Feed Editor 2 Jul 2009 09:16:28 GMT Whirligig presents news items about the programmes which were broadcast to our televisons and radio sets back in the Fifties in the UK. There are also news items about the stars and celebrities of that era and links to other websites of relevent interest. News of what is new on the Whirligig website is also available here. http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk Copyright (c) 2008 Whirligig.TV, All rights reserved en-gb http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk/tv/whirligig.gif http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk Whirligig Logo Malden's early film career made little impression. His first appearance was in They Knew What They Wanted (1940) and, until the film of A Streetcar Named Desire, he played only bit parts, albeit in films of some renown, such as Kazan's Boomerang (1947), The Gunfighter (1950) by Henry King, and Lewis Milestone's war epic Halls of Montezuma (1951). Streetcar put him on the map, though not always one on which he would like to be recognised. In King Vidor's Ruby Gentry (1953), he played the first of several betrayed husbands - the man whom Jennifer Jones marries to spite her old flame Charlton Heston. Outrageously melodramatic, it is now a cult classic - unlike Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), a tacky 3-D remake of the Edgar Allan Poe story, with Malden in the role (originally played by Bela Lugosi) of a mad psychiatrist, who hypnotises an ape to do his dirty work. The detective role in Hitchcock's I Confess (1953) was also thankless, as Malden played second fiddle to Montgomery Clift's Catholic priest, who is suspected of murder but bound by the confessional not to reveal the killer's identity. The mid-1950s were Malden's best years, embracing not only On the Waterfront and Baby Doll, but Fear Strikes Out (1957), a harrowing biopic of the baseball player Jim Piersall (Anthony Perkins), whose confidence was sapped by his father's driving ambition. At this time, Malden also ventured into direction. He made one film - the 1957 Korean War courtroom drama Time Limit, starring Richard Widmark and Richard Basehart - although Malden did not appear in it himself. It was politely received. He also handled some scenes, uncredited, for a western, The Hanging Tree (1959), in which he played the villain, when the director Delmer Daves fell sick. 2 Jul 2009 09:16:21 GMT http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/5714143/Karl-Malden.html AF1A72B8-909B-4659-9980-24FEECE73073 Before landing the starring role in My Little Margie in 1952, Gale Storm had appeared in several B-films opposite such stars as Roy Rogers, Eddie Albert and Jackie Cooper. After her last television series, The Gale Storm Show, ended in 1960, she went on to a successful singing career while continuing to make occasional television appearances. She was often cast in westerns as the girl the cowboy left behind, and appeared in such B-movies as The Dude Goes West with Albert, The Kid from Texas with Audie Murphy and The Texas Rangers with George Montgomery. With her film roles diminishing in the early 1950s, Gale Storm followed the path of many fading Hollywood stars of the day and moved to television. The sitcom My Little Margie debuted on CBS as a summer replacement for I Love Lucy in 1952. It quickly became an audience favourite and moved to its own slot that autumn. The year after My Little Margie ended its 126-episode run in 1955, she moved on to The Gale Storm Show, which lasted until 1960. In this she played Susanna Pomeroy, a troublemaking social director on a luxury liner. Having taken vocal lessons, she sang on her second series, and three of her records became best sellers: I Hear You Knocking, Teenage Prayer and Dark Moon. She subsequently appeared only sporadically on television, taking guest roles in such programmes as Burke's Law, The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote. 30 Jun 2009 08:28:40 GMT http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/5689263/Gale-Storm.html A38141BE-56AF-4657-9FF1-F8062C753ED2 Steve Race became a familiar face on television in the 1950s and went on to host the popular Radio 4 panel game My Music, which ran from 1967 until 1994; he subsequently set a regular crossword for The Daily Telegraph. His first job was as a pianist with Harry Leader's band, and he went on to play with the bands of Lew Stone and Cyril Stapleton, and to arrange for the Ted Heath band and Judy Garland. Race first came to notice on BBC children's television in 1953, in the magazine programme Whirligig, a miscellany of items that introduced a generation of postwar children to