurring guest role in hospital drama ER in 2005, for which he was nominated for an Emmy. His success in Sayonara led to other film roles including The Longest Day, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and The Poseidon Adventure.
Red Buttons' career spanned 60 years and took in all forms of performance from comedy and theatre to television and cinema. In later years, he appeared in TV shows such as The Love Boat and Knots Landing. more....

Don Lusher OBE, virtuoso jazz trombonist, has died aged 82 (8 July 2006)
Don Lusher was a cornerstone of the Ted Heath band and had many features both in ballads and faster numbers. One of the most exciting and best known was on his own composition "Lush Slide", a combination of breathtaking trombone dexterity in a blazing orchestration.
After the war, his skills gained him easy entry into many top bands. He joined Joe Daniels in 1947 and between then and joining Heath in 1953 he worked for Lou Preager, Maurice Winnick, the Squadronaires, Jack Parnell, Woolf Phillips and Eric Delaney. He also led his own bands and played in Jack Parnell's ATV orchestra.
The Don Lusher Big Band began in 1974 and toured internationally with various musical directors including Robert Farnon, Nelson Riddle and Henry Mancini. more....

Peter Bryant, actor turned BBC producer, has died aged 82 (1 July 2006)
Bryant was a regular in The Grove Family (1954-57) as Jack Grove, the eldest son and a National Service conscriptee. He reprised his role in the first ever film spin-off from a British television series, It's a Great Day! (1955). Seemingly similar, but more ambitious, was The English Family Robinson (1957), Iain MacCormick's four-part series on colonial rule; Bryant was in its last instalment, with Peter Wyngarde as an Indian, while Champion Road (1958) was a Northern-set "serial" with a young Prunella Scales.
After playing a reporter in A Farthing Damages (BBC, 1959), a single play starring suave Alan Wheatley as a suspect spiritualist, Bryant turned his attentions to radio, first as an announcer, then as a script editor, eventually as head of the BBC's Drama Script Unit.
In 1967 he returned to television, now on the other side of the camera. He became story editor, on Doctor Who, before becoming its producer that year with "The Tomb of the Cybermen". Patrick Troughton was the Doctor, and Bryant remained with the series until Troughton's penultimate story two years later. One of his final acts as producer was to cast Jon Pertwee as Troughton's replacement.
After Special Project Air (1969), an early-Sunday-evening series that formed part of BBC1's first week in colour, he produced Paul Temple (1969-71), starring the debonair Francis Matthews as Francis Durbridge's amateur sleuth, long popular on radio. more....

Elkan Allan, Journalist and television producer, has died aged 83 (29 June 2006)
Elkan Allan was an extraordinary mixture of journalist, television producer, entrepreneur and innovator. In 1945, Allan was starting his career in broadcasting, creating and writing the questions for BBC Radio's first quiz shows, Quiz Time and Quiz Team. He then had spells as features editor of John Bull Magazine, and assistant editor of Illustrated, before moving into television as a presenter for the BBC's Armchair Traveller in 1953.
In 1962 he became Rediffusion's Head of Entertainment. There he saw the opportunity to bring live pop music to television for the first time by creating and producing Ready, Steady, Go! It was this seminal pop show, with its catchphrase "The weekend starts here", which caught the buzz of Sixties Britain and became an icon of its time while the BBC was still relying on Juke Box Jury. An undeniable part of the show's success was Allan's choice of the unknown, untried Cathy McGowan as one of its presenters. The 19-year-old typist from Streatham came to represent the new possibilities for all teenagers and her appointment was typical of Elkan Allan's imagination and ability to see beyond the norm.
When ITV got under way, Allan's ingenuity and eye for the new was perfect. At Rediffusion, where he was first a reporter, then editor of the current affairs programme This Week, he is said to have given David Frost his first job in television. more....

Aaron Spelling, actor and television producer, has died aged 83 (26 June 2006)
Aaron Spelling was the most successful and prolific television producer in history, responsible for inflicting upon viewers such series as Charlie's Angels, Dynasty, Starsky & Hutch, SWAT, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210, all of which epitomised trashy glamour and were inordinately popular.
He started out directing plays in the Dallas area before heading for Hollywood and starting out as an actor.
He made his début as a desk clerk in the digs of a murdered model in the film noir Vicki (1953), the first of his nine pictures, and appeared in episodes of legendary television series such as Dragnet (1953, 1954, 1955), I Love Lucy (1955), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) and Gunsmoke (1956).
But, with an ambition to write, he sold his first script, Twenty Dollar Bride (1957), to Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre and subsequently contributed to other anthology shows such as Playhouse 90 (1958), Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (1958), The Dick Powell Show (1961) and Zane Grey Theater (1958, 1959, 1961), as well as three 1957 episodes to the classic western series Wagon Train.
Telegraph obituary
Independent obituary

Hugh Latimer, radio, TV and stage actor has died aged 93 (24 June 2006)
Hugh Latimer' was a handsome, unambitious actor familiar to West End playgoers and television viewers for several decades. In parallel with his busy stage career, Latimer appeared in the film spin off from the wireless series PC 49 and in Mrs Dale's Diary, playing Bob Dale in the latter.
He was in television's Dixon of Dock Green and The Adventures of Robin Hood, Warship and Hunter's Walk, as well as The Dickie Henderson Show and Two in Clover, with Sid James.
After making his film debut in Corridor of Mirrors (1946) he appeared in Stranger at the Door (1951), The Last Man to Hang (1956) and the crime story The Gentle Trap (1960). more....

Julian Slade, composer and lyricist who co-wrote Salad Days, the irresistible musical whose success outshone all his later creations has died aged 76 (21 June 2006)
The name of the lyricist and composer Julian Slade will always be linked to Salad Days, the musical he co-wrote in 1954 with the actress Dorothy Reynolds as an end-of-season show for the Bristol Old Vic. The success made Slade rich — and hugely benefited the Bristol Old Vic Theatre — and though several subsequent musicals reached the West End none came remotely near it in popularity. Free as Air followed in 1957, then Follow that Girl (1960) and a decade later Trelawny (1972). This last, starring Ian Richardson, Hayley Mills and Timothy West, opened the week before Jesus Christ Superstar, but Slade’s characteristic style of writing had already fallen out of fashion. more....

Alec Bregonzi, actor in 'Hancock's Half Hour' has died aged 76 (9 June 2006)
Alec Bregonzi was a character player who became one of the stalwarts of British television and radio. He will be particularly remembered for his contributions to the Tony Hancock shows (he was in 22 of the 63 television episodes) and for his support of such other comedy stars as Benny Hill, Arthur Askey and the Two Ronnies.
In 1957 he made his first appearance in the television series Hancock's Half Hour, in an episode titled "The Continental Holiday". Memorable roles in the 22 playlets in which he appeared included his exasperated pilot in "Air Steward Hancock", a young juror in "Twelve Angry Men" annoyed by Hancock's procrastination, a library client disconcerted by Hancock's desperate search for the page which reveals the killer in the book he has been reading, in "The Missing Page", and the character "Fred" in the Archers-type radio show from which Hancock has just been sacked, The Bowmans. more....

