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Whirligig TV News Archive

Bernard Archard, star of the TV series 'Spycatcher', has died aged 91 (6 May 2008)
Disillusioned with the experience of regular unemployment as an actor in Britain, in 1959 Bernard Archard booked a seat on the next boat to Canada, with plans to make a new start. But then he was asked to audition for the starring role in Spycatcher, as Lt-Col Oreste Pinto, a wartime Allied counter-espionage expert. The programme, which ran to four series, finally made Archard a star at the age of 43 and he became a prolific character actor in films and on television.
Following his success in Spycatcher, Archard was frequently typecast as policemen, in long-forgotten films such as The Clue of the New Pin (1960), Man Detained (1961), The Silent Playground (1963) and The List of Adrian Messenger (1963). On television, he was HM Inspector of Constabulary on official visits to the police stations in both Z Cars (1965) and its spin-off, Softly Softly (1967). more....

Humphrey Lyttelton, broadcaster and jazz musician, has died aged 86 (26 April 2008)
After spending the Second World War as an officer in the Grenadier Guards, Lyttelton became a pioneering figure in the British jazz scene. He formed his first band in 1948 after spending a year with George Webb's Dixielanders, a band that pioneered New Orleans-style jazz in the UK. The Humphrey Lyttelton Band quickly became Britain's leading traditional jazz group, and continental tours gave them a following in Europe.
In 1949, he signed a recording contract with EMI which led to a string of records in the Parlophone Super Rhythm Style series and which have become highly sought after. By the late 1950s he was branching out, enlarging his band and experimenting with mainstream and non-traditional material, and shocking his established fans in the process. In 1959, the band made a successful tour of the United States.
He was a keen amateur calligrapher and birdwatcher, and in 1984 formed his own record label, Calligraph. He composed more than 120 original songs during his career. In 1993 he won the radio industry's highest honour, a Sony Gold Award. He also won lifetime achievement awards at the Post Office British Jazz Awards in 2000, and the inaugural BBC Jazz Awards the following year.
It was in 1972 that, against his better judgement, he took on the chairmanship of Radio Four’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Nobody imagined that his role, somewhat like a naïve and despairing schoolmaster who was forced to read out double entendres that he never understood, would last for the rest of his life. His sharp humour was hilarious and yet without malice. more....

Hazel Court, horror actress highly popular for her appearances in Roger Corman's Poe cycle, has died at the age of 82 (16 April 2008)
Hazel Court was born in England in 1926 and became one of the 'Gainsborough girls' at the Gainsborough production company in the 1940s, but significant screen roles were to elude her until her induction into the horror genre, notably in the Hammer Film The Curse Of Frankenstein(1957), where she played the evil count's unwanted suitor. She also played the daughter of Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison (in their first appearance as the Huggetts) and represented the millions of girls who had lost their men in the war.
Though appearing in the horror classic The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), her enduring popularity was initiated by her involvement in Roger Corman's 'Poe cycle' of films. Of these films, Court appeared in The Premature Burial (1962), The Raven (1963) and The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), in each case starring alongside Vincent Price - and giving him a hard time; Court's 'Poe' roles found her playing conspiring and treacherous women, and at her worst she was at her best...in the eyes of her many fans.
In later years, Court took an interest in painting and the arts, exhibiting in the USA and in Europe. more....

Ollie Johnston, leading animator with Walt Disney, has died aged 95 (16 April 2008)
Johnston's first work was as an "in-betweener" - the artist responsible for the drawings that appear between the extremes of an action drawn by an animator - on Mickey's Garden (1935), the second colour Mickey Mouse short. The following year, he was promoted to apprentice animator, working under Fred Moore on such shorts as Pluto's Judgment Day and Mickey's Rival.
Under Moore, Johnston became assistant animator on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), responsible for drawing the dwarfs (which Thomas was also working on).
By Pinocchio (1940) he had progressed to animator, and supervised the Blue Fairy sequence. The same year he was in charge of the Pastoral Symphony section of Fantasia before joining Thomas, who had done preliminary work on Bambi. As well as the young Bambi segments, Johnston (credited as supervising animator) developed Thumper. Johnston was also responsible for the animation of the young Bambi.
He drew the stepsisters in Cinderella (1950); Alice and the King of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland (1951); and, two years later, Mr Smee in Peter Pan. After the good fairies in Sleeping Beauty (1959) and 101 Dalmatians, Johnston and Thomas did some of their best work in The Sword in the Stone (1963), for which Johnston was responsible for all the leading characters. The following year Thomas did the dancing penguins in Mary Poppins; Johnston drew the ones who were waiters. more....

Willoughby Goddard, versatile actor who deployed his considerable bulk to impressive effect on stage and on film, has died aged 81 (14 April 2008)
Widely remembered for his excessive corpulence on stage and television, Willoughby Goddard spent over 40 years never trying to disguise it. It brought him authority, variety, monotony and joy. Whether he was genial or aggressive, alarming or soothing, he could be cast in all sorts of moods. Sometimes he played up self-consciously to his weightiness; sometimes it hardly mattered. He could play judges, professors, mayors, landlords, managing directors and chairmen; he could also play sundry characters of no importance whatever.
On television he created first a fine impression as Professor Mark Harrison in The Voices; and in the Adventures of William Tell he put the shivers up watchers as the hero's splendidly weighty main protagonist Landberger Gessler.
As Sir Jason Tovey in The Mind of Mr Reeder he was well cast; and as the monstrous Lord Charley, who sought artistic grants from Hattie Jacques as Miss Manger, it was said that “he knew his business”.
With Charlie Drake in Drake's Progress Goddard found a strong sense of fun, and one of his last appearances was as Professor Siblington, last seen watching from the elegant spires of an English college in Porterhouse Blue (1987). more....

John Hewer, actor, has died aged 84 (20 March 2008)
The actor John Hewer won worldwide fame playing Captain Birdseye in the long-running fish finger TV commercials.
He played the role from 1967 until the late 1980s. The jovial, bearded naval captain outlasted the Milky Bar Kid and Ronald MacDonald to become the longest running "brand personality" since food advertising began.
Hewer worked his way up to parts in the films The Dark Man (1951, a melodrama in which his taxi-driver character falls victim to Maxwell Reed's seaside murderer) and the thriller Assassin for Hire (1951, as a violinist whose instrument and lessons are paid for by his brother, a professional killer).
He then landed the title role in the BBC children's series The Great Detective (1953), playing it for the first four episodes, with Graham Stark taking over for the final two – curiously, with no explanation for the switch.
At about the same time, Hewer took the role of John Parrish, the bank clerk wrongly suspected of being involved in a heist, in the first episode of the crime series Colonel March of Scotland Yard (1955-56), which starred the horror actor Boris Karloff as an eyepatch-wearing detective investigating eerie cases involving criminals known by names such as the Abominable Snowman and the Missing Link.
During his career, the actor also produced music-hall shows on Southend Pier with the bandleader Henry Hall, and he was hired by Canadian television to host the variety show The Pig and Whistle (1967-77), set in a fictional, traditional English pub and featuring British music-hall entertainment. more....

Barry Morse, Actor who found fame as Philip Gerard, police chief in 'The Fugitive' has died aged 89 (5 February 2008)
Barry Morse made his professional début in the People's Theatre production If I Were King while at Rada and finished his time at drama school by taking the title role in Henry V for a Royal Command Performance in front of George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Then, in 1937, he made his first television appearances in some of the BBC's earliest broadcasts. He made his film début as a stooge to Will Hay in the wartime espionage comedy The Goose Steps Out (1942) and followed it with character roles in pictures such as Thunder Rock (1942) and When We Are Married (1943).
Morse's West End début came in School for Slavery (Westminster Theatre, 1942), which he followed with Crisis in Heaven (Lyric Theatre, 1944) directed by John Gielgud. In 1951, Morse, his wife and their two children emigrated to Canada, settling in Toronto when CBC introduced the country's first television service the following year, with Morse working as an actor, producer and director.
Over the years, he won Canada's Best TV Actor award five times, but he was also prolific on radio, most notably acting in and producing the drama series A Touch of Greasepaint (1954-68), a chronicle of actors down the years.
But he became known worldwide through The Fugitive, also directing a 1967 episode, before moving back to London and playing Mr Parminter, the secret service contact issuing assignments to an American government agent played by Gene Barry, in the British series The Adventurer (1972-73). more....

Allan Melvin, character actor has died aged 84 (24 January 2008)
While working at a job in the sound effects department of NBC Radio, Melvin did a nightclub act and appeared and won on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio show. While appearing on Broadway in Stalag 17, he got his break into television by getting the role of Cpl. Henshaw on the popular The Phil Silvers Show program. TV fans of this era usually best remember his role as Henshaw, Sergeant Bilko's right hand man on that show.
During this period, in addition to his role on The Phil Silvers Show, Melvin was often cast in slightly loud, occasionally abrasive, but generally friendly second banana roles. Melvin was also adept at "tough guy" roles; in an example of his range as an actor, one episode of Sergeant Bilko featured Melvin doing a recognizable impersonation of Humphrey Bogart.
The jowly, jovial Melvin spent decades playing a series of sidekicks, second bananas and lovable lugs, including Archie Bunker's friend Barney Hefner on "All in the Family". But his place in pop culture will be fixed as butcher and bowler Sam Franklin, the love interest of Brady family maid Alice Nelson, who was played by Ann B. Davis. Melvin played the role from 1970 to 1973. more....

British actress Pat Kirkwood, star of stage and screen, has died aged of 86 (26 December 2007)
Pat Kirkwood's career spanned more than six decades and she played the lead roles in the West End shows of Noel Coward, Cole Porter and Leonard Bernstein. After appearing in a talent contest on the Isle of Man she was invited to an audition with the BBC in Manchester She made her professional debut, aged 14, as a singer on the BBC radio programme The Children's Hour.
A year later, in April 1936, she made her first stage appearance at the Royal Hippodrome, Salford, billed as The Schoolgirl Songstress.
The following year she starred in her debut film - Save a Little Sunshine.
After the success of the revue Black Velvet at the London Hippodrome in 1939 she was hailed as "Britain's first wartime star".
She became the first female to have her own television series with The Pat Kirkwood Show in 1954 and also appeared in various TV plays. In Our Marie (1953) she played the music hall star Marie Lloyd; she also appeared in Pygmalion (1956) and The Great Little Tilley (1956) as another music hall star, Vesta Tilley, which was directed by Hubert Gregg and subsequently became the film After The Ball (1957). In 1953, she was reunited with George Formby on the panel of What's My Line but was seen on screen feeding Formby questions to ask the contestants. more....