puppet favourites such as Hank the cowboy and Mr Turnip. In 1955 Race became light music adviser to Associated Rediffusion, remaining in the post until 1960, when he went on to conduct for many television series, including the Tony Hancock and Peter Sellers shows. Race enjoyed nine weeks of chart fame in 1963 with his catchy rendition of Pied Piper (The Beeje), which reached number 29. In 1962 and 1963 Race won awards for his commercial jingles for ITV. The most lucrative was the one for Birds Eye frozen peas: "Sweet as the moment when the pod went pop". He also won an Ivor Novello Award for his composition Nicola (named after his daughter). In 1965, aged 44, he suffered a heart attack, but it did little to halt his prodigious work rate. Immaculately dressed and sporting a distinguished white beard, Race - although a somewhat shy man - was always confident and assured in front of a microphone or a camera. 'My Music', while pioneered on radio, made a successful transfer to television bringing out the best (and worst, when it came to puns) from the comic writers Denis Norden and Frank Muir, and their fellow-panellists John Amis and Ian Wallace. Neither Race nor Wallace missed a single episode of more than 520 that were broadcast. 23 Jun 2009 09:13:23 GMT http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/5604727/Steve-Race.html 6FA9A419-7D79-403B-AE2E-1C1CFEF93DBE On screen, Tenniel Evans was one of those character actors with a face recognisable in dozens of television programmes but whose name was less familiar. He played doctors, police officers, judges and vicars, and even went on to be become a priest himself. But it was out of vision, acting a look-out in the long-running BBC radio comedy The Navy Lark (1959-77), that Evans could claim to be "recognised". As Taffy Goldstein, alongside Ronnie Barker as Johnson, he was one of the two Able Seamen among an inept crew aboard HMS Troutbridge, a frigate refitted to house undesirable elements of the Royal Navy. He made his television début as a policeman in an episode of No Hiding Place (1960), before acting Jonathan Kail, alongside Geraldine McEwan and Jeremy Brett, in an ITV adaptation of Tess (1960, based on Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles). For 45 years, Evans worked solidly in character parts on television, flitting from one popular programme to another - and even playing Hitler in The Roads to Freedom (1970). Occasionally, the actor found regular roles, such as John, one of the solicitor siblings, in the legal drama The Sullavan Brothers (1964-65), Sergeant Bluett in the sitcom My Brother's Keeper (1975-76), Geoff Barratt in the final series of the post-war comedy-drama Shine on Harvey Moon (1985), Teddy Haslam in the zoo vet drama One by One (1987) and Sir Edward Parkinson-Lewis in September Song (1994). He also took over from the late Patrick Troughton the role of Perce, grandfather of Ashley (Nicholas Lyndhurst), in the sitcom The Two of Us (1987-90). 17 Jun 2009 08:32:53 GMT http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1706869.html D7F0B228-AB45-4D62-98AE-76CB16208E1A The soundtracks to six lost episodes of the great comedy series Hancock's Half Hour have been restored to the BBC archives after half a century thanks to the efforts of a bootlegger. They are thought to be the earliest examples of a DIY audio recording made directly from a television broadcast. The series, which began on radio in 1954 and moved to TV in 1956, was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who later created Steptoe and Son. It made Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques - as well as Hancock - comedy stars. The BBC will release four of the rediscovered soundtracks as CDs and downloads this year. The sound quality on the two remaining episodes is so poor that it is not certain that they will be made available. The tapes had circulated among a few Hancock aficionados for some time but were returned to the BBC only last winter with the help of The Hancock Appreciation Society. One of them, The Wrong Man, lampoons the Hitchcock film of that name. In another, Hancock and James enter a beauty contest, and in The Flight of the Red Shadow Hancock tries to pass himself off as the Maharaja of Renjipur to escape from disgruntled members of the East Cheam Repertory Company. There are cameo appearances from Warren Mitchell and Rolf Harris. 