Allan Prior, playwright, television scriptwriter and novelist, has died aged 84 (6 June 2006)
With more than 300 television scripts to his name Allan Prior may have supplied more words for the small screen than any other writer. During the 1950s he wrote two or three radio plays a year and moved into television, where his early work included plays and adaptations for the ITV Armchair Theatre series, a BBC serial, Starr and Company, another serial, Yorky, with Bill Naughton, and episodes of the ITV series Deadline Midnight. By the time he was approached to write for Z Cars he was an experienced, reliable and highly professional writer.
The Z Cars format was devised by Troy Kennedy Martin, who took his inspiration from the American police series, Highway Patrol. Prior also wrote 37 episodes of the Z Cars spin-off, Softly Softly, which ran for ten years from 1966. When Charlie Barlow, the bullying detective played by Stratford Johns, was given his own series, Barlow at Large, Prior, once more, was the scriptwriter. But although he later wrote for two other police shows, The Sweeney and Juliet Bravo, his work was so varied that he never ran the risk of being typecast in one genre. more....

Billy McComb, Influential entertainer and world-class magician, has died aged 84 (18 May 2006)
Billy McComb was one of the world’s top cabaret magicians, a brilliant, inventive performer who was known for his stylish presentation and off-beat comedy patter. He began working professionally as a magician and quickly made a name for himself in London nightclubs and theatres. He appeared regularly on television, made small cameo film appearances and in 1951 supported Bob Hope in variety at the Prince of Wales Theatre. By the mid-1950s he was acknowledged as one of the country’s finest magicians and he was in demand as an adviser to magic shows worldwide. more....

Val Guest, film director and screenwriter, has died aged 95 (15 May 2006)
The amazing thing about his career was the wide range of themes and styles: he switched from broad comedy to situation comedy to crime and detective thrillers, from studio-bound productions to location dramas, from period musicals to science-fiction tales, from pop musicals to soft porn, from cinema to television series. It is impossible to think of another British film creator who can approach his record.
His '50s films included: Miss Pilgrim's Progress; The Body Said No; Mr Drake's Duck (1951) based on a radio sketch, "The Atomic Egg", by Ian Messiter. Penny Princess (1952); Life with the Lyons (1953) and The Lyons in Paris (1955); The Runaway Bus (1954), the first film to star the radio comedian Frankie Howerd; Men of Sherwood Forest (1954); Dance Little Lady (1954) featured young Mandy Miller as a child ballerina. They Can't Hang Me (1955); Break in the Circle (1955); The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) was adapted from BBC TV's first huge success, an original science-fiction serial by Nigel Kneale. The sequel - Quatermass II followed in 1957. It's a Wonderful World (1956); Carry On Admiral (1957) which was from Ian Hay's play Off the Record and, according to Guest, gave a rival producer the whole idea of the "Carry On" series.
The Abominable Snowman (1957); Camp On Blood Island (1958); Up the Creek (1958); Further Up the Creek (1958); Yesterday's Enemy (1959); Expresso Bongo (1959) and a revival of the Crazy Gang after a 30-year hiatus, Life Is a Circus (1959). more....

Jennifer Jayne, the actress has died aged 74 (13 May 2006)
Jennifer Jayne appeared in many of the ITC productions from the '50s, including William Tell (as Tell's wife Hedda), Ivanhoe, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot and Robin Hood and also in other shows such as Martin Kane Private Investigator, The Invisible Man and Dial 999. She also made an appearance in the airline series Garry Halliday. Her TV career continued throughout the sixties when she worked with the cinematographer Freddie Francis, particularly on two of his directing credits, Dr. Terror's House of Horrors and the Man in a Suitcase episode "Which Way Did He Go, McGill?". In both of these she was paired with Donald Sutherland. more....

Mary Cook, head of entertainments at the Nuffield Centre, has died aged 93 (2 May 2006)
Mary Cook was described by the jazz pianist and presenter Steve Race as "the great unsung heroine of British show business"; as head of entertainments at the Nuffield Centre, near Piccadilly Circus, and of the BBC Auditions Unit from 1947, she was responsible for launching the careers of some of the biggest stars of the 20th century. In 1944 Mary Cook took over as head of entertainments at the Nuffield Centre that had opened the previous year in the disused Café de Paris, off Leicester Square. She proved to be brilliant at spotting talent. Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Benny Hill, Tommy Cooper, Tony Hancock, Michael Bentine, Frankie Howerd and Ronnie Corbett were among those who got their first breaks at the centre during Mary Cook's time there. more....

After 48 years, the final score looms for Grandstand (25 April 2006)
Sitting down to a Saturday afternoon of TV sport will never be the same again as the BBC has announced that it is to axe Grandstand, after 48 years, as part of the corporation's strategy to survive in the digital age. Since Grandstand was launched in 1958, its theme tune, format and popular presenters have made it an institution.
The programme is the most high-profile casualty of plans to help the BBC keep pace with changing viewing habits. more....

Richard Bebb, actor and connoisseur of the recorded voice, has died aged 79 (20 April 2006)
Richard Bebb was an erudite actor on stage, screen and radio whose deep interest in the history of acting turned him into a distinguished collector and student of the recorded theatrical voice. In 1950 he began working regularly in radio and television. He shared the narration with Richard Burton in the original wireless production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, and appeared in more than 1,000 broadcast plays.
A prolific TV and film actor he often played doctors or upper-class figures. He made his TV debut in 1951 playing Octavius to Walter Hudd’s Julius Caesar and appeared in a string of drama series including Dangerman, Softly, Softly, Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green. For several years he played Dr Harvest in the ITV lunchtime soap, Compact. He was Dr Orlov in Anna Karenina (1977) and Dr Stanhope in The Barchester Chronicles (1982). In recent years he was a regular face (and voiceover) in the Poirot series. more....

Myron Healey, western actor, has died aged 83 (3 April 2006)
Many character actors are known by name only to enthusiasts, but Myron Healey was so prolific that it is particularly surprising that he falls into that category - he is estimated to have appeared in over 160 feature films and twice that many television shows. With his deep voice and wily smile, he was often cast as the villain, particularly in westerns.
He became established as a regular performer on television, having made his small screen debut in the series The Lone Ranger (1949-57). His numerous credits included such westerns as The Gene Autry Show, Cheyenne, Wagon Train, Gunsmoke and Bonanza, plus other shows such as Perry Mason, Sea Hunt and The Incredible Hulk.
He is particularly remembered for two roles in western shows - his taking over from Douglas Fowley as "Doc" Holliday in the popular series starring Hugh O'Brian, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1958-59), and his portrayal of a sadistic sergeant who gives Robert Horton 20 lashes with a bullwhip in an episode of Wagon Train titled "The Traitors" (1961). more....

Ivy Wallace, the author of Pookie The Flying Rabbit books, has died aged 90 (1 April 2006)
Ivy Wallace became a publishing phenomenon in the 1950s and 1960s with a series of children's books chronicling the adventures of Pookie, the flying rabbit who leaves his home in the Bluebell Wood to seek his fortune with a red spotted bundle tied on a stick; in the 1990s she became one of the few writers to be rediscovered in her own lifetime. more....