Anton Rogers, stage and screen actor, has died aged 74 (3 December 2007)
Anton Rogers was a member of the helicopter crew that provided the focus for the BBC comedy series The Sky Larks (1958). During the 1960s and early 1970s Rodgers secured fairly regular employment as a guest star in Lew Grade's contemporary thriller series, including Danger Man (1964-65), The Saint (1967) and The Champions (1968).
He was a Scotland Yard detective who teams up with astrologer Anoushka Hempel in the light-hearted series Zodiac (1974), another policeman in the comic mystery series Murder Most English (1977), Lillie Langry's weak-willed spouse who has to turn a blind eye while she conducts an affair with the Prince of Wales, in Lillie (1978) and a country practice vet in Noah's Ark (1997).
Few of his TV series attained the status of true classics, though Fresh Fields and May to December scored well in the ratings. Fresh Fields was sufficiently popular for Thames Television to reunite Rodgers and Julia McKenzie in their old roles of William and Hester Fields, in a new setting, in French Fields (1989-91) more....

Verity Lambert, the television and film producer, has died aged 71 (24 November 2007)
In 1956 she landed her first job in television, as a £7-a-week secretary in Granada's press office. Sacked after six months, she moved to ABC Television where she became production assistant to the drama director Ted Kotcheff and worked on the production of the Armchair Theatre series, overseen by the company's new head of drama, Sydney Newman.
As production assistant in a "live" gallery, Lambert had to take over as studio director in November 1958 when one of the actors died on the set of the play Underground, just before a scene in which he was supposed to appear. Meanwhile Kotcheff used a commercial break to reorganise the cast and cover the loss.
At the age of 28, she became the youngest producer at the BBC and the drama department's only woman producer when Doctor Who began the day after President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.
After 18 months Lambert moved on to produce the first eight episodes of the twice-weekly serial The Newcomers (1965-69), about a London family adapting to life in a small East Anglian town, and then supervised production on Adam Adamant Lives! (1966-67). more....

Frank Cox, versatile artist who, with his brother, was a stalwart of the variety scene, has died aged 86 (22 November 2007)
Frank Cox was the identical twin of Fred Cox who, as the Cox Twins, were one of British variety's most enduring acts. Stalwarts of the RAF gang shows during the Second World War, they played four instruments, sang, tap-danced and performed acrobatics.
After the war and until their retirement in 2000 they were regulars at the London Palladium, notably supporting Johnny Ray, starred in summer seasons and pantomimes and made several films, including the 1972 version of Alice in Wonderland with Peter Sellers, in which they appeared as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
The twins had irresistible, ebullient personalities. Sporting huge black frizzy hairstyles, they wore brightly coloured garish suits (complete with red or yellow socks) and were liable to burst into song at the drop of a hat. They were virtually impossible to tell apart and in conversation one twin would start a sentence while the other would finish it. In the 1960s they complicated matters further by getting married on the same day to the variety artistes Estelle and Pauline Miles, who were also identical twins. more....

Moira Lister, actress who excelled in sparkling comedy roles ranging from Shakespeare to the moderns, has died aged 84 (29 October 2007)
As an actress, Moira Lister was once compared to the American comedienne Lucille Ball, because of her way of turning glamorous women into witty commentators on life. Whether it was in a play, musical, film or television drama or even as a guest on such TV shows as What's My Line?, Call My Bluff and Life Begins at Forty, she stood apart with her slim figure, bright blue eyes and delicate, upper-class voice. She was an accomplished actress whose regal bearing found her often cast in patrician roles, though she also had a splendid sense of humour and a versatility that ranged from acclaimed performances in Shakespearean tragedy to her award-winning display of farcical expertise in Move Over, Mrs Markham.
In 1954, Moira first teamed up with Tony Hancock in the second series of "Star Bill". She was brought into "Star Bill" to replace Hancock's previous lady foil of the first series, Geraldine McEwan. With considerable film experience behind her, Moira's strong personality proved her to be an ideal match for Hancock.
Her distinctive, husky voice made Lister a radio stalwart in such series as Simon and Laura and A Life of Bliss, and in South Africa her radio roles included the leading parts in Rain, The Deep Blue Sea (she had earlier played a supporting role in the film version) and The Millionairess. On television, she was a sparkling critic of record releases in Juke Box Jury, and she was a guest on such shows as Danger Man, Call My Bluff and The Avengers.
For three years, 1967-69, she starred in her own series, A Very Merry Widow. In 1971 she was the subject of This Is Your Life, and her autobiography, A Very Merry Moira, was published in 1969. more....

Deborah Kerr, star of From Here To Eternity, has died aged 86 (19 October 2007)
Deborah Kerr was the unfadingly ladylike and prototypical English rose whose red-haired, angular beauty and self-possessed femininity distinguished more than 50 films in four decades of cinema. She made serenity dramatic; and though her poise might be ruffled at critical moments in scenes of passion (most famously exemplified by her encounter on the beach with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity in 1953), her well-bred airs and social graces made her a model of British womanhood in Hollywood. Her best-known film was probably The King and I, in which she played a haughty governess opposite Yul Brynner's Siamese monarch; and her principal problem as an accomplished actress was to convince Hollywood of her sensual potential. Although she herself was a more spirited, relaxed and informal person than her image on the screen suggested, producers were reluctant to cast her in passionate roles. more....

Loss-making Sooty up for sale after losing his magic (5 October 2007)
Sooty is going on sale. TV rights to the mischevious puppet bear, who never speaks, are being sold by his owners Hit Entertainment. The puppet, famous for his magic tricks and water pistol, has been on British TV since the Fifties, alongside his friends Sweep the squeaky dog and Soo the panda. Hit Entertainment, which also produces Bob the Builder, Pingu and Thomas the Tank Engine, is said to have lost money after buying it in 1996 for £1.4 million from presenter Matthew Corbett. A new series of Sooty was cancelled by ITV last year. more....

Marcel Marceau, who revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died aged 84 (23 September 2007)
Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau played the entire range of human emotions onstage for more than 50 years, never uttering a word. Offstage, however, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said. A French Jew, Marceau survived the Holocaust and also worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children. His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. Marceau, in turn, inspired countless young performers. Michael Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau sketch, "Walking Against the Wind."
In 1949 Marceau's newly formed mime troupe was the only one of its kind in Europe. But it was only after a hugely successful tour across the United States in the mid-1950s that Marceau received the acclaim that would make him an international star.
Marceau performed tirelessly around the world until late in life, never losing his agility, never going out of style. In one of his most poignant and philosophical acts, "Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death," he wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just minutes. more....

Peter Graham Scott, award winning film and TV producer and director, has died aged 83 (11 August 2007)
Scott was the producer behind many classic television series of the 1960s and 1970s including The Avengers, The Prisoner, The Troubleshooters and The Onedin Line; he was also a talented director in television and films.
An energetic perfectionist, Scott was one of the pioneers of television drama, joining the BBC as a trainee after the war before moving to ITV when it launched in 1955. Scott had cut his teeth with Associated-Rediffusion during ITV's early years, directing, in Battle of Britain Week 1956, an acclaimed live production of Richard Hillary's Second World War classic The Last Enemy.
Scott secured, for cash, the television rights to The Quare Fellow after an evening's heavy drinking with Brendan Behan in a London pub; it was broadcast live in November 1958, one of many plays Scott produced and directed during what he considered "the best years of ITV".
Scott had begun his career as a film editor on Brighton Rock (1947), starring Richard Attenborough, and later worked on other films such as The Perfect Woman and Landfall (both 1949), Shadow Of The Eagle (1950), The Small Miracle (1951) and River Beat (1954). As a writer, Scott scripted Sing Along With Me (1952), which he also directed, The Big Chance (1957) and, in 1979, the ITV serial Kidnapped, which he also produced. His producing credits also included The Citadel (1960), The Curse Of King Tutenkhamun's Tomb (1980), Arch Of Triumph and Jenny's War (both 1985). more....

Peter Tuddenham, actor, has died aged 88 (9 August 2007)
Peter Tuddenham's earliest television appearances included parts in Clara, The Maid of Durham: Or Home Sweet Home (1955) and the BBC's "Musical Playhouse" Ivor Novello productions The Dancing Years (as Franzel, 1959) and Perchance To Dream (as Lord Failsham, 1959). He also had several roles in soap opera, on radio in Mrs Dale's Diary (as Dr Mitchell, who famously once sat on Mrs Freeman's cat) and Waggoners' Walk, and as George Banham in ITV's East Anglian vets serial Weavers Green (1966).
On television, Tuddenham was a regular as the pub landlord in Backs to the Land (1977-78) and as William in Double First (1988). He also guest-starred as priests in the sitcom Nearest and Dearest (1968) and the P.D. James thriller A Mind To Murder (1995), and played doctors in Quiller (1975), The Lost Boys (1978) and Nanny (1981, 1982) and an auctioneer in Lovejoy (1986).
At the age of 60, after spending more than half his adult life as an actor, Peter Tuddenham became most familiar to television viewers as the voices of three computers in the cult science-fiction serial Blakes 7. more....

Phil Drabble, 'One Man and His Dog' presenter, has died aged 93 (1 August 2007)
A countryman through and through, the writer and naturalist Phil Drabble shared his love of nature and rural ways in dozens of books but, most famously, as the original presenter of One Man and His Dog, which provided the spectacle of working sheepdogs demonstrating their skills at rounding up flocks in lush, green fields and meadows, moving them around fences, gates and enclosures while following their handlers' whistles and commands.
He had made his radio début with a feature on the Black Country's bull-rings and bull-stakes for the BBC Midland Region in 1947. He continued to make contributions for the next 13 years, especially to the rural programme Countrylover, before presenting its successors, Countryside and In the Country, himself.
Drabble's television baptism came in 1952, when he was invited to show off his tame badger for a live broadcast and he was soon in demand for children's programmes. Then, in 1961, he left his day job to pursue writing and broadcasting full time and, three years later, began a weekly column in the Birmingham Evening Mail that ran until 1990.
One Man and His Dog, screened on BBC2, brought him national fame, as well as more television work, beginning with the rural magazine programme Country Game (1976-79), presented by Julian Pettifer, then Angela Rippon, with Drabble as a contributor. more....