15 Jun 2009 08:40:45 GMT http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6498551.ece 2B391C23-27FF-4ADC-9926-DFD5D30B4CDE Terence Alexander played gentlemen and rogues, combining the two in his most famous role, Charlie Hungerford in the television detective series Bergerac. He began his successful television career in the 1950s and subsequently appeared in many series, including The Forsyte Saga, the Les Dawson and Dick Emery shows, Terry and June, and The New Statesman. His radio work included several plays as well as the series Law and Disorder and The Toff. Alexander's numerous films included the comedies The Square Peg (1958), with Norman Wisdom, and Carry On Regardless (1961). He also appeared in the epic Waterloo (1970) and the thriller The Day Of The Jackal (1974). But probably his best film role was as an ex-officer turned bank robber in the comedy adventure The League Of Gentlemen (1960). He performed in many West End comedies and farces, including Fringe Benefits (Whitehall, 1976) and Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus (Nottingham Playhouse, 1980). With John Nettles in the title role, Alexander brought humour and suavity to Bergerac as the detective's millionaire ex-father-in-law. His lightness of touch was perfect for the slim, silver-haired Charlie, constantly puffing a cigar and often in a flap. 3 Jun 2009 08:35:17 GMT http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6417589.ece BCD17DF2-064F-49BB-B2C7-5244F53BF4BF Viv Cox's career in films began after demobilisation in 1946. After working with Sydney, Muriel and Betty Box at Shepherd's Bush Studios, he became associate producer to Betty Box and then producer at Pinewood Studios. Among his early films were So Long at the Fair (with Jean Simmons and Dirk Bogarde, 1950), Father Brown (with Alec Guinness, 1954) and Bachelor of Hearts (with Hardy Kruger and Sylvia Syms, scripted by Cox's friends Leslie Bricusse and Frederic Raphael, 1958). From 1959 to 1967 Cox worked as an independent producer and screenwriter for Rank Studios, producing such titles as Watch Your Stern (with Spike Milligan, Leslie Phillips, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Connor, 1960) and We Joined the Navy (with Kenneth More, 1962). Between 1960 and 1976 Cox produced all the stage shows for the annual Royal Command Film Performance and hosted the royal party. In 1967 Cox returned to his first profession and his alma mater, teaching English, French and Drama at Cranleigh School. A gifted and inspiring teacher, he taught for eight years, during which he also directed several plays, including Hassan with Juliet Stephenson. From 1975 until his retirement in 1982 he worked with Sir Bernard Miles as administrator at London's Mermaid Theatre. 2 Jun 2009 08:25:12 GMT http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6408737.ece 3565CFFC-E83A-4118-9126-DCEB4EFD123D Outside of Australia he was probably best known for his role as a high court lawyer in the cult 1997 comedy The Castle, but locally he was the face of many roles spanning a 50-year career, from television to the stage and the silver screen. Tingwell acted in his first movie in 1946 and appeared in over 100 films during his long career, which included a 17-year stint working in Britain. He moved to England in 1956 where he carved out a career as a 'London Aussie', appearing as an Australian surgeon in Emergency - Ward 10, and as Inspector Craddock in four of the Miss Marple films alongside Dame Margaret Rutherford. He also voiced the character of Mr Bennet in Catweazle as well as characters in The Thunderbirds. After returning to Australia with his wife and two children in 1973, Tingwell settled in Melbourne and began his long foray in the local entertainment industry. He had a long-standing role on the police TV drama Homicide and also appeared in the cult TV show Prisoner: Cell Block H, and later enjoyed a recurring role on Neighbours. Tingwell played many small roles in scores of Australian films including Breaker Morant, Puberty Blues and the mini-series All The Rivers Run. 15 May 2009 14:30:35 GMT http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6291304.ece 3BF858DC-5E43-4A88-BA23-7AC84A01FB58 One of the first female career journalists, Anne Scott-James rose to become Fleet Street royalty. A formidable woman of calm authority and understated glamour, she began her career on Vogue in the 1930s, and during the war joined the staff of the pioneering photojournalistic magazine Picture Post. She later edited Harper's Bazaar and the women's pages of the Sunday Express, exercising a keen news sense and demonstrating that articles aimed at women need not focus only on domestic issues and fashion. While she thrived on the discipline and pressures of journalism, she also enjoyed domestic life; she had two children (her son is the journalist and author Sir Max Hastings, former Editor of The Daily Telegraph), and pursued quiet pleasures. Her passion for gardening (at her cottage on the Berkshire Downs, which she bought in 1938) inspired, in the 1970s, a second career as an author of engaging, no-nonsense books on the subject, some of which were illustrated by her husband Osbert Lancaster. They were well received and remain influential. She was invited to appear in the popular BBC radio panel game 'My Word', and was a fixture from 1964 to 1978. 