Channing Pollock, celebrated magician, has died aged 79 (26 March 2006)
Channing Pollock performed one of the most sophisticated and elegant magic acts in the world. A debonair figure, dressed immaculately both on stage and off, he set the standard for producing doves from thin air. As he made literally hundreds of doves appear from nowhere he seemed to be shaping them from his own hands. Magicians throughout the world copied his act but never equalled his artistry. In the mid-1950s he came to Britain where he headlined on several occasions at the London Palladium, sometimes billed as “the most beautiful man in the world”. When asked how he developed his stage image he said: “Fear made me look sophisticated!”
He also went on to guest star in American TV shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies and Bonanza. more....

John Crawley, BBC 'complaints' editor, has died aged 96 (22 March 2006)
On 23 September 1955, a grieving nation of radio listeners read of the heroic death of Grace Archer dashing into a blazing stable to rescue a horse. This soap operatic news story caused far more press comment - and far more leading articles - than there were about the formal opening of Independent Television the evening before. The man behind this piece of inter-media gamesmanship was John Crawley, at that time in charge of BBC publicity. Others had devised the idea, but it was Crawley who arranged to invite all the radio correspondents to an afternoon pre-hearing of the Archers episode, to hold them there long enough to prevent a leak to the evening papers and to ensure that they had something compulsive to write about while their television colleagues were attending the ITV banquet in Guildhall. By 1970 he had worked his way up the rungs of the BBC ladder to become Chief Assistant to the Director-General, Charles Curran. more....

Moira Redmond, vivacious actress known for her work on popular TV series, has died aged 77 (21 March 2006)
She was a redhead of beauty and vivacity who never quite achieved stardom. She popped up in guest roles in almost every popular television crime series of the late 20th century, from No Hiding Place and Dixon of Dock Green to The Sweeney, from The Avengers and Danger Man to The Return of the Saint, but seldom more than once in each. The one title she graced three times was the B-movies series, the Edgar Wallace Mysteries, of the early 1960s.
On the loftier slopes of television drama she created several important parts, notably that of Leonie, the hero's faithless wife, in David Mercer's extraordinary 1962 BBC comedy of madness, A Suitable Case for Treatment, sharing the honours with Ian Hendry, Jack May, Anna Wing, Jane Merrow and Guy the Gorilla, whose scenes the director Don Taylor pre-filmed at the London Zoo.
Telegraph Obituary
Times Obituary

John Junkin, actor and scriptwriter, has died aged 76 (8 March 2006)
Born in Ealing, West London, in 1930, Junkin worked as a teacher, lift attendant and labourer before turning to writing professionally. After meeting Spike Milligan, he joined the team on the zany sketch show The Idiot Weekly, Price 2d (1956), which included writers such as Ray Galton, Alan Simpson and Johnny Speight, with Eric Sykes as script editor. It ran for five series until 1956. Junkin teamed up with Freeman and Nation to write the radio sitcom The Floggits for Elsie and Doris Waters. Junkin wrote more conventional humour for two series of The Ted Ray Show (1958-59), starring the popular comedian who had made his name in music hall.
Telegraph Obituary
Independent Obituary
Times Obituary

Peter Philp, writer and antique dealer who made the one-man TV show Collectors' Club, has died aged 85 (6 March 2006)
For many years from the 1970s Peter Philp wrote witty and highly informative columns in The Times, distilled from one of his principal careers, antique dealing. Not only was he the doyen of the trade in Cardiff, where he was the third generation in the family business, but he had also been the writer, director, lighting man, designer and presenter of the original TV antiques programme, the very much one-man show Collectors’ Club, first broadcast in 1958. more....

Dennis Weaver, actor in the classic western Gunsmoke, has died aged 81 (27 February 2006)
Weaver was best remembered as the slow-witted deputy Chester Goode in the series and also the New Mexico deputy solving New York crime in McCloud.
When Weaver first auditioned for the series, he found the character of Chester "inane". He wrote in his 2001 autobiography, 'All the World's a Stage', that he said to himself: "With all my Actors Studio training, I'll correct this character by using my own experiences and drawing from myself."
The result was a well-rounded character that appealed to audiences, especially with his drawling, "Mis-ter Dil-lon."
At the end of seven hit seasons, Weaver sought other horizons. He announced his departure, but the failures of pilots for his own series caused him to return to Gunsmoke on a limited basis for two more years. The role brought him an Emmy in the 1958-59 season. (The series was known as Gun Law in the UK).
Telegraph Obituary
Independent Obituary

Al Lewis, Grandpa in The Munsters, has died aged 82 (6 February 2006)
American television viewers had also known Lewis as Officer Leo Schnauser in Car 54, Where Are You? a comedy set in a Bronx precinct that aired from 1961 to 1963, and which also starred Fred Gwynne, and later for humorous cameos on such shows as Lost in Space, The Night Stalker, and Here's Lucy, with Lucille Ball. Lewis also took roles in theatre and television shows such as Decoy (1954). He worked on hundreds of radio shows, but his break came when Phil Silvers gave him a showy cameo on The Phil Silvers Show. The Munsters followed. He never escaped the role, but never complained. "It pays the mortgage," he said. Lewis would for decades make guest appearances in character at film conventions and autograph shows. more....

Henry McGee, character actor and straight man, has died aged 76 (2 February 2006)
McGee was a character actor best known for his role as straight man to the television comics Benny Hill and Charlie Drake. He had only to "feed" their clowning to raise laughter, but he did so with immaculate, farcical solemnity. Few actors knew how to keep so straight a face in front of such sustained absurdity. From 1965 McGee forged a memorable partnership with Drake in the television series The Worker, in which he played the hapless Employment Exchange official Mr Pugh; one job failure after another would cause him, quivering with rage, to haul Drake over the counter by his lapels.
Later McGee began his 20-year association with Benny Hill, often serving as the announcer on Hill's television show, delivering the introduction: "Yes! It's The Benny Hill Show!". Among other television comics whom McGee "fed" were Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper, Reg Varney, Eric Sykes, Terry Scott, Dick Emery, Jimmy Tarbuck, Ted Rogers, Max Wall and Lance Percival. Other series included Up the Workers, Rising Damp, The Goodies, The Late Mr H, and A Penny for Your Dreams. more....

John Woodnutt, character actor, has died aged 81 (31 January 2006)
John Woodnutt was one of the most prolific character actors from the golden age of television drama, his long, thin face well suited to expressing disapproval, particularly as cold officials or implacable villains.
He made one of his earliest television appearances in One (1956), "a story of the foreseeable future", broadcast live on the still new ITV. But he became more familiar in a succession of adventure serials shown in early evenings as part of the BBC's children's television slot, usually on Sundays. He was an evil spy in The Black Brigand (1956) from Alexandre Dumas, while Queen's Champion (1958) was written and produced by Shaun Sutton, later Head of BBC Drama. The cast also included Patrick Troughton, Patrick Cargill, the future "Q" Desmond Llewellyn and a very young Jane Asher. Just four months later, Woodnutt was back, in a Cornish swashbuckler, The Rebel Heiress (1958), and was then strangely cast as a Native American in a western, The Cabin in the Clearing (1959). more....