BBC to open up archive for trial (19 April 2007)
The BBC is to open up its vast archive of video and audio in an on-demand trial involving more than 20,000 people in the UK.
Full-length programmes, as well as scripts and notes, will be available for download from the BBC's website.
The pilot is part of the BBC's plans to eventually offer more than a million hours of TV and radio from its archive.
He said the corporation's end ambition was "one day enabling any viewer to access any BBC programme ever broadcast via their television", and highlighted the need to bridge the divide between TV and content with online connections.
The archive trial will make available 1,000 hours of content drawn from a mix of genres to a closed number of people. About 50 hours - of both TV and radio programmes - will be available in an open environment for general access. more....

Terry Hall, ventriloquist, has died aged 80 (11 April 2007)
Terry Hall entertained the baby-boom generation as the creator and sidekick of Lenny the Lion. Traditionally, these sidekicks had been boy puppets, such as Arthur Worsley with Charlie Brown and Peter Brough with Archie Andrews, but Hall took advantage of the booming television medium in the 1950s to tweak the format.
Making their BBC debut in 1956 alongside Eric Syke, Hall and Lenny were an instant hit with children, who were captivated by the idea of a talking lion that was, by turns, cowardly, bashful and generally unleonine, and whose catchphrase - "Aw, don't embawass me!" - became one of the best-known on the air. Hall was invited to guest-star on the legendary Ed Sullivan Show in the United States (1958) and returned home to take his puppet to two more popular programmes, Lenny's Den (1959-61) and Pops and Lenny (1962-63).
The Beatles made one of their earliest television appearances in a May 1963 episode of Pops and Lenny, singing their first No 1 single, "From Me To You", and "Please Please Me", as well as joining Hall and his puppet for a song titled "After You've Gone".
The pair remained popular in summer seasons and pantomimes on stage and as guest stars in television variety programmes including Big Night Out (1965), David Nixon's Comedy Bandbox (1966) and The Blackpool Show (1966). more....

George Sewell, the actor, has died aged 82 (5 April 2007)
George Sewell had one of the best-known faces in Britain, thanks to dozens of appearances on television and in films. With his sandblasted features and shifty, haunted looks, Sewell was as at home playing shady villains as he was in police and thriller roles, which dated from the early 1960s, when he appeared in series such as Z-Cars, to the 1990s comedy The Detectives.
He appeared as Detective Chief Inspector Alan Craven in 25 episodes of Special Branch, a 1970s television drama series made by Euston Films in which he was cast opposite Patrick Mower as Haggerty. At the height of his Special Branch fame, his appearance on This Is Your Life topped the television ratings in December 1973. more....

Ivor Emmanuel, welsh actor and Singer, has died aged 80 (23 July 2007)
Ivor Emmanuel was renowned for his rendition of Welsh song Men of Harlech in the classic film Zulu.
He was born in 1927, in Pontrhydyfen, near Port Talbot, the same village as fellow actor Richard Burton.
The Hollywood star helped give him his theatrical break, and he became a popular TV name in the 1950s.
He will probably be best remembered for 1964's Zulu, showing the British Army, many of them Welsh, defying an attack at Rorke's Drift in South Africa. Roles on Broadway followed and he made guest appearances on shows such as Morecombe and Wise and Benny Hill. leading role in the Welsh language music programme Gwlad y Gan (Land of Song) in the late 1950s helped give him a large following. more....

Frank Maher, Film and TV stuntman, has died aged 78 (20 July 2007)
As a stunt performer and co-ordinator in swashbuckling feature films and 1960s television adventure series, Frank Maher made his career out of being other people - notably "doubling" for Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster in the cinema and Patrick McGoohan and Roger Moore on the small screen. His move into television came with The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-59), one of ITV's early adventure series, based on the folk legend, filmed at Nettlefold Studios, Walton-on-Thames, in Surrey, and starring Richard Greene in the title role. The programme was made by technicians who had a background in the film industry, so it was natural that some of those who had worked with them would be given a chance in the burgeoning new medium. All the fight sequences were carefully planned and written down before they were shot and the close-in, one-on-one sword fights were recreated, with weapons copied from those of the time preserved in museums.
Maher subsequently acted and did stunt work in programmes such as Man in a Suitcase (1968), The Champions (1969), Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969), The Persuaders! (with Roger Moore again, 1971) and Space 1999 (1976), before working as stunt co-ordinator on the first two series (1978-79) of the science-fiction serial Blakes 7, created by Terry Nation, who invented the Daleks in Doctor Who. Maher also did some work on the cult heist film The Italian Job (starring Michael Caine, 1969) after a stunt company was fired during shooting. more....

George Melly the jazz singer, author and raconteur has died aged 80 (5 June 2007)
Melly leched, drank and blasphemed his way around the clubs and pubs of the British Isles and provided pleasure to the public for five decades. His involvement in jazz was born out of a romantic nostalgia for a golden age of brothel music. Appearing in the 1950s with Mick Mulligan’s Magnolia band and later for nearly three decades with John Chilton’s Feetwarmers, "Good time George" followed a well-established routine of singing numbers from the 1920s (his foremost influences being Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton) interspersed with camp asides and bawdy anecdotes. more....

Alan Chivers, one of BBC television’s leading outside broadcast producers has died aged 89 (5 June 2007)
Chivers was responsible for events from the Queen’s Coronation in 1953 to the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980. During the 1966 World Cup in England he was the executive producer of the BBC/ITV consortium responsible for the TV coverage. By 1948 he was involved in the early TV outside broadcasts, first at Alexandra Palace and then at Wembley, in the years when new standards of programming, engineering and invention were set. There was a brief flirtation with ITV in 1959 when he helped to launch World of Sport, ITV’s answer to the BBC’s Grandstand, but he returned to the BBC in 1962, as a producer, then a senior producer and, for an unhappy spell, as head of events. more....

Gordon Scott, Tarzan actor, has died aged 79 (9 May 2007)
Gordon Scott played a string of classic heroes in the 1950s and 1960s including Samson, Hercules, Goliath, Zorro and Buffalo Bill in films where the heroes relied largely on their own strength and agility, rather than superpowers or an arsenal of military hardware. But for many who grew up in the 1950s Scott's defining role was as Tarzan.
His physique enabled him to play the role of Tarzan in six films between 1955 and 1960. His Tarzan was a barrel-chested, very physical, slightly dim manifestation, though the earlier films still managed to present him as a jungle version on the average suburban American of the time, with wife Jane, son Boy and family pet Cheeta. more....

Dick Vosburgh, comedy writer, lyricist, broadcaster and film buff, has died aged 78 (21 April 2007)
Dick Vosburgh was an immensely talented writer, broadcaster and lyricist who provided material for virtually every leading comic performer in the UK, plus such American superstars as Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Carol Channing and Peggy Lee. Vosburgh's quick wit and invention put him much in demand as a gag writer, and stars for whom he provided sitcoms and sketches included Stanley Baxter, Frankie Howerd, Bob Monkhouse, John Cleese, Ronnie Corbett, Lenny Henry and Roy Hudd. He contributed to film scripts for Frankie Howerd (Up Pompeii and Up the Chastity Belt) and Bob Hope (Call Me Bwana), as well as Carry On Nurse.
In 1953 he wrote his first radio show, Breakfast with Braden, starring the Canadian humorist Bernard Braden.
From writing for radio programmes, including over 50 editions of The Show Band Show, he moved into television, and his credits over the following decades would fill several pages. They included Alfred Marks Time (1956), Bresslaw and Friends (1961), The Stanley Baxter Show (1963) and Frost Over Europe (1967), starring David Frost, which won the Golden Rose at Montreux. more....

Dame Vera Lynn celebrates 90th Birthday (20 March 2007)
Lords and ladies turned out to pay their respects to Britain's Forces' Sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, who has just celebrated her 90th birthday. The House of Lords hosted a special party sponsored by the Royal British Legion in the first of half-a-dozen parties for a woman whose singing inspired the nation during the darkest days of war.
As one of the guests told her: "You put a smile on everybody's face, even in those terrible times. Our wireless was always on."
A sprightly Dame Vera, who said she felt like she was aged 60, was in chatty mood as she mingled with her friends. Even now she is engaged in charity work for many causes, not simply those involving ex-servicemen.
She said: "I don't know where the years have gone. It is amazing what you can do for others. It is up to everybody to utilise whatever talents they have to use to help others inasmuch as they can. I hope I have spent my life well. I tried to do what I could to help others." more....

Betty Hutton, the original "Blonde Bombshell" has died aged 86 (14 March 2007)
She was once described as "the noisiest girl in Hollywood". The actress and singer made her name in the 1940s in a series of hectic musical comedies, including The Fleet's In and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, but was probably best remembered for her starring role in Annie Get Your Gun in 1940 in which she starred opposite Howard Keel.
She followed it later that year with Let's Dance, in which she starred opposite Fred Astaire. It flopped.
In 1948 Betty Hutton visited Britain for the premiere of her film Dream Girl. When she appeared at the London Palladium, critics described her as "a big strong, lively girl, always eager to please" but complained that her voice was so loud "she deafened the first two rows of the auditorium".
In 1952, after learning a trapeze act for her performance in Cecil B De Mille's Greatest Show On Earth, Betty Hutton left Paramount Studios and returned to The London Palladium. Hutton's show remained essentially the same although, having learned the trapeze, she now included some aerial acrobatics in her act. more....

Ray Evans, the Oscar-winning lyricist, has died aged 92 (23 February 2007)
Ray Evans wrote the words to such familiar songs as Que Sera, Sera - which was a hit for Doris Day - and Mona Lisa, which was very nearly not a hit for Nat "King" Cole.
With his songwriting partner Jay Livingston, Evans wrote Mona Lisa in 1950 for an Alan Ladd film called Captain Carey, USA; the planned title for the song - Prima Donna - was changed at the suggestion of Evans's wife, who preferred Mona Lisa.
They won their first Oscar for best song with Buttons And Bows, from the comedy Western 'The Paleface' (1948); the jaunty number was introduced by Bob Hope who, as the cowardly dentist "Painless" Peter Potter, sang it to Jane Russell; later Dinah Shore had a hit with it.
In later years Evans and Livingston wrote theme music for long-running television series, including Bonanza and Mr Ed. Jay Livingston died in 2001.more....