15 May 2009 14:03:05 GMT http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/5324936/Anne-Scott-James.html 17F8DAFF-7BEE-456B-A2B3-703598714953 The screen and stage actor Laurence Payne made his biggest impression as the titular detective in Sexton Blake, a children's television series which is fondly recalled by a generation of now middle-aged viewers. The series, which ran from 1967 to 1971, went out in a tea-time slot. Payne made his television debut in the Adrian Brunel play Till Tomorrow (1948). He played Captain Bluntschli in an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man (1952) and Troilus in The Face of Love (1954), a modern and comic version of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. His first film was the Ealing Studios drama Train of Events (1949), directed by Charles Crichton, but - apart from an appearance as Joseph in the opening scenes of the biblical epic Ben-Hur (1959) - most of his screen work was on television. Payne played D'Artagnan in a BBC's The Three Musketeers (1954); Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice (1955); Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (1955); Philip Truscott in the sci-fi serial The Trollenberg Terror (1956-57, before reprising the role in the 1958 film); King Magnus in The Apple Cart (1962); Colonel Andrev in the Balkans-set political thriller The Midnight Men (1964); Lieutenant Rinaldi in A Farewell to Arms (1966); Capulet in Romeo and Juliet (1976); and Weaver in Psy-Warriors (a 1981 “Play for Today" written by David Leland and directed by Alan Clarke). Payne also had three roles in Doctor Who over the years: Johnny Ringo in the wild west story “The Gunfighters" (1966); Morix in “The Leisure Hive" (1980) and Dastari in “The Two Doctors" (1985). Payne also wrote crime novels, including The Nose on My Face (1961), Birds in the Belfry (1966) and Spy for Sale (1969). 4 May 2009 09:24:57 GMT http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1678628.html 15BD537F-D339-44B4-B293-C67AB6620A66 The director Ken Annakin was one of the British cinema's most stalwart craftsmen. Able to turn his hand equally to domestic comedies, war epics, family fare for Walt Disney and big-budget spectaculars, he was a reliable purveyor of screen entertainment - as he once put it: “I make films for audiences." He had his biggest commercial success in the 1960s with Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, a rumbustious comedy built around the 1910 London-to-Paris air race. In 1946 he joined Gainsborough Studios under Sydney Box and the following year made his first feature, Holiday Camp, a comedy-drama notable for launching the Huggetts, a warm-hearted working-class family headed by Kathleen Harrison and Jack Warner. Annakin's sympathetic and unpatronising treatment of ordinary people was rare in the British cinema of those days. With the teenage Petula Clark joining the cast as their youngest daughter, the Huggetts appeared in three further films, all directed by Annakin, Here Come the Huggetts, Vote for Huggett and The Huggetts Abroad. They were conceived as a series and in many ways the Huggett saga anticipated television soap opera, albeit on a cosier level. By the early 1950s Annakin had emerged as an efficient all-rounder, tackling anything from the Malayan emergency in The Planter's Wife to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat and another Greene story, Loser Takes All. He also began an association with the Disney studio that yielded four films, from Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952) to the children's classic Swiss Family Robinson (1960), which starred John Mills. 