Bengo the Boxer Pup is set to return to television (16 January 2006)
Maverick Entertainment who brought back Muffin the Mule in 2005 have agreed a deal with the estate of William Timym, illustrator of the series. He also drew Bleep and Booster, the cartoon characters who entertained Blue Peter viewers in the 1960s, who are also set to return to the small screen.

Trevor Duncan, composer of television and light music, has died aged 81 (5 January 2006)
His credits include music for the 'Quatermass' serials of the 1950s, 'A For Andromeda' and 'The Planemakers', the theme for the BBC television serial 'The Scarf' (The Girl From Corsica), 'Doctor Finlay's Casebook' (March From A Little Suite) and many other light music titles. more....

Sunny Rogers, exuberant sidekick and confidante to Frankie Howard, has died aged 92 (5 January 2006)
Sunny Rogers was the long suffering stooge, feed and pianist to Frankie Howerd for 35 years. A diminutive figure with a sparkling smile, she bore the brunt of the comedian’s onstage insults with remarkable finesse: “Poor old soul. She’s past it, you know — that is, if she ever ’ad it! She’s deaf — aren’t you dear? Deaf! I said deaf!”
Audiences adored her and she was much respected among her peers for her own considerable comic timing. “Far from being a poor old soul,” said Roy Hudd, “she was very glamorous and knew exactly what she was doing on stage with Howerd. She could feed a line or throw a glance at him that would bring the house down.” more....

Michael Latham, documentary film-maker, has died aged 73 (4 January 2006)
He was responsible for some of the most influential factual television programmes of the last four decades. In the late 1950s he joined the BBC's Outside Broadcast Unit and in 1960 he covered the marriage of Princess Margaret to the Earl of Snowdon. Latham and Snowdon became friends and worked on a number of television projects together, including Love of a Kind, directed by Snowdon, about the British and their pets.
By the early 1960s Latham had joined BBC Features. It was a time of great innovation and new freedoms, and he leapt at the chance to stimulate debate with his programmes. Diligent and painstaking in his research, with a particular talent for scriptwriting, he approached each new project with a meticulousness and enthusiasm which was to inspire many other documentary film-makers. more....

Belita, glamorous star of the stage, screen and ice rink, has died aged 82 (4 January 2006)
She dazzled audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Belita starred in several of Langdon’s ice shows at Empress Hall in the 1950s. These included Babes in the Wood (as Robin Hood); Jack and the Beanstalk; the celebrated White Horse Inn on Ice with the great comic Max Wall; Wildfire with the singer Frankie Vaughan; and London Melody in which the comedian Norman Wisdom also featured. She also toured with her own show, Champagne on Ice, in England, appearing with it at the London Hippodrome for the impresario Bernard Delfont. She also made an appearance at Eagle Court in a water show with the Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller. more....

Maurice Dodd, scriptwriter of 'The Perishers', has died aged 83 (3 January 2006)
In 1959 Bill Herbert, Cartoon Editor of the Daily Mirror (who had served with Dodd during the Second World War), asked him to help out as scriptwriter on "The Perishers", a cartoon strip about a group of "perishing" kids led by a freckle-faced boy called Wellington, who wore Wellington boots and a deerstalker hat. Launched in February 1958 as a British answer to the American Charles Schultz's popular "Peanuts" strip, it first appeared in the Manchester edition of the Daily Mirror with a storyline by Ben Witham (who went on to write jokes for the "Useless Eustace" cartoon feature) and drawings by Dennis Collins. Dodd soon set up a partnership with Collins - creating scripts and rough layouts while Collins produced the finished drawings - and created a host of new characters, including Wellington's pet Old English Sheepdog, Boot, who first appeared in 1959. more....

Phil Tate, who has died aged 83, led a popular dance band in the post-war years. (15 December 2005)
In 1950 Tate took up a residency at Hammersmith Palais. His band, which shared the billing with Lou Preager's orchestra, featured the unique blend of three flutes and five saxophones. He began recording ballroom dance music for the Oriole label and, with the launch of commercial television in 1955, made regular Friday night appearances on the Associated Rediffusion show Palais Party. Tate hosted the weekly radio show Non-Stop Pop on the BBC Light Programme, in which he interviewed current pop stars, including the Beatles. He also made regular television appearances with the band on the BBC's Come Dancing. more....

Waldo Maguire, broadcaster who became the first Ulsterman to hold the post of BBC Controller, Northern Ireland has died aged 85 (30 November 2005)
.....Demobilised in 1945, Maguire was invited to join the BBC Latin American Service: languages came easily to him. He transferred to Radio News the next year, worked his way up the ranks, moved to Alexandra Palace, the home of television news, in 1955, and was made editor, TV news, in 1962. This was a period of great technical and managerial bustle, with the balance of power in the corporation steadily shifting as the newer medium attracted the mass audience. Among other big events for which he was responsible was the news coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. more....

Archie Andrews dummy sells for £34,000 (23 November 2005)
A private collector has paid £34,000 for the original Archie Andrews dummy used by ventriloquist Peter Brough in the 1950s radio show, Educating Archie. The dummy sold for more than double the £15,000 estimate at Taunton auctioneers Greenslade Taylor Hunt on Tuesday, where it was sold by Brough's family. more....

Ralph Edwards, creator of 'This Is Your Life', has died aged 92 (21 November 2005)
Ralph Edwards was among the first broadcasters to realise the financial importance of a television franchise for a popular idea. Every time Eamonn Andrews or Michael Aspel surprised a subject with the "big red book"on This Is Your Life, the credits had to acknowledge Edwards's role as creator and licensee.
He came up with the idea for This Is Your Life for US radio in 1948 with the purpose of telling the life story of some notable citizen. The television version, which began in 1952, was based more on celebrity and the subjects included Bob Hope, Marilyn Monroe and Laurel and Hardy.
In 1955 Eamonn Andrews, the host of What's My Line?, was booked to host the UK edition, but the press leaked that the first subject would be the footballer Stanley Matthews. When the day of the first show came, Andrews assumed that Matthews would still be the subject, and he was stunned to see instead Ralph Edwards, who then hosted an edition on Andrews's life. more....

Actress Avril Angers has died aged 87 (11 November 2005)
Avril Angers was one of the most zestful, charming and reliable character comediennes in the post-war London theatre; she also appeared in television series such as Dad's Army, All Creatures Great and Small, Are You Being Served?, Minder, Coronation Street and The Tomorrow People.
Her comic persona flourished on stage and television, particularly in provincial pantomime and in television partnerships with comedians like Benny Hill, Arthur Askey, Frankie Howerd, Terry-Thomas and Les Dawson, and in shows such as Dad's Army and Coronation Street.
She started broadcasting for the BBC radio service in 1944. It was when she was in Cairo with the troops that Douglas Moodlie saw her as a future radio personality, and Variety Bandbox gave her her big chance; followed by more than a year with the Carroll Levis radio show.
She had a topical musical slot called Look Back with Angers on the BBC radio show Roundabout, from which she was upset to be "given a rest" in 1959. From the 1930s through to the 1950s, she was a fixture as a cartoon character in Radio Fun, in a comic strip entitled The Adventures of Avril Angers more....