Derek Waring, actor, has died aged 79 (23 February 2007)
Derek Waring was born Derek Barton Chapple in Mill Hill, north London, in 1927, the son of Wing Cdr Harry Barton Chapple, an electrical engineer who assisted John Logie Baird in his early television experiments. (Derek's elder brother, Richard, went on to become a sitcom writer and BBC script editor, under the name Richard Waring.)
On television, Waring appeared in episodes of early ITV series such as The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1957), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1957, 1958), Ivanhoe (1958), William Tell (1959) and No Hiding Place (1959), and was even seen modelling men's spring fashions in Flair, a 1959 advertising magazine - a type of programming finally banned three years later. He was marrried to Dame Dorothy Tutin. more....

BFI archives to be free to public (23 February 2007)
Items from the BFI archive will be made available free of charge
Britain's national film and television archive is to be opened up in order for it to be accessed by the public.
Visitors to the British Film Institute (BFI), which is in London, will be able to choose items from the collection and watch them free of charge.
Items range from footage of the Queen's coronation to early scenes from long-running soap Coronation Street more....

The original Mr. Turnip is coming up for auction! (9 February 2007)
On March 15th 2007 Vectis Auctions - the world's largest toy auctioneer - will be auctioning the Joy Laurey Collection including the original Mr Turnip puppet prop together with associated ephemera including several lots relating to Twizzle. Including the Gerry Anderson and Joy Laurey original A.P.Films hand written signed contract, 1957, plus other agreements between A.P Films and the Laurey Puppet Company detailing the contract concerning the making of Twizzle.
Also original film scripts by Mary Lee, hand coloured photostats from the books by Roberta Leigh, finely painted in gonache, used by Joy Laurey to create puppet personas for the TV series, christmas cards, post cards - many signed, original BBC TV Whirligig scripts, photographs, scrapbooks etc.Vectis website

Frankie Laine, singer, has died aged 93 (8 February 2007)
Frankie Laine was the most successful of the black-influenced white singers who came to prominence in the post-war era belting out blues in American nightclubs; he became one of the country's biggest stars, with a string of more than 70 hits and international sales of more than 250 million.
Laine's soulful, masculine style and highly emotional delivery dealt a blow to the gentler crooning styles of the day and paved the way for later blues and rock and roll artists such as Johnnie Ray and Elvis Presley.
From the 1950s Laine enjoyed a second career recording versions of the title songs of Hollywood and television Westerns such as Gunfight At OK Corral; 3:10 To Yuma; Bullwhip; Champion the Wonder Horse and Rawhide. more....

Les Henry, Harmonica player and comedian who contributed 'Cedric' to the Three Monarchs' has died aged 86. (26 January 2007)
Les Henry was “Cedric”, the lugubrious comic turn in the Three Monarchs, the hugely popular harmonica-playing trio who topped variety bills in Britain from the 1950s to the 1970s.
The trio was founded in 1946, with the musicians Eric York and Jimmy Prescott, and as it gained fame in clubs and on radio in The Forces Show, Henry developed the character of “Cedric”. His shuffle, tiny black beard, brilliant timing and squeaky voice turned them into a top-rating variety act. They appeared more times than any other musical act at the London Palladium, starred in revue and cabaret in London, Las Vegas and South Africa, and notched up several Royal Variety performances. In the 1960s they were an almost permanent fixture with the Black and White Minstrel Show. It was Henry who christened the trio the Three Monarchs — billed in variety as “Kings of Harmonica”. Initially the act was purely musical but the character of Cedric became so popular that extra comic routines were added. As well as the harmonica the Monarchs also played trumpet, drums, piano, guitar and saxophone. more....

End of an era for iconic sports show (26 January 2007)
Legendary BBC sports show Grandstand will end on Sunday 28th January after 48 years of broadcasting. Grandstand first appeared on 11 October 1958 on Saturday afternoon, with the remit "to feature sports and events as they happen, where they happen". It went head-to-head with ITV rival World of Sport, presented by Dickie Davies, but viewers preferred tuning in to the BBC on a Saturday. Past presenters included Peter Dimmock, David Coleman, Frank Bough, Cliff Morgan, Des Lynam, Tony Gubba and Steve Rider. more....

Barbara Kelly, television personality, has died aged 82 (16 January 2007)
Barbara Kelly was one of showbusiness's brightest personalities in the 1950s, often appearing with her husband, Bernard Braden; she was probably best known for her appearances on the panel show What's My Line? Barbara Kelly was in regular demand in radio dramas and scored a hit in Male Animal in the West End, but soon joined her husband on the radio variety show Breakfast with Braden, which was so popular that in 1950 it was moved to a later slot and renamed Bedtime with Braden.
They made their television debut on An Evening at Home With Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly in 1951 but, though popular, it ran for only one series.
In 1953 she joined What's My Line?, which featured Eamonn Andrews as the chairman, and David Nixon, Gilbert Harding and Isobel Barnett as the other contestants attempting to guess the occupations of members of the public.
Her other television work included Kelly's Eye, Criss Cross Quiz and Leave Your Name and Number as well as the sitcom B and B in 1968, where she again teamed up with her husband, and in which their younger daughter Kim also appeared. more....

Yvonne De Carlo, film star of the 1940s and 1950s, has died aged 84 (12 January 2007)
In the 1940s and early 1950s Yvonne De Carlo was Hollywood’s favourite Arabian Nights heroine, a dark-haired beauty waiting for a handsome leading man to loosen her chains. If her function was to look decorative, rather than to stretch herself as an actress, she carried it off with style.
But despite efforts to broaden her range she became typecast in exotic roles and when these were no longer in demand, her career floundered. Ironically, it was with another exotic character, Lily in The Munsters, that she won a new following from a generation who barely remembered her films.
In the 1950s she made two films in Britain: Hotel Sahara, where she starred opposite Peter Ustinov, and The Captain’s Paradise, in which she played Alec Guinness’s wife, revealing a talent for comedy she was seldom able to display elsewhere. In 1956 she was back in costume playing Sephora, wife of Charlton Heston’s Moses, in Cecil B. de Mille’s The Ten Commandments, and was a mulatto girl sold as a slave in 19thcentury Kentucky in Band of Angels, with Clark Gable.
But on television she had a big hit as the 156-year-old Dracula-inspired Lily Munster opposite Fred Gwynne’s Herman in the spoof horror series, The Munsters, which ran for two years in the mid-1960s. She also appeared in several made-for-television films. more....

Lila Prentice, variety artiste, has died aged 98 (7 January 2007)
Lila Prentice was one half of the rope-spinning, whip-cracking variety act El Granadas, which played halls, theatres and miners' galas from the 1920s until the 1970s; they took part in the Royal Command Performance in 1946 at the Palladium, an evening that included performances by Arthur Askey, Sid Field, Tessie O'Shea and Terry Thomas.
Lila's partner was Cecil Prentice, a variety artist whom she first met on stage in pantomime in Derby in 1928. He was a stepbrother of Kay Smart, of Billy Smart's Circus.
Their stage act featured fancy rope-spinning, stock-whips, unicycling, lassooing and baton-swinging.
There were numerous memorable occasions. Once Danny Kaye tried to ride Peter's unicycle and promptly fell off; they appeared on Blue Peter in its early days, and with Judy Garland at the London Palladium in 1947 in a variety show that also featured Max Bygraves, Dina Shaw and the Debonairs. more....

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 pets. The books themselves had a much more attractive format than conventional veterinary texts of the time. They were translated into many languages and sold almost a million copies worldwide. more....

Howard Keel, actor and baritone, has died aged 87 (9 November 2004)
Howard Keel was one of the biggest stars of MGM musicals in the 1950s, with a powerful, if only partially trained, baritone voice that lent itself to lusty singing westerns, ranging from Annie Get Your Gun (1949) to Calamity Jane (1953) and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). In later life Keel enjoyed a second career in television, playing the role of Clayton Farlow, husband of Miss Ellie, in the long-running series Dallas, which eventually closed in 1991. more....

BBC told to sell access to archives (20 October 2004)
The BBC has helped drive the take-up of digital radio but should consider making programmes from its vast radio archives available to private sector companies, a government commission says. The report on the publicly funded broadcaster's five digital channels -- 1Xtra, BBC Asian Network, 6 Music, BBC7 and Five Live Sports Extra -- comes less than a week after a separate government-commissioned report criticised the BBC's digital television channels for providing poor value for money.
The digital radio report from former Channel Four executive Tim Gardam comes as parliament reviews the BBC's governing charter. At a time when the BBC's independence from government oversight is in doubt, Gardam also warned that "the lack of any formal relationship between the BBC governors and (media regulator) Ofcom ... is a problem."
Gardam recommended that commercial radio companies be able to buy programmes from the BBC Radio archive, and that the BBC should consider a joint venture with the commercial sector for archival programming in the future.
The BBC is pursuing a separate initiative to open its audio and video archives to the public. more....

John Hardwick the puppeteer has died aged 67 (6 October 2004)
He started out by helping Bob Bura to stage Punch and Judy shows on Southsea beach. In 1956, he and Bura were taken up as marionette puppeteers by the BBC Puppet Theatre and it was there, while working on the Rubovian Legends, that they met Gordon Murray. They also helped Jan and Viasta Dalibor manipulate the puppets on Pinky and Perky. Their first animated films were cinema advertisements, and they later made animated inserts for Blue Peter, Pops & Lenny, and Hey Presto It's Rolf (Harris). The pair went on to create the classic children's television programmes, Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley. more....
Independent Obituary

The Venerable Francis House has died aged 96 (18 September 2004)
He was Archdeacon of Macclesfield from 1967 to 1978, but his most substantial contribution to the life of the church was made immediately after the war, when he was head of religious broadcasting at the BBC, then assistant general secretary of the World Council of Churches.
During his time at the BBC (1947-55), House initiated a revolutionary change in the Corporation's approach to religious broadcasting, influenced by the arrival of television and by the recognition that Britain was no longer a churchgoing nation in which Christian values could be taken for granted. more....