25 Apr 2009 08:05:53 GMT http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1674023.html C14FA696-8E89-4E67-8F71-A0D2C2A447C8 Peter Rogers dreamt up the Carry On comedies and went on to produce the entire Carry On oeuvre, from Carry On Sergeant (1958) to Carry on Emmanuelle (1978). Some time after Rogers had established himself as a producer, working with the director Gerald Thomas, he obtained an RF Delderfield script, The Bull Boys - a serious piece about the effect of army conscription on a pair of ballet dancers. To avoid any audience irreverence he had it rewritten by Norman Hudis as a comedy: Carry On Sergeant. The film, which starred William Hartnell and a youthful Bob Monkhouse, with Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Connor as three hapless army privates, was shot quickly on a budget of under £75,000. The critical response was lukewarm. The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "a conventional farce, in which all the characters come from stock". Yet Carry On Sergeant became an unlikely success - hitting No 3 in the UK box-office charts for 1958, behind Dunkirk and Bridge On the River Kwai, so Rogers decided to make another. Carry On Nurse, also starring Williams, Hawtree and Connors, topped the box office charts in 1959. Over the next 20 years the formula was applied to many institutions - hospital, police, school - and to locations as exotic as the Wild West, the Khyber Pass and Ancient Egypt. The routine was simple enough. Rogers would think up the title in his bathtub, then summon the scriptwriter. In the mid-1950s, working with Gerald Thomas, Rogers went on to produce children's films in which he was able to indulge his love of animals. These included The Gay Dog (1954), Circus Friends (1956) and The Dog and the Diamonds (1953), which won the Venice Film Festival Award in the same year. He also wrote and produced the thriller Time Lock (1957). During the Carry On years, Rogers continued to produce other comedies, such as the spicily titled Please Turn Over and Watch Your Stern and also produced the television series Ivanhoe, with Roger Moore, and the film version of the Sid James sitcom Bless This House. 16 Apr 2009 08:00:05 GMT http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/5160097/Peter-Rogers.html 76166647-64DE-4D0C-9F2C-058F95B8B727 Stardom came to the actor Edward Judd in cult sci-fi films of the 1960s, sandwiched between his roles in soap operas and other character parts on the small screen. By the time he found himself catapulted to international fame, he had already appeared as a regular in Britain's first daily television serial, Sixpenny Corner (1955), playing Denis Boyes, one of the community living around a garage run by the newly-wed Nortons in the fictional rural town of Springwood. The soap was written by Hazel Adair, who was later to create the longer-running Crossroads. His first starring role in a film, as a hard-drinking newspaper reporter redeeming himself in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, was not so far removed from the everyday life of soaps, where the ordinary encounters the extraordinary. In the 1961 black-and-white feature - directed by Val Guest, following his earlier Quatermass pictures - Judd is seen as the fictional Daily Express journalist Peter Stenning, who stumbles on the revelation that American and Soviet nuclear tests have knocked the Earth off its axis, sending it heading for the sun and causing floods and fires. Judd gained repertory theatre experience in Windsor and Nottingham, before his brooding good looks led him to further screen roles as an adult. On television, he took 11 different bit-parts in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1957) and appeared in other swashbucklers such as Ivanhoe, The Adventures of Robin Hood and William Tell (all 1958). Later came roles as Gavin Grant in the espionage drama series Intrigue (1966) and the crippled Uncle Russell in Alan Plater's adaptation of Flambards (1979). He also started low down the cast list in films, in pictures that included Carry on Sergeant (1958), I Was Monty's Double (1958) and Sink the Bismarck! (1960). But after his sci-fi successes, Judd was cast in supporting roles, such as Oswald in O Lucky Man! (1973), the director Lindsay Anderson's anti-capitalist, surrealist musical. 14 Apr 2009 08:18:37 GMT http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/1668286.html 97F4202C-9D32-4E30-81DD-EAC5EBC7C15A When ITN News started in September 1955, an exciting new format was created with two people for the Six O'Clock News who were referred to as “newscasters" rather than “newsreaders". The implication was that they had a very definite input into the news coverage. Huw Thomas fitted well into this bright, professional line-up: he had a touch of Welsh panache, he was articulate, handsome, invariably polite but with a dogged questioning manner that ensured that questions were answered and not skated around. In 1956 Thomas answered an advertisement for the new Independent Television's news programme which was to be produced through Independent Television News (ITN). The less formal style of ITN made an immediate impact and was considered more colourful and “viewer friendly" than the BBC's more traditional presentation. Thomas and his colleagues questioned correspondents and politicians live, and this added to the up-to-the-minute feel of the news coverage. The newscasters were encouraged to create an on-screen personality, and this suited the eloquent Thomas. He had a debonair and gracious on-screen personality, with a fine voice and black swept-back hair. At one stage he was receiving sacks of fan letters and became something of a cult figure. He responded to the challenge of altered schedules and hastily organised live interviews with relish. The value of his legal training was apparent in his questioning, which was always sound, courteous and to the point. 