Geoffrey Keen, film and television actor, has died aged 89 (7 November 2005)
Geoffrey Keen specialised in playing tetchy authority figures.
During the 1950s and 1960s, if ever an actor was required to portray an authoritarian headmaster, strait-laced chairman or a commanding officer, Keen was high on the wanted list.
He established himself as one of the busiest character actors in the profession, often averaging more than five films a year. The joke in British film studios was that Keen seemed to pop up in every home-grown film ever made, an indication of how memorable his performances were.
Among Keen’s 100 film credits were Genevieve (1953), Doctor in the House (1954), The Long Arm (1956), Fortune is a Woman (1957), The Spiral Road (1962) — his first taste of Hollywood, he appeared with Rock Hudson — and Doctor Zhivago (1965). His most memorable small screen role was his portrayal of Brian Stead, a ruthless oil company chairman, in Troubleshooters. more....

Actress, Jan Holden, has died aged 74 (28 October 2005)
Jan Holden was a stage actress known for her performances in light comedy, and also appeared in popular television series of the 1950s and 1960s.
Her television credits in the 1950s included the television series Fabian of the Yard and Douglas Fairbanks Presents. She was also in the successful detective series The Vice, playing some 10 different characters in the show until 1961. In that year she played the personnel officer in Harper's West One, an ATV black and white television series about life in a large Oxford Street store. There were 32 one-hour episodes, all broadcast live. She also appeared in episodes of The Avengers, The Saint and Are You Being Served? and was the magazine editor to Maureen Lipman's agony aunt in the sitcom Agony.
She was married to the actor Edwin Richfield, who played was Armando in the ITV show The Buccaneers. more....

Little Rascal, Gordon Lee, has died aged 72 (25 October 2005)
The former child actor Gordon Lee was known as "Porky" in the "Our Gang" film comedies - subsequently rechristened The Little Rascals for television - produced by Hal Roach from 1922 to 1938, and in the continuation of the series produced at MGM until 1944. "Porky" - joined the series with Little Sinner (1935) and remained until 1939's Auto Antics. In all, he appeared in 42 of the films. Although by no means too old to continue, Lee had begun to grow much taller and slimmer, thus belying the "Porky" tag (his eventual adult height was 6ft 4in). During his time with the Gang, Lee was identified by the exclamation "O'tay" - or "OK", as rendered through the minor speech impediment that he came to outgrow - and as part of an unofficial double act with another of the tinier children, the black actor Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas. more....

COI Public Information Films available on the Web (25 October 2005)
To celebrate their 60th birthday, for the first time on The National Archives' website you can view complete public information films from the 20th Century. The first selection of films from 1945 -1951 features some fascinating events from Britain's post-war history. For more information and to view the films, follow this link : more....

Michael Gill Director and producer of Kenneth Clark's 'Civilisation' has died aged 81 (24 October 2005)
He started out in television in 1958, as an arts producer in BBC Schools Programmes, and then went to Monitor, edited by Huw Wheldon. Monitor was the seed-bed that gave television and cinema the talents of Melvyn Bragg, Patrick Garland, Jonathan Miller, Ken Russell and John Schlesinger. Gill brought in John Berger, and during the next five years the pair made many programmes, riding around London together with Gill on the back of Berger's motor-bike, arguing in Soho restaurants, and creating films "out of a dialogue between writer and director; I could not imagine working in any other way". more....

New Muffin Children's programme ranked no. 1 (18 October 2005)
Peak Entertainment Holdings today reported that Muffin the Mule was ranked the number 1 pre-school program in the United Kingdom. The findings were derived from the BARB/DGA local survey. The survey included the top 25 pre-school programs, targeting children between the ages of 4 to 6 years old residing in multi-channel and free-to-air digital homes. Viewing channels included CBeebies and Nick Jr., with Muffin reaching 21.66 percent of their local viewing audiences. "Muffin the Mule has successfully built an effective presence as the program of choice for our local markets," said Phil Ogden, Managing Director of Peak Entertainment Holdings Inc. "After 60 years, the BBC's classic children's favorite Mule has proven that the old ones definitely are the best. We have broadened our reach by knowing our audience's consumption, knowing that our viewers are searching for the most educational and stimulating programming available for their children." more....

Comedy actor, Ronnie Barker has died aged 76 (4 October 2005)
For more than 20 years Ronnie Barker was one of the leading figures of British television comedy. He was much loved and admired for his appearances in the long-running series The Two Ronnies, with Ronnie Corbett, as prison inmate Fletcher, in the series Porridge, and as Arkwright, the bumbling, stuttering, sex-obsessed shopkeeper in Open All Hours.
It was during the 1950s that he broke into radio. He was in 300 editions of The Navy Lark as A B Johnson (also known by the nickname 'Fatso').
Ronnie Barker first worked with Ronnie Corbett in The Frost Report and Frost on Sunday, programmes for which he also wrote scripts. In 1971 they teamed up for the first Two Ronnies.
BBC Obituary...
Telegraph Obituary
Independent Obituary...
Times Obituary...

Little Rascal, Tommy Bond, has died aged 79 (28 September 2005)
The "Our Gang" comedies were one of the most successful series of shorts during the 1920s and 1930s. Starring a bunch of mischievous toddlers, the films were notable in featuring working-class children and for casting the boys and girls, black and white, as equals. Later, in the Fifties, they entertained a whole new generation when released to television as The Little Rascals. One of the most memorable of the team was Tommy Bond, who joined the series at the age of five as a soft-spoken peripheral member of the gang, but became a prime figure when he reappeared later as a hissable bully named "Butch". There were 221 "Our Gang" movie shorts, the series successfully making the transition from silent to sound. Bond made his début in Spanky (1932), a showcase for chubby "Spanky" McFarland, but made a particularly strong impression the following year in Mush and Milk. more....

Actor Ronald Leigh-Hunt has died aged 88 (24 September 2005)
A smooth supporting actor, Ronald Leigh-Hunt was one of the most familiar faces of postwar British cinema. He made more than 50 films, many of them B-movie thrillers in which he was usually cast as a doctor or a policeman and on television he was best known for roles as King Arthur in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956) and as Colonel Buchan in the long-running children’s series Freewheelers (1968). Rarely out of work throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Leigh-Hunt played supporting roles in a string of films as well as appearing in television series such as The Saint, Dixon of Dock Green, The Avengers and Z Cars. Elegantly dressed on screen and off, he was known in theatrical circles for his glorious voice and impeccable manners. more....