The BBC could be forced to share its radio archive with its commercial radio rivals, if a move suggested by media regulator Ofcom goes ahead. (17 September 2004)
The BBC's radio archive contains more than 750,000 programmes from the corporation's 82-year history.
Ofcom chief executive Stephen Carter suggested the BBC sell programmes to commercial stations "to enhance their offering to the listening public".
This would also help the take-up of digital radio in the UK, he said. more....

Margaret Kelly, founder of the famous Bluebell Girl dancers, has died at the age of 94. (13 September 2004)
As a child, Margaret Kelly was adopted by a poor Irish family. When the family doctor admired her bright blue eyes, he affectionately called her “bluebell” and her nickname stuck.
Margaret Kelly started dancing at 14 and toured Europe with an English ballet troupe. At the age of 19, she was a dancer with the Folies Bergere in Paris. She started her first dance troupe in Scotland; they were known as the Hot Jocks
The first Bluebell Girls appeared on stage in 1932. They were noted for their beauty, height (averaging 5 foot 11 inches) and professionalism. Kelly had a reputation for her strict supervision of her girls but, equally, she was also highly protective of them.
When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Margaret Kelly - whose husband Marcel was Jewish - was held at a camp in Besant. After the war, her Bluebell Girls continued to enchant audiences throughout the world with troupes on stage in Paris, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro and Las Vegas.
Mararet Kelly's life was later dramatised for the popular British television series "Bluebell" in 1986, which starred Carolyn Pickles as Miss Bluebell. more....

Stage and television actor Glyn Owen has died aged 76 (11 September 2004)
Glyn Owen was probably best known for his role as Jack Rolfe in Howard's Way. His career spanned 50 years and early on he played Dr Paddy O'Meara in Emergency Ward 10, one of the first big soap operas on television. In the '50s, he also appeared in The Trollenberg Terror, William Tell and The Invisible Man. His starring roles included Richard Hurst in The Rat Catchers and Hugo in Richard the Lionheart in 1962. In the 1960s, he was seen in The Saint, Thorndyke and Trouble Shooters. More recently he appeared in popular television shows such as Casualty, Heartbeat, Doctor Who and Survivors. more....
Daily Telegraph Obituary

Sad news about Charlie Drake (1September 2004)
Until recent weeks, Charlie Drake was living with his brother in Crystal Palace, London. But a few weeks ago, he suffered a stroke, the result of which is blindness. After treatment at Kings College Hospital, he has now been admitted to Brinsworth House, Twickenham - the retirement home for show business performers.

John Barron, the character actor has died aged 83 (7 July 2004)
Barron was best known for his portrayal of CJ, the maniacal head of Sunshine Desserts in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.
In the early 1950s he performed studio drama for the BBC; these were the days in which a "repeat" meant merely that the play was filmed live on Sunday, and once again on Thursday. This early grounding proved invaluable, and throughout his career Barron was never off the small screen for long.
He made early television appearances in Fly Away Peter, Emergency-Ward 10 and (as the Dean) in All Gas and Gaiters. more....

Anthony Pragnell, stalwart of ITA has died aged 83 (18 June 2004)
Tony Pragnall was a stalwart of the Independent Television Authority from its beginnings. He served the Independent Television Authority (later the Independent Broadcasting Authority) for almost 30 years of quiet professionalism. When the ITA was formed in 1954 he was picked to be one of the small band who, under Sir Robert Fraser, would launch this venture. First as Assistant Secretary, then as Secretary, and then as Deputy Director General (Administrative Services), Pragnell was increasingly a key man in the engine room. more....

TV 'Cowboy' Ross Salmon has died aged 80 (12 June 2004)
After service as a pilot in the Navy, when he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Ross Salmon became an entertainer and author, remembered for his "cowboy" character. He appeared on early BBC children's television, originally on Shirley Abicair's programmes before launching his own series.
His character was a "real" cowboy, informing children about what being a cowboy was all about, things like how to recognise different animal footprints, or how to whittle, the art of horse management, how to make and use a lasso, etc.
He set up an American Western style ranch called the "Lazy S" at Longdown in Devon and introduced a breed of hardy cattle.
There were a series of Ross Salmon books and annuals, printed in the 50's.
He was a broadcaster for the BBC for over 30 years, covering sport (principally rugby and cricket as I recall) for BBC South West. more....

TV Drama head Shaun Sutton has died aged 84 (18 May 2004)
Shaun Sutton was a tireless champion of quality television whose good fortune was to preside over what is regarded as the golden age of television drama.
Joining the BBC in the very early Fifties, one of his earliest jobs was writer of the children's television programme Saturday Special, he also starred in 'The Cabin in the Clearing' as Silas Sutherland in 1954 and went on to produce six of the later episodes of 'Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School'.
As Head of BBC Television's Drama Group from 1969 to 1981, Sutton was the executive ultimately responsible for an era which produced Pennies From Heaven; Play for Today; Softly Softly; I Claudius; The Pallisers and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He loosed a huge outpouring of BBC 2 "classic" serials, ranging from The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R to Testament of Youth. more....

Whirligig Magician Geoffrey Robinson OBE has died aged 90 (6 May 2004)
Probably best known for his appearances on the BBC Children's TV programme in the 1950s, With his fawn coloured lovable docile rabbit called 'Whirly', Geoffrey Robinson made well over 50 appearances in the Whirligig programme, appearing every other week. Over a period of some three or more years he performed over four hundred tricks in all and some wonderful magic. He was appointed treasurer of the Magic Circle in 1973 and held the appointment until 1987. In 1978, perhaps his greatest honour was to be awarded the OBE for services as Secretary to The National Hospitals for Nervous Diseases.

Norris McWhirter has died aged 78 (19 April 2004)
He was co-founder, with his twin brother Ross, of The Guinness Book of Records. In the Fifties he worked with BBC radio as a sports commentator, including the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. He then switched to television as part of the corporation's commentary team for four successive Olympic Games: Rome (1960), Tokyo (1964), Mexico (1968) and Munich (1972). more....

Broadcaster Hubert Gregg mourned (29 March 2004)
Hubert Gregg was a unique broadcaster. As a musician he was responsible for memorable songs such as 'Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner', and in Radio 2's Thanks for the Memory, he painted pictures of a bygone era with wit and style. He appeared in '50s TV series including Robin Hood (as Prince John) and 'Colonel March of Scotland Yard' as well as Radio series such as Auntie Rides Again in 1955. more....

Dennis Bardens, Writer and founding editor of 'Panorama' has died aged 92. (18 February 2004)
Panorama was first broadcast on 11 November 1953. Bardens was billed as Editor, and contributed a fascinating item to the first edition about brainwashing and the way a number of British prisoners of war returning from Korea had been won over to Communism. But Panorama was not at first a great success, and after six months Bardens left to work first for the Foreign Office, and then, when the new network began broadcasting two years later, for ITV. more....

Rikki Fulton, the Scottish comedian has died aged 79 (29 January 2004)
Rikki Fulton was a Jock-of-all-trades who mastered every medium in the entertainment business, playing every kind of role from pantomime dame on stage to private detective on radio.
He was the laconic compere of The Show Band Show (1953), a Light Programme showcase for Cyril Stapleton and his musicians and in July 1958 he received the first of many accolades - a booking for that year's Royal Variety Performance, in a predominantly Scots-flavoured cast which included Duncan Macrae and Stanley Baxter. An edited version of the show was broadcast on radio a few days later, and Fulton obtained more national exposure in 1959 on ITV when Bernard Delfont's Sunday Show, transmitted from the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, introduced him as "the new comedy personality".
There followed two Saturday night specials on BBC television in 1960 and 1961, The Rikki Fulton Show, scripted by its star, and with the comedy actress (and Fulton's first wife) Ethel Scott as his principal foil. more....

Andy Pandy's coming to say his first words in 54 years (22 January 2004)
Throughout 54 years clambering in and out of his wicker basket home, the clown-suit-clad puppet has maintained a profound silence. Soon, however, Andy Pandy and Looby Lou and Teddy, his equally tight-lipped friends in the puppet show, will find their voices for the first time since the programme began as part of the BBC's Watch With Mother series in 1950.
The marionette will break his half-century of silence in a stage production featuring the three characters which opens next month at London's Peacock theatre.
The news of Andy Pandy's venture into speech follows claims by the actor Tom Conti, the narrator of the BBC's new colour version of the classic series, that the updated programmes are littered with double meanings and sexual innuendo. The shows, now nicknamed Randy Pandy according to Conti, feature scenes such as Andy blowing on a wooden horn, which he finds "rather hard".
But parents alarmed that the character's talking stage counterpart will use the gift of speech to make lewd suggestions to Looby Lou or even to swear fruitily at Teddy need not be alarmed. Andy Pandy's opening gambit to youngsters watching the show, produced by BBC Worldwide Events and Children's Showtime, and also featuring the TV puppets Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, will be the distinctly low-key greeting: "Hello, my name is Andy Pandy, have you come to play?"

Actor Dinsdale Landen, a veteran of British stage, TV and film, has died aged 71 (29 December 2003)
Dinsdale Landen, the stage and television actor, was one of the most original, gifted and hilarious exponents of light comedy or farce in the post-war West End theatre.
Short-built, thick-set, round-faced, wide-eyed, fat-cheeked and resonant of voice, Landen had a line in nervous husbands, faltering suitors, idle academics and eccentric bumblers which was not only brilliantly observed but also executed with precision and a degree of panache. His TV debut came when he played Pip in a 1959 adaptation of Great Expectations. more....

The British entertainment world is mourning comedian Bob Monkhouse, who has died aged 75 (29 December 2003)
As well as his long career as a talented, slick comedian and occasional straight actor, Bob Monkhouse was probably best known as a host of popular TV game shows.
Bob Monkhouse became a TV regular in the early 1950s. 'Fast and Loose' was Monkhouse's first regular TV show, a live sketch show written with comedy partner Denis Goodwin. Beginning in 1954, it starred the pair alongside other comedy actors including June Whitfield, and ran for two series on the BBC.
Monkhouse also played a character called Bob in 'My Pal Bob' a two-series sitcom, but the domestic characters and scenarios were entirely fictional. Goodwin starred as Bob's "friend, partner and chief victim" while Terence Alexander appeared as Terry, Bob's drunken neighbour. The show ran in 1957 and 1958.
The first of Monkhouse's many quiz shows was called 'Do You Trust Your Wife?'. It was a version of a US game show hosted by Johnny Carson where he would ask contestants: "Would you like to answer this one yourself, or do you trust your wife to answer it?" more....