3 Apr 2009 08:40:09 GMT http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6023787.ece 4C89806E-6E7F-4EB1-8CA0-28E7EB4635B7 In recent years he was most familiar to television viewers in the role of Patricia Routledge's long-suffering husband in the BBC detective series Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, in which she stars as a fussing, somewhat self-righteous private eye in Yorkshire. Benfield also had a long-running part in one of the most popular television series of the 1970s. The Brothers concerned a warring family, the Hammonds, which owned a haulage firm, and Benfield played the company's foreman, Bill Riley. Benfield's first television appearance was in the BBC serial Return to the Lost Planet, after which he had roles in popular programmes such as Emergency Ward Ten, Z Cars, and Dixon of Dock Green (for which he also wrote four scripts). There were parts in dramas such as Great Expectations and The Knowledge before he became a regular in the cult children's science fiction drama Timeslip, broadcast in 1970-71. As a writer, Benfield specialised in farce, and plays such as The Post Horn Gallop and Wild Goose Chase (which chart the exploits of the eccentric Lord and Lady Elrood) have proved popular with amateur dramatic societies. His play Beyond a Joke was staged with Arthur Lowe in the leading role, and Bedside Manners starred John Inman and later Tim Brooke-Taylor. Touch and Go was translated into French by Marc Camoletti and ran for a year in his theatre in Paris; last Christmas it had a successful run at the Mill at Sonning. 31 Mar 2009 15:24:53 GMT http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/5077973/Derek-Benfield.html 04F40771-A1B6-4724-BD0D-482D489AABEA Tim Briton joined the BBC in 1951 as a radio announcer, mainly on overseas programmes. From 1957 he was head of English programmes at Radio Hong Kong. He switched to ITN's high-profile team of presenters in 1959. His greatest moment came the following February when he broke into Right of Reply to announce Princess Margaret's engagement. Brinton, a professionally-trained actor who had left ITN to go freelance in 1962, became almost as well known playing a newsreader as he had been as the genuine article. His film credits included Information Received (1961), Allez France (1964), Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), Man at the Top (1973) and Carry On Emmanuelle (1978). Among television dramas in which he appeared were Dixon of Dock Green, Knocker, The Power Game and The Avengers. In 1971 Brinton took over as anchor of Southern Television's Scene South-East. he was a committed Tory who had campaigned for the former Home Secretary Henry Brooke in Hampstead. He was elected to Kent County Council in 1974, and prior to the 1979 election was selected to fight the Labour-held marginal of Gravesend; he captured it with the handsome majority of 9,346, and in 1983 was re-elected for the redrawn constituency of Gravesham. At Westminster Brinton became a founder-member of the education select committee, defending independent schools and complaining that children were swapping school meal vouchers for Mars bars and chips. He was also vice-chairman of the Conservative backbench media committee. 30 Mar 2009 19:14:05 GMT http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/5072338/Tim-Brinton.html 4CDE5CD7-0416-4A5D-A18C-AA937840B479 Simms was for 40 years one of the most familiar voices on the BBC at home and abroad as a pioneer of natural history, making more than 7,000 radio broadcasts and appearing on television some 700 times. As the BBC's resident naturalist and director of wildlife sound recording projects, he was the first person in Britain to record on magnetic tape, introducing parabolic reflectors, radio links and hydrophones. He made the first recordings of badgers, and recorded for the first time an exchange between an adult female bird and its chick inside its unbroken eggshell. Many of Simms's recordings were first broadcast in The Countryside Programme, which he created