Actor Derek Aylward has died aged 82 (6 September 2005)
During the 1950's, Derek Aylward concentrated on the new medium of television, in the live days with the BBC as the only channel. He had made his début in 1947 in a play, Blow Your Own Trumpet, as a character called Dick. He became a regular, as a scout named Brayton Ripley, in The Cabin in the Clearing (1954), a BBC western serial for children, and guested in the now unintentionally hilarious Fabian of the Yard (1954), and a No Hiding Place (1959) that was recovered in 1999 as part of the British Film Institute's "Missing Believed Wiped" initiative.
One of his best-remembered roles was in Quatermass II (1955), as a nice young public relations man who perishes after falling into a vat of alien slime; he worked for Rudolph Cartier in Anna Karenina (1961), supporting Claire Bloom in the title role and Sean Connery as Vronsky, and the subsequently wiped Rembrandt (1969), as Banning Cocq, with Richard Johnson. Classic serials included Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1959), as Godfrey Ablewhite, with Patrick Troughton, plus some popular swashbucklers: William Tell (1957), Ivanhoe (1958) and The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956). There were two appearances during Dixon of Dock Green's long run, and Aylward played an incompetent professor's assistant in a one-off sci-fi comedy, Bellweather Nine (1959). more....

Actor Terence Morgan has died aged 83 (31 August 2005)
In the cinema, Terence Morgan played a string of charming rats before switching to television as Elizabeth I's seafaring adventurer in Sir Francis Drake. Typical of ITV's early swashbucklers, such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, the 26 half-hour programmes (1961-62) were popular Sunday-afternoon entertainment in British homes and one of the television executive Lew Grade's many series to be sold abroad, including the profitable American market.
Starring with Morgan was Jean Kent as Queen Elizabeth - and two recreations of the Golden Hind. A full-scale model was built for scenes shot at Elstree Studios while another, seaworthy replica for location filming in Cornwall was reconstructed from a neglected motor fishing vessel, found on the mudflats near Colchester, that had seen active service during the Second World War as a harbour launch but most recently as a mission ship with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
The series followed Morgan in his role as the first Englishman to sail round the world, taking on the Spanish on the high seas and bringing home glittering riches. more....

N J Crisp, TV dramatist, playwright and novelist has died aged 81 (18 August 2005)
Norman James Crisp had a long career as a successful writer for television. In the mid-fifties he had short stories accepted by Reveille, John Bull and the Saturday Evening Post, and a television play, People of the Night (about a radio cab company, 1957) broadcast by the BBC. He went on to write scripts for the BBC soap opera Compact (1963-64), set in the offices of a women's magazine, many Dixon of Dock Green episodes between 1965 and 1975 and The Expert (1968-69, 1971, 1976), which combined George Dixon and Dr Finlay by following the day-to-day activities of a forensic scientist, Dr John Hardy (Marius Goring).
Even during the five-year run of The Brothers, the prolific Crisp wrote scripts for Colditz (1972-74), the wartime prison-camp drama produced by Glaister. The pair then devised Oil Strike North (1975), about the crew and their families on a North Sea oil rig, for which the creators spent two years researching in Scottish coastal towns and on rigs and supply vessels.
In a different vein, Crisp scripted the feature-length television drama The Masks of Death (1984), starring Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes and John Mills as Dr Watson, and the horror film Murder Elite (1985), featuring Ali MacGraw. more....

Jack Tripp, pantomine dame, has died aged 83 (6 August 2005)
Tripp was one of the most popular pantomime dames of the post-war period; a master of drollery and pathos, and a stylish, if eccentric, dancer, he was once described by the Stage as "the John Gielgud of pantomime dames".
His talents as a comic actor were not confined to the pantomime, but he will forever be associated with turning the role of dame into an art form. He played the part some 35 times, in the tradition of such classic dames as George Lacy and Douglas Byng. Never crude or over made-up, and always daintily dressed in lace-trimmed gingham, bloomers and immaculate white pinafores, he had a range of comic expressions - from a wide grin and a grimly pursed mouth to archly raised eyebrows - that said more than any smutty remark. more....

Derek Hilton, Coronation Street theme music composer has died aged 78 (1 August 2005)
He also supplied incidental music for the series. Having begun at Granada Television as a pianist, Hilton rose to become Granada's musical director, writing 241 television themes. As a conductor and arranger, he worked with some of the biggest names in showbusiness, Shirley Bassey, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis and Tom Jones among them. He contributed to Criss Cross Quiz; All Our Yesterdays; Mr Rose; The Caesars; Paris 1900; Cribb; Murder; The Odd Man; Spoils of War; Inheritance; A Family at War; A Kind of Loving, and to many others shows. more....

A brand new TV adventure beckons for Muffin the Mule this September as he makes an eagerly awaited return to the BBC, his first TV home. Maverick Entertainment has been commissioned to produce an initial 26 x 10 minute episodes of 2D animation and is investing £2 million into Muffin’s TV makeover. Aimed at pre-schoolers, Muffin will be presented as a fun loving problem solver and will be joined in Muffinham by nine friends, including Peregrine the Penguin, Louise the Lamb and Oswald the Ostrich who were all original puppet characters in the 1940s TV show. The charming, humorous and vibrant production remains faithful to the characteristics of the original and will undoubtedly appeal to all generations. more....

Magazine publisher Future is to expand its childrens' portfolio with a launch this year -- of Muffin the Mule Magazine in October 2005.
Muffin the Mule Magazine is licensed from Peak Entertainment, and its launch coincides with the 60-year-old character's return to TV on BBC One and CBeebies for 26 episodes.
It is Future's first magazine pitched at the pre-school market and will be published every three weeks priced £1.75.
Editor Cavan Scott said: "Muffin was the first ever character created by the BBC and the new TV show and magazine will follow in the BBC's tradition of quality family entertainment."

Betty Astell, early television variety artist has died aged 93 (29 July 2005)
During the early days of television, Betty Astell was one of those whose face flickered on the screen as the pioneering John Logie Baird conducted experiments in the new medium. On 22 August 1932, when the BBC began its "30-line" transmission with Baird's equipment, speeches by the great and the good were followed by a programme of light entertainment that included Astell singing and dancing. She married Cyril Fletcher and, after the war, they both wrote and starred in the film comedy A Piece of Cake (1948). They also appeared on television in episodes of the sketch show Kaleidoscope (1949) and their own BBC sketch special Cyril's Saga (1957), written by Bob Monkhouse and Denis Goodwin. Switching to ITV, they starred in The Cyril Fletcher Show (1959), a six- part series of comedy sketches scripted by Johnny Speight. Monkhouse and Goodwin also wrote a radio sitcom for Astell and Fletcher. Mixed Doubles (1956-57) featured them as a married couple, with Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray - another show-business pair - playing their neighbours in south London. more....

Actor Michael Medwin receives OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours (11 June 2005)
Army Game star Michael Medwin has been awarded an OBE in the Birthday Hounours List. He played Corporal Springer in the series and has appeared in many films and TV series since. He played Don Satchley in the TV series Shoestring and produced the Gumshoe TV series of 1971. more....

Billy Smart Jr. has died aged 70 (24 May 2005)
Billy Smart Jr. was the youthful star of Billy Smart's Circus in the 1950s and 1960s, when his father's fairground empire was one of the largest in Europe; at the height of its success, Billy Smart's Big Top could hold 5,500 people, and the show involved hundreds of animals, vehicles and entertainers, as well as a 15-piece orchestra and its own touring train. Smart took part in many of the regular television shows of Smart's Circus from the early 1950s and contiued until 1983. They were shown first on the BBC, when viewing audiences reached the highest figures recorded for any light entertainment show, and later by Thames Television. more....