The actor Alfred Lynch has died aged 72 (27 December 2003)
Alfred Lynch first came to prominence in that period of the late Fifties when working-class realism and kitchen-sink drama were coming to the fore on stage and screen as never before.
For television's fondly remembered Sunday night anthology Armchair Theatre, he played one of three sailors on shore leave in Liverpool in Alun Owen's No Trams to Lime Street (1959). Often referred to as the British equivalent of On the Town, it had songs by Ronnie Scott and Marty Wilde. Lynch also starred in the BBC's series Hereward the Wake (1965) as the 11th-century freedom fighter battling the Duke of Normandy. Sadly, it is one of the shows the BBC is believed to have wiped. more....

Actor David Hemmings has died aged 62 (4 December 2003)
One of David Hemmings' first TV parts as a child actor was in the 1950's childrens series Billy Bunter. Hemmings became one of the icons of the swinging 60s appearing in the cult films Blow-Up and Barbarella but later focused on directing and producing TV shows like A-Team, Quantum Leap and Airwolf. He returned to acting in recent years with roles in films like Gladiator, Last Orders and Gangs of New York. more....

Dai Francis, the singer, has died aged 73 (28 November 2003)
Dai Francis was a star of The Black and White Minstrel Show, George Mitchell's song and dance spectacular which beat Fred Astaire and the Kirov Ballet to win the Golden Rose (for Best Television Show in the World) at the first Montreux Festival in 1961 and dominated television variety for two decades, regularly attracting audiences of 15 million.
With his fellow bass-baritone Tony Mercer and tenor John Boulter, Francis was one of the Minstrels' excellent trio of lead vocalists. Although he is best remembered for his renditions of Al Jolson, his joie de vivre and energy were such that he gave an instant lift to any scene in which he appeared. more....

Actor Robert Brown has died aged 85
Brown was born November 12, 1918 in the Hebrides Islands, Scotland and appeared in numerous television shows and nearly 60 films. Brown first appeared alongside future Bond co-star Roger Moore in 1958 in the television series "Ivanhoe" playing his trusty sidekick Gurth.
He went on play Admiral Hargreaves in "The Spy Who Loved Me" and later portrayed "M", the head of MI6 in four films: Octopussy, A View To A Kill, The Living Daylights and Licence To Kill.
He has appeared in over fifty movies, from which the most memorable ones include: Carol Reed's "The Third Man" (1949), William Wyler's "Ben-Hur" (1959), Peter Ustinov's "Billy Budd" (1962) and Michael Anderson's "Operation Crossbow" (1965).
Brown's last role came in 1992 with a small role in the television movie, "Merlin of the Crystal Cave." more....

Jack Elam, the actor has died aged 84 (24 October 2003)
Elam was the all-purpose "baddie" of dozens of classic Westerns, including The Man from Laramie; Once Upon a Time in the West; High Noon and Gunfight at the OK Corral.
Elam appeared in more than 130 films, and in numerous television series, including Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Laramie, Cheyenne, Rawhide, Have Gun - Will Travel, Bronco, The Rifleman, Lawman, Zorro and Tales of Wells Fargo though he was always better-known as a face than as a name. Tall, weatherbeaten and effortlessly sinister, his grinning, wild appearance was enhanced by a wandering left eye, left sightless and adrift after a childhood fight. In Hollywood circles he was known as "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". more....

David Lodge, the film and TV actor, has died aged 82 (21 October 2003)
He was first seen on screen in José Ferrer's Second World War adventure Cockleshell Heroes (1955), as one of the group who break the blockade of Bordeaux by using cockleshell canoes to attach limpet mines.
Other early films included Private's Progress (1956), The Battle of the River Plate (1956) and The Long Arm (1956), a taut thriller that was the last Ealing film actually made at Ealing Studios. Lodge was seen on screen with Peter Sellers for the first time in the amusing black comedy The Naked Truth (1957, as a policeman), followed by Up the Creek (1958), the satire on unions I'm All Right Jack (1959), Never Let Go (1960), Two Way Stretch (1960), The Dock Brief (1962), A Shot in the Dark (1964), Casino Royale (1967), Hoffman (1969), Return of the Pink Panther (1974) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978).
Lodge appeared in over 100 films in total, other notable titles including I was Monty's Double (1958), The League of Gentlemen (1959), Oh! What a Lovely War (1969, as a recruiting sergeant), The Railway Children (1970) and Mutiny on the Buses (1972). His last film was Edge of Sanity (1989), a bizarre reworking of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in which Anthony Perkins, as Jekyll, discovers a formula that turns him into Jack the Ripper. more....

Sheb Wooley, singer-songwriter/actor has died aged 82 (16 September 2003)
In 1958 Wooley became a regular member of the cast of Rawhide, the western television series about a cattle drive, starring Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood. Playing the role of Pete Nolan, Wooley remained with the series for several years, writing some of the later scripts. He recorded an album, Songs from the Days of Rawhide (1961) and, in a similar vein, Tales of How the West Was Won (1963). His most well-known song however was "Purple People Eater" which topped the US charts for six weeks and sold over three million copies. more....

Versatile actor Ben Aris dies aged 66 (15 September 2003)
As a youth he appeared on television (in the Muffin the Mule series) and on the radio, as one of the "Ovaltinies". His roles ranged from Rosencrantz in Tony Richardson's boisterous production of Hamlet to the dancing instructor Julian Dalrymple-Sykes in Hi-De-Hi!, but theatregoers may best remember him for a role he created in the West End, the diffident Geoffrey, the only male member of a provincial tap-dancing class, in Richard Harris's hit comedy Stepping Out. more....

Actor Rand Brooks has died at the age of 84 (5 September 2003)
Rand Brooks, the actor who played Scarlett O'Hara's ill-fated first husband in Gone with the Wind and who gave Marilyn Monroe her first screen kiss, has died.
Brooks also appeared as sidekick Lucky Jenkins in a string of Hopalong Cassidy westerns and played Cpl Randy Boone in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin before quitting acting in the 1960s to start up an ambulance business in suburban Los Angeles. more....

Veteran broadcaster Peter West dies aged 83 (2 September 2003)
The veteran sports broadcaster Peter West, for many years the face of BBC cricket, has died. He commentated on Test matches in England every year from 1952 to 1986, about 150, and for many years was the anchorman, giving the summary at the end of the day.
For more than 30 years West also gave commentaries on rugby union and tennis at Wimbledon. And he was at five Olympic Games. West joined Come Dancing in 1957 and stayed with the show for 15 years. more....

Kent Walton dies aged 86 (29 August 2003)
Kent Walton has died aged 86, He will be remembered as a Radio Luxembourg DJ, as presenter of the 'Cool For Cats', 'Thank your Lucky Stars' and 'Discs a Gogo' Rock and Roll programmes in the '50s and '60s and as a wrestling commentator on ITV where his catchphrase was always "Have a good week ... till next week".
When Kent Walton was asked in 1955, "What do you know about wresting?" he replied "Nothing", yet five days later he was giving a stylish commentary on his first wresting match on 'World of Sport'. more....

Dyke to open up BBC archive (24 August 2003)
Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, has announced plans to give the public full access to all the corporation's programme archives. The service, the BBC Creative Archive, would be free and available to everyone, as long as they were not intending to use the material for commercial purposes, Mr Dyke added. more....

Early Panorama producer dies at age of 72 (19 August 2003)
David Webster was fortunate to have pursued a BBC career as a producer and editor in the 1950s and the 1960s when the television arm of the organisation was expanding.
At the BBC, Webster first came to prominence as a globe-trotting producer on the BBC's flagship programme Panorama, at that time anchored by Richard Dimbleby and with such distinguished reporters as Robert Kee, John Morgan, Ludovic Kennedy and Robin Day more....

Rolf to celebrate 50 years on TV (3 August 2003)
Artist and TV presenter Rolf Harris is to celebrate his 50th anniversary in television with a golden jubilee concert at London's Royal Albert Hall. The Australian star is expected to perform orchestral versions of some of his best known hits, such as Two Little Boys and Jake the Peg.
The event, which will be held on 29 September and raise money for the Prince's Trust, will be shown on BBC One.
Harris said: "The show at the Royal Albert Hall will be drawn from everything I've done over the years, both musically and artistically, which will be a fantastic experience. "I can't believe how quickly the years have flown since my first television appearance here in 1953," he said.
Harris will also draw and paint live during the concert. Harris has presented a wide range of programmes since the 1950s, and today is best known for Rolf on Art and Animal Hospital. more....

Comedian Bob Hope has died at the age of 100 (27 July 2003)
Despite being born in England, Bob Hope was the most American of comedians. His deft delivery of the one-liner made him the best known comedian since Charlie Chaplin. He was born Leslie Townes Hope at Eltham in south-east London in 1903, the son of a stonemason and a former concert singer. He later changed his name to Bob, because "it sounded brisker".
In the 1950s he appeared on the small screen in such series as "The Jack Benny Show" and "I Love Lucy". more....

Buddy Ebsen has died aged 95 (7 July 2003)
Buddy Ebsen played Jed Clampett, head of the backwoods family in The Beverly Hillbillies, one of the most popular television series of the 1960s. Prior to this Disney had cast him as George Russel, the hero's rowdy sidekick in the television saga Davy Crockett (1954). America suddenly went Crockett crazy, and the television episodes were stitched together to make two profitable feature films more....

Michaela Denis has died aged 88 (4 May 2003)
She was, with her husband Armand, a pioneer of wildlife programmes on television.
Their first British television series, Filming Wild Animals, was shown in 1954, the same year in which David Attenborough embarked on Zoo Quest. One television series followed another: Filming in Africa (1955); On Safari (1957-59 and 1961-65), Michaela and Armand Denis (for ATV, 1955-58) and Safari to Asia (1959-61). more....

Muffin Trots back after 60 years out to grass (15 April 2003)
Muffin the Mule was the first children's TV character, making his BBC premiere on 20 October 1946. Hugely successful in the 50s and 60s and now very much part of English heritage, he is due to return to the screens in late 2005 or early 2006, just in time for his 60th birthday. Maverick Entertainment, who bought the rights to Muffin in January, will initially produce twenty-six, 10 minute episodes, in partnership with the BBC and production will commence later this year. The revival is likely to see him reunited with some of his old friends including the bossy penguin Mr. Peregrine Esquire, a shy Louise the Lamb, Oswald the Ostrich and Willie the Worm. more....

Dame Thora Hird dies aged 91 (15 March 2003)
The much-loved actress was known to millions for starring in sitcoms like 1960s favourite "Meet the Wife", playing Thora Blacklock, and "In Loving Memory" playing Ivy in the late 1970s. She joined "Last of the Summer Wine" in 1985, starring as the gossiping Aunt Edie Pegden. A deeply religious woman, she was a natural choice to present such Sunday television programmes as "Praise Be". She also wrote several successful books.
In the 1950s, she played very many film parts but her earliest recorded TV role at that time was in "The Adventures of Robin Hood" in 1955 when she played "Ada" in the episode "Husband for Marian". more....

Adam Faith has died of a heart attack at 62 (8 March 2003)
In 1956 he formed a skiffle group with friends called The Worried Men. His big break came when the band was playing in Soho, when he was spotted by television producer Jack Good - director of the BBC pop show 6-5 Special. He adopted his stage name, Adam Faith, and went on to enjoy chart hits including number one singles What Do You Want and Poor Me. more....

Chris Brasher CBE, presenter on the "Tonight" programme, has died at the age of 74. (28 February 2003)
Brasher won an Olympic gold medal in 1956 in the steeplechase. He also acted as pace-maker when Roger Bannister became the first man to break the four-minute barrier for the mile in 1954. He became a TV personality when he presented on the Tonight programme. By 1969, he had been made head of general features television at the BBC, a key appointment at a time when colour television was being introduced. He resigned after four years, and went off to pursue his orienteering, his business interests and some independent productions. Inspired by the success of the New York marathon, Brasher co-founded the London marathon which was first run in 1981. more....

Barry Bucknell, TV's original DIY expert in the 1950s and 1960s has died, aged 91. (21 February 2003)
Barry Bucknell passed on his tips in a programme called Do It Yourself, which later became Bucknell's House. The half-hour programme was broadcast on BBC TV and was a forerunner to the wide range of homes and interiors shows which fill the schedules today. He later went on to design the immensely popular Mirror dinghy. more....

Dick Simmons, Star of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon dies aged 89 (20 February 2003)
Dick Simmons was most closely identified with the role of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, which ran on television from 1955 to 1958. Aided only by his black horse Rex and his malamute dog Yukon King, Preston single-handedly enforced law and order each week on the Canadian frontier, ending each show with the words, "Well King, this case is closed." Simmons also directed several of the 30-minute episodes. more....

Cyril Shaps, character actor and voice-over artist has died aged 79 (24 January 2003)
Cyril Shaps made his first screen appearances as Bibot in the popular ITV swashbuckling series The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1955). He was also in demand as a voice-over artist. He took over from George Murcell as the Austrian inventor Professor Popkiss, the arch-enemy Masterspy and other characters in the early Gerry Anderson puppet science-fantasy series Supercar (1962), and was one of the voices of Mr Kipling in the "exceedingly good cakes" commercials. more....

Raymond Baxter belatedly awarded an OBE (31 December 2002)
Raymond Baxter, from Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, presented Tomorrow's World, before co-founding the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships. Mr Baxter joined the RAF in 1940 and has been honoured for his work to preserve the memory of those who crossed the Channel to save thousands of British soldiers during the war. more....

James Coburn has died aged 74 (19 November 2002)
James Coburn, the actor, never quite ranked in the top flight of Hollywood stars, yet his powerful performances in several classic films, such as The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid rightfully ensured his status as a minor screen legend. Following appearances in the TV Western series Bonanza, Gunsmoke and Wanted: Dead or Alive, Coburn's first film role was in Budd Boetticher's Western Ride Lonesome (1959) as a villain. Other supporting parts in Westerns followed, until in 1960 he was picked for The Magnificent Seven. more....

Musician Lonnie Donegan has died at the age of 71 (3 November 2002)
Best known for novelty songs like My Old Man's a Dustman, Lonnie Donegan enjoyed a worldwide reputation among musicians as exalted as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Van Morrison. During the early 1950s skiffle, with its guitar-driven rhythm, tea-chest basses and washboard percussion, was hugely popular and Lonnie Donegan was its biggest star, notching-up 28 top-30 hits. Donegan's enthusiastic espousal of skiffle, blues, gospel and American folk music was instrumental in igniting the 1960s British blues revival.
As the skiffle craze waned at the end of the 1950s, Lonnie Donegan recorded new material, fun songs like Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavour? and My Old Man's a Dustman. more....

Bill and Ben author dies aged 88 (21 September 2002)
Hilda Brabban, who has died aged 88, wrote the first stories about children's characters Bill and Ben, the denizens of the potting shed who became popular favourites in the 1950s as part of BBC Television's Watch With Mother series.
Hilda Brabban wrote three Bill and Ben stories which were broadcast on the children's radio programme Listen with Mother in 1951. The television version, adapted by Frieda Lingstrom, appeared a year later.
She received only one guinea for each of her three original stories. more....

Music man George Mitchell has died aged 85 (27 August 2002)
He was the driving musical talent behind The Black and White Minstrel Show, the most popular light entertainment television series of the 50s and 60s. The Mitchell Minstrels - the men blacked up, the women a winsome line-up of leggy showgirls - achieved record-breaking success under Mitchell's understated and unassuming direction. A fast-moving song and dance spectacular, the show featured George Mitchell's arrangements of 20th century song-book standards and show tunes, as well as traditional minstrel fare such as Oh Susanna or Camptown Races. more....

Versatile character actor Peter Bayliss has died aged 79 (2 August 2002)
He was one of the most original, charming and versatile actors on the post-war British stage. Never short of work, he appeared in numerous television programmes and series, and in films. Capable of playing characters considerably older than himself, Bayliss was noted for his be-whiskered manner, flowing moustaches or copious sideburns, which gave his wheezings and comic croakings an authority to which his patrician voice - humming, murmuring, hesitant, or breathing heavily - added depth. His television credits included appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in New York in 1957, and Pc Codge in Dixon of Dock Green, as well as parts in successful series such as Crown Court, The Avengers, Lovejoy, Minder, and The Sweeney. more....

Actor Maurice Denham has died aged 92 (26 July 2002)
After making his name on the wireless in the 1940s with comic voices in ITMA (It's That Man Again) and Much Binding in the Marsh, he went on to appear in all sorts of films, from Huggett comedies to horror melodrama, and to become a commanding presence on television.
His ear for accent and dialect, and his gift for inventing voices was astonishing. He used to say that this came from his days at the BBC with Tommy Handley in ITMA - as Lola Tickle, the char, and as the announcer on Radio Fakenberg - and with Kenneth Horne, Sam Costa and Richard Murdoch in Much Binding in the Marsh. "They were always playing themselves," he said, "so I played everyone else." more....

Gerald Campion whose career never quite recovered from the success he enjoyed as TV's Billy Bunter has died at 81 (11 July 2002)
Gerald Campion was not the obvious choice to play the lead in the BBC series Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School. In 1952 he was 29, only 12 stone and a father of two. When offered the part Campion was very reluctant to take it, but his strained financial cicumstances meant that he couldn't refuse. The show ran for ten years and proved popular with adults and children alike and was transmitted twice each week with Campion performing the show live both times. He went on to run several restaurants and hotels in the UK and retired in 1991 to France. more....

Classic comedy stalwart Pat Coombs dies, aged 75 (27 May 2002)
Miss Coombs, who never married, became one of the busiest actresses in the business after first appearing on TV in Hancock's Half Hour in 1956. She was working until two weeks ago when she starred with Roy Hudd and June Whitfield on the BBC Radio Four sitcom "Like they've Never Been Gone". Her most recent TV appearance was as Marge Green in EastEnders. more....

Comedian Johnny Hackett has died aged 71 (21 May 2002)
Johnny Hackett who made several appearances on Sunday Night at the London Palladium in the 1960's has died after a serious illness.

Norman Vaughan dies at the age of 79 (18 May 2002)
Entertainer Norman Vaughan has died in hospital, where he was receiving treatment after being injured in a traffic accident. He will be remembered as a host of Sunday Night at the London Palladium where he coined the catchphrases "Swinging!" and "Dodgy!". He later also hosted The Golden Shot and was noted for his Cadbury's Roses ads. more....

The Army Game showing on Granada Plus (29 April 2002)
Episodes of "The Army Game" along with "Mr Digby Darling" are being transmitted on Granada Plus on Sunday mornings.

Dave King has died at the age of 72 (17 April 2002)
Dave King, one of the most popular UK television performers of the 1950s and early 60s, has died after a short illness. In 1955, the BBC gave him his own show, in which he performed sketches and spoofs of Hollywood films. In 1959, he tried his luck as an entertainer in the US, but the experiment came to nothing. On returning to the UK, he found his style of comedy had fallen out of favour, and turned to straight acting. He has appeared in many popular TV series since. more....

Comedian and writer Barry Took dies at the age of 73 (31 March 2002)
Barry Took wrote for TV and radio during the 1950s and '60s. He co-wrote many of the episodes of the TV series "The Army Game" with Marty Feldman which ran from 1957-61. He also co-wrote "Beyond Our Ken" for the radio with Eric Merriman and later "Round the Horne" which starred Kenneth Horne and Kenneth Williams. more....

Andy Pandy returns this week in a new animated series (31 March 2002)
The new series starts on Thursday 4th. April on CBeebies channel at 08:55 with repeats on BBC 2 at 10:00 and 13:00

Puppet Maker Jack Whitehead has died aged 88 (28 March 2002)
After the war he founded a travelling show, the Whitehead Puppets, for which he designed and carved the puppets himself. He performed in the early days of BBC Television on such programmes as Muffin the Mule, and in the puppet cowboy series called Four Feather Falls. He also made scenery and sets, and branched out into special effects, working on series such as The Invisible Man. more....