Elisabeth Frazer, who played Sergeant Bilko's girlfriend, has died aged 85 (17 May 2005)
Elisabeth Fraser played brassy blondes in films alongside such stars as Frank Sinatra and Burt Lancaster; but she was most arresting as the girlfriend of the crafty Sergeant Bilko in the American television series of the 1950s. As Sergeant Joan Hogan, the colonel's secretary at Fort Baxter, Kansas, she represented an essential alliance for the wisecracking master sergeant, played by Phil Silvers, warning him in advance of any attempts to use his vehicles for military purposes. more....

Johnnie Stewart, Juke Box Jury producer, has died aged 87 (5 May 2005)
In 1937 Stewart joined the sound effects department for BBC radio drama. On returning to the BBC after the war, he produced several music programmes including Sing It Again and BBC Jazz Club.
In 1958 Stewart transferred to BBC Television and produced Juke Box Jury, hosted by David Jacobs; in 1963 he produced a 90-minute television special, Terry-Thomas Says How Do You View, capitalising on the comedian's appearance in the big-budget film It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. The disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted the very popular Teen and Twenty Disc Club on Radio Luxembourg, and, in 1963, the BBC producer Barney Colehan thought his format could be adapted to television. He recorded a pilot with Savile and, in subsequent discussions, it was decided to make it a chart show, produced by Johnnie Stewart. Stewart came up with the title, Top of the Pops. more....

Dixon of Dock Green back on duty (2 May 2005)
Classic BBC TV police drama Dixon of Dock Green is to make a comeback - but this time as a series on Radio 4.
The show will star Lawless actor David Calder as George Dixon and Casanova's David Tennant as Andy Crawford. A series of six programmes will be broadcast in June and will be based on the original TV scripts. The BBC One series, starring Jack Warner, ran from 1955 to 1976 and was one of the most popular shows of its day, watched by over 14 million people. Set in the East End of London, Dixon of Dock Green focused on the everyday routine tasks of local police, troubled mainly by low-level crime. Compared to contemporary police dramas, the show was gentle and slow-paced, summed up by the comforting central character of Dixon with his catchphrase "Evenin' all". David Tennant will play George Dixon's sidekick Andy Crawford. more....

Composer, trumpeter and arranger Robert Farnon has died aged 87 (24 April 2005)
Bob Farnon composed many light music cameos for Chappell Music Publishers, primarily for use as background music in newsreels etc, but many of these pieces were recorded by Bob's and other orchestras, and often became familiar through their use as radio and TV signature tunes. Among his very well known compositions are 'Portrait Of A Flirt', 'Jumping Bean', 'Journey Into Melody', 'Melody Fair', 'Westminster Waltz' and 'Manhattan Playboy'. more....

Sir John Mills, one of Britain's best-known and best-loved actors, has died at the age of 97 (23 April 2005)
He starred in more than 100 films since the early 1930s including Great Expectations, War and Peace, and Ryan's Daughter - for which he won an Oscar. A 1929 appearance as Hamlet at the Old Vic Theatre in London established him as one of the most talented actors of his generation. His role in Goodbye Mr Chips in 1939 first brought him to international stardom. Patriotic roles in such films as Ice Cold in Alex, Above Us The Waves, Dunkirk, Scott of The Antarctic and Tunes of Glory brought him more accolades. He also displayed a deft touch for whimsical comedy in an adaptation of H G Wells' novel The History of Mr Polly and portraying a proud Northerner in The Family Way. He said the Oscar in 1971 for playing a village idiot in David Lean's Ryan's daughter was the highlight of his career. Roles followed in films ranging from science-fiction fantasy Quatermass, historical epic Gandhi and Madonna's Who's That Girl? more....

Benny Hill show comic writer, Dave Freeman, dies aged 82 (1 April 2005)
Comedy writer Dave Freeman was instrumental in the success of Benny Hill. He co-wrote and appeared in The Benny Hill Show in its early days and also worked with Tommy Cooper, Frankie Howerd and Tony Hancock.
He also wrote for sitcoms including Bless This House and Terry and June as well as scripting two Carry On films. more....

First ITV Weatherman, Laurie West, has died aged 96 (26 March 2005)
Laurie West was an early television weatherman in the days before the technological wizardry of computer graphics. He became the first independent television weatherman for the London area in 1955. Instead of the Met Office weather chart, he invented a device consisting of maps drawn onto a series of horizontal three-sided metal bars which allowed him to change the map by turning a handle. He also developed the idea of using small mobile symbols of the sun, clouds, rain and snow, which could be attached by magnets to the map. Always smartly dressed, West himself never appeared on television without a fresh flower in his buttonhole. By the mid-1960s he had made nearly 3,000 broadcasts. He retired in 1968. more...

Oliver Whitley, former MD of BBC External Broadcasting, has died aged 93 (24 March 2005)
Oliver Whitley, a former Managing Director of External Broadcasting and Chief Assistant to the Director-General, was regarded by many as the keeper of the BBC's conscience. In 1949 Whitley returned to the BBC as Assistant Head of the Colonial Service and then rose steadily through a succession of posts in the World Service. After nine years he moved to Broadcasting House to take charge of staff recruitment, training and promotion. In 1964 he became the Chief Assistant to the Director-General, Sir Hugh Greene. more....

Actor, David Kossoff, dies aged 85 (24 March 2005)
David Kossoff was a versatile actor well remembered for his role as Alf Larkin in the television series The Larkins, and a charming exponent of Jewish humour, manners and aspirations.
Apart from his cosy retelling of Bible stories, he was best known on the small screen for his successful collaboration with Peggy Mount on The Larkins. But although the programme was a hit, and though he also had memorable roles in films such as A Kid for Two Farthings and The Bespoke Overcoat, it was the theatre which was closest to his heart. more....

New BBC Four series features '50s TV (16 March 2005)
BBC Four has launched its website for TV On Trial - a week-long search to discover which was Britain's greatest TV decade, starting Sunday 27 March 2005. Roy Hattersley praises the decade of the Queen's coronation, while the Observer's TV critic Kathryn Flett wonders what was so great about the 50s.
Programmes showing in full: Fabian of the Yard, Double Your Money, Life with the Lyons, Can You Tell Me?
link....

Singing star Kathie Kay, 86, dies (9 March 2005)
Big band singing legend Kathie Kay, who belonged to a well-known Glasgow family, has died at the age of 86.
Her big break came in the 1950s when she was made resident singer on Billy Cotton's Band Show, which later switched from radio to television. more....

Sci-Fi frightener set for live TV (4 March 2005)
The BBC is to screen a live production of Fifties sci-fi classic The Quatermass Experiment. It will be the BBC’s first live drama programme in more than 20 years. The Quatermass Experiment was originally broadcast in 1953 and was so frightening that audiences were said to have fainted in front of their TV sets.
BBC4 will condense the original six episodes into a two-hour special to be broadcast on April 2.
Only two of the six original Quatermass episodes, which were filmed live, remain in the BBC archives – the others have been lost. The BBC followed up the series with Quatermass II (1955) and Quatermass and the Pit (1957).
The lead role of Professor Quatermass has yet to be cast. more....