Kenneth Wolstenholme has died aged 81 (26 March 2002)
He was the voice of football on the BBC for almost a quarter of a century. He entered broadcasting in Manchester and commentated on his first televised match in 1948 and contributed to TV's Sports Special in the 1950's, although he was far better known as a radio reporter at the time. more...

Lone Ranger director dies at 86 (18 March 2002)
William Witney, an influential director of dozens of Westerns, has died in California. He directed hundreds of TV shows such as The Lone Ranger, Lassie, Wagon Train and Bonanza. more....

Spike Milligan, Last of the Goons, dies at 83 (27 February 2002)
One of Britain's most respected performers, he was known to millions as one of the founding members of The Goons. Together with Peter Sellers, Michael Bentine and Harry Secombe, the quartet helped redefine comedy programmes for a generation. He went on to star in the Q series of television shows and also wrote several books, including Adolf Hitler, My Part In His Downfall. more....

Jennings follows Potter's success with TV return (24 February 2002)
Talkback Productions is negotiating to serialise the adventures of the fictional schoolboy who first surfaced on a BBC Children's Hour radio play in 1948. For decades Jennings was Britain's most popular scholboy and became a successful TV series in the 1960's. The author of the Jennings books, Anthony Buckeridge now 89, is said to be delighted.

Bugs Bunny cartoonist Chuck Jones dies (23 February 2002)
Chuck Jones, the Oscar-winning animator who penned such cartoon classics as Bugs Bunny, Wile E Coyote and Road Runner, has died, aged 89. Film studio Warner Brothers announced that he had died yesterday. Mr Jones died from heart failure at his home in Corona del Mar, near Los Angeles, his family added.
His work encompassed some 300 films and many cartoons of his own creation such as the amorous French skunk Pepe Le Pew. more....

Jeremy Hawk has died aged 83 (25 January 2002)
Jeremy Hawk had an acting career that spanned more than 60 years and his face was familiar to millions of television viewers for his role in comedy sketches as the straight man to Benny Hill. Later he fulfilled a similar role for Arthur Askey, Norman Wisdom and Sid Caesar. On television, he first found fame on Granada's Criss Cross Quiz, for which he was quizmaster on three shows a week from 1957 to 1962. more....

'Professor' Stanley Unwin passy-way age ninety-fold (14 January 2002)
Comedian Stanley Unwin, who won fans with his own zany language, has died aged 90.
Professor Unwin, as he was affectionately known, found fame by twisting words into a nonsense language, which he called Unwinese, on radio and later TV in the 1940s and 1950s. more....

Vintage TV writer slams alleged 'covert ban' on old-style 'British' sit-coms (10 January 2002)
Veteran comedy writer, Vince Powell - once the king of the TV sit-coms, and famous for blockbuster TV shows, like 'Never Mind The Quality, Feel The Width', and 'Nearest And Dearest' - is furious that the funny-business, typical of writers of his genre, has been given the elbow, by today's new breed of TV executive. more...

Grove Family "Dad" dies (20 December 2001)
One of Britain's earliest television soap stars, Edward Evans who played Dad in The Grove Family has died aged 87. When the BBC producer John Warrington originally considered Evans for The Grove Family (1954-57), he thought that the actor would be perfect in the role of a nosy neighbour but, after auditioning him, Warrington realised that he had his lead character and built the rest of the new television family around him. He also appeared later in many television programmes including Compact and Coronation Street. more....

Pugwash Theme Tune composer dies (13 December 2001)
The man who provided the theme tune for the classic children's television programme Captain Pugwash, has died nearly 50 years after being paid 30 shillings for his work. more....

Peggy Mount has died aged 85 (14 November 2001)
She specialised in playing grotesquely comic harridans such as the tough cockney matriarch Ada Larkin in the early ITV sitcom, The Larkins, who was constantly fighting with her husband, Alf (David Kossoff). But although the battleaxe became her forte, she gave strong performances in a number of classical roles, which suggested that beneath the brazen, brawny exterior was an actress of some subtlety and tenderness. more....

Andy Pandy's coming to play again! (28 October 2001)
The Blue and white striped outfit and floppy hat are the same, but when Andy Pandy returns to TV in Spring 2002 viewers will notice a few changes. Gone are the strings, and Andy and his friends Looby Loo and Teddy will no longer live in a wicker basket but will have their own houses. The 26 x 10 min. shows will be narrated by Tom Conti.

Elton Hayes has died aged 86 (29 September 2001)
On television Elton Hayes appeared in The Minstrel Show (forerunner of The Black and White Minstrel Show) and BBC Caravan Time, and sang and acted in several television plays. more....

Sooty is on his way to the Antarctic (10 September 2001)
A Sooty glove puppet, which has already travelled around the world as a mascot with the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989/90, is now reported as being on his way to the Antarctic with the current British Army Antarctic Expedition. more....

Arthur Worsley the ventriloquist has died aged 80 (20 July 2001)
Arthur Worsley was, in his heyday, described as the greatest ventriloquist in the world.
Worsley and his talkative dummy Charlie Brown appeared regularly on British television from the 1950s to the 1970s. more....
Arthur Worsley Sound Clip

Eleanor Summerfield dies at 80 (16 July 2001)
Eleanor Summerfield, who has died aged 80, was an intelligent and subtle comedy actress. With her arched eyebrows and irrepressibly cheerful nature, Eleanor Summerfield was widely in demand, not merely as an actress, but also on radio and television panel games. more....

The 100 Greatest Kids TV Shows (21 August 2001)
On Monday 27th August 2001 at 20:30 on Channel 4, Jamie Theakson presents a nostalgic journey back into the recesses of youth with this run-down of the best kids' TV entertainment over the years - as voted for by the British viewing public. As well as being a roll-call of the kiddies' classics, the programme recounts the stories behind the shows, including all those rumours about hidden 'adult' references and behind-the-scenes bust-ups.

Looby Loo is Coming to Play! (5 July 2001)
A re-make of the classic children's programme Andy Pandy will include rag doll Looby Loo, it was confirmed today. A BBC spokesman dismissed speculation that Looby Loo would be missing from the line-up of the 1 million pound animated version. Andy Pandy's comeback after 31 years follows the successful return of another Watch with Mother favourite, Bill and Ben. more....

Gerry Anderson awarded MBE in Queen's Birthday Honours (16 June 2001)
Gerry Anderson has been awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) in the Queen's Birthday Honours list which was announced today. The award comes in recognition of his 55 year career in the British film and television industry, and his immense contribution to popular British culture through his Supermarionation and live-action television creations. more....

Perry Como dies at 88 (13 May 2001)
US crooner Perry Como has died in his sleep at his Florida home after a long illness. Como's songs, including Catch a Falling Star and Magic Moments, helped pioneer TV musical variety shows in the '50s. more....

BBC to close its visitor centre (4 May 2001)
The BBC Experience, which allows people to try their hand in front of the camera by presenting the weather forecast or reading the news, is to shut despite visitor numbers going up. Since opening as part of the BBC's 75th. anniversary in 1997, it has attracted more than 300,000 visitors. The attraction has never broken even, despite an admission charge and the prospect of an expensive refurbishment and pressure on space at Broadcasting House has made the BBC decide on its closure.

Scottish entertainer Jimmy Logan dies (13 April 2001)
Tributes have been paid to veteran Scottish entertainer Jimmy Logan following his death from cancer at the age of 73. more....

Sir Harry Secombe has died (11 April 2001)
Sir Harry Secombe, the entertainer from Swansea famed for his work with The Goon Show, has died aged 79. more....

Bill and Ben to go on show (25 March 2001)
The original string puppets for the Fifties children's TV series Bill and Ben, the Flowerpot Men go on display today at the Museum of London until 17 April. Alongside them will be the new Flowerpot Men, made of steel and Latex. This is expected to be the last public appearance of the originals.

Muriel Young dies (23 March 2001)
Muriel Young, presenter of TV children's programmes such as Small Time in the 1950s and 60s, has died aged 77.

It'll Never last... 70 Years of British Television (23 Feb 2001)
BBC Radio 2 are currently transmitting this series on Tuesday evenings at 2100-2200
The series traces the evolution of television in six parts presented by Alan Whicker.

Dale Evans dies (7 Feb 2001)
Dale Evans, wife of Roy Rogers, has died aged 88. She appeared in many Western shows with her husband and her horse Buttermilk. more....

Peter Haigh dies (18 Jan 2001)
The announcer and broadcaster Peter Haigh has died. He will be fondly remembered as a BBC announcer and the presenter of the Movie-go-Round programme on BBC Radio and also Come Dancing and Picture Parade on television in the 1950's. more....

Jimmy Shand dies (23 Dec 2000)
The Scots bandleader Jimmy Shand has died aged 92. Amongst his many television appearances with his Band, he will be remembered for the BBC series "The White Heather Club" in the 1950's. more....

Destruction of our Television Heritage (12 Dec 2000)
On Friday 8th December Haringey Council (owners of Alexandra Palace), published a document setting out its intention to have the Alexandra Park & Palace Acts 1900 - 1985 revised in order to grant a lease on the building as a whole or in part. This does not sound very dramatic but the outcome will result in the destruction of the television studios.
Follow this link to read the full details. more....

Flowerpot Men to return to BBC1 on 4 Jan 2001 at 15:45 (22 Oct 2000)
Bill and Ben, the Flowerpot Men, who first charmed young television viewers almost half a century ago, are returning to our screens with a new look and without puppet strings. Updated for the 21st century, the pair, who spoke in gibberish known as "flobbadob", have been redesigned by the BBC for a 26-episode series beginning on 4th. January 2001. It will be accompanied by merchandising spin-offs including toys, games, videos and a Bill and Ben magazine. John Thompson narrates the new version.

Puppet man Ivan Owen dies (19 Oct 2000)
The man who provided the voices of several puppet characters in the 1950's, including Yoo Hoo the Cuckoo in Billy Bean and his Funny Machine and also Fred Barker from Smalltime, has died after a long battle with cancer. Ivan Owen, who was 73, later created Basil Brush along with Peter Firmin, for a children's puppet show in 1964. more....

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