Leonard Miall, BBC US correspondent and Head of Television Talks, has died aged 90 (25 February 2005)
A great institution like the BBC is made by people. Leonard Miall, who was involved with the BBC from 1939 into the new century, must rate as one of its outstanding public servants. He was a star in his own right as a reporter, he was the head of a production department in television that still influences the standards of current-affairs broadcasting, he was an ambassador for the BBC and then went on to be one of its historians. more....

Gerard Glaister, TV drama producer, has died aged 89 (16 February 2005)
Gerard 'Gerry' Glaister demonstrated an opportunity to draw in audiences from the beginning: The Dark Island; Maigret (1960-1963), which won a Bafta for best series, and, above all, Dr Finlay’s Casebook (1962-1971) were all successful. The Revenue Men involved Customs and Excise. In 1968, The Expert was based on his uncle’s forensic work. Two years later, Codename was a gripping thriller. But all were eclipsed when The Brothers, a series set in a road haulage firm began in 1972. In the same year, Colditz became one of the highest-rated series ever shown, and towards the end of the decade Glaister repeated its success with Secret Army, which dealt with a Resistance escape route in Belgium (and was later sent up by ’Allo ’Allo!). Howards’ Way, set in a boatyard, captured perfectly the tone of the Thatcherite 1980s and proved popular, but by 1991 the formula failed to work so well when it was transferred to the world of horseracing in Trainer. more....

Actor Basil Hoskins has died aged 75 (11 February 2005)
Basil Hoskins was a character actor in the romantic mould and dedicated his career, which spanned nearly half a century, to the theatre. To earn a living he had, somewhat against his will, to work in television. In Emergency Ward 10, Hoskins was the flirtatious Dr Lane-Russell; and, when he wanted to return to the theatre, it proved difficult to write him out.
Lane-Russell had already been up before the General Medical Council, so the scriptwriters had him propose to a staff nurse who turned him down, driving him to find work in a public health department.
Hoskins did, though, still appear in television dramas, among them The Prisoner, Clayhanger, New Avengers, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Blackheath Poisonings and Cold Comfort Farm. His film credits included Ice Cold in Alex, The Millionairess, North-West Frontier, Lost in London and Heidi. more....

Jack Kine Pioneer of television special effects has died aged 83 (29 January 2005)
Jack Kine was a true pioneer of television. As the co-founder in 1954 of the BBC Visual Effects Department along with Bernard Wilkie, he worked on many landmark productions, inventing techniques that stood the burgeoning industry in good stead for decades to come. Their baptism of fire was 'Running Wild' with Morecambe and Wise in 1954, quickly followed by Rudolph Cartier's epic production '1984'. They learnt fast and quickly: on 'Quatermass II' (1955) the amorphous monster was hurriedly put together after Cartier finished one morning session with the announcement that "after lunch we shoot the creature". Although shows were predominantly live, some pre-filming was allowed for 'Quatermass and the Pit' (1958/59), for which Kine designed the hideously plausible Martian creatures. Their remit covered every genre including comedy (Dad's Army, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em), drama (Z-Cars, Maigret) and education (Blue Peter and Tomorrow's World). They weren't backroom boffins, but an integral part of the studio team, establishing a rapport with cast and crew alike. The television Visual Effects Department became the biggest of its kind in the world, with a bevy of talented designers blowing things up with aplomb. BBC bureaucracy would not allow joint heads of department, so Kine became the titular chief, assuming a more administrative role, whilst Wilkie continued on the workshop floor. He was great company, full of stories and proud of his work without being arrogant. more....

Johnny Downes, Crackerjack! producer dies aged 84 (25 January 2005)
Johnny Downes, who died in December 2004, was the originator of Crackerjack, the BBC's first live children's television programme.
Made up of sketches, competitions, corny jokes and pop star guests, at the height of its popularity it began with the words "It's Friday, it's five to five, and it's Crackerjack". The studio audience screamed in response, sending adult fingers instinctively toward the off-switch.
Apart from Crackerjack, Downes produced such BBC shows as Peter's Troubles (1953), Peter Cavanagh (1955), Ignorants Abroad (1958), Leave It To Pastry (1960), The Valiant Varneys (1964), Jennings (1966), Oh Brother! (1968) and Michael Bentine Time (1972).
The series he produced included Playbox and Studio E (both 1955), The Lenny The Lion Show (1957), and a cult show for adults, Call My Bluff, from 1965. He came out of retirement in 2001 to produce and direct Boom Boom! The Best Of The Original Basil Brush Showy Bluff, David Nixon’s shows, Child’s Play and The Basil Brush Show. He devised Crackerjack in 1955, just two years after the BBC recruited him. more....

Cyril Fletcher has died aged 91 (2 January 2005)
Cyril Fletcher delivered odd odes in strangulated Cockney tones and was a surprising hit with television and radio audiences in a broadcasting career spanning more than sixty years. With his distinctive nasal twang and his contagious bonhomie Cyril Fletcher was one of Britain's most popular comedians.
In the post-war years, he was a regular in three series of the classic 1950s panel game What's My Line? and appeared in the first religious series, Sunday Story. He and his wife starred in Bob Monkhouse and Denis Goodwin's BBC sketch special Cyril's Saga (1957) and in the six-part series The Cyril Fletcher Show (1959), scripted by Johnny Speight. Fletcher was also a regular member of the panel in the BBC radio show Does the Team Think? As well as delivering his distinctive ditties, Cyril Fletcher was also, in his time, a cabaret artist, gardening expert and proud countryman. more....

British Film Institute to catalogue its TV advertisement collection for public access (30 November 2004)
It has been announced that the National Film and Television Archive (NFTVA), part of the British Film Institute, is embarking on the enormous task of cataloguing its extensive collection of between 70,000 and 80,000 adverts. The project has been given a healthy kick-start with a six-figure sponsorship from Coca-Cola UK, which is also donating its entire 50-year-old archive of 1,200 British commercials to be restored and archived for public access. more....

Novelist Arthur Hailey has died at the age of 84 (26 November 2004)
He was known for his bestselling page-turners exploring the inner workings of various industries, from the hotels to high finance.
In 1956, Arthur Hailey scored his first writing success with a TV drama, "Flight Into Danger," which later became a motion picture and a novel, Runway Zero-Eight. Since then, as a novelist and one of the great storytellers of our time, he has acquired a worldwide following of devoted readers and his books are published in twenty-seven languages. more....

Eddie Straiton, the first of the "TV vets", has died aged 87. (10 November 2004)
Eddie started a regular television feature in 1957, giving advice to farmers on animal health and welfare topics on Farming Today. His engaging personality, Scottish accent, down-to-earth advice and straightforward methods brought him immense popularity with his audience. He went on to broadcast widely, and write a series of popular veterinary books (by "the TV Vet") on farm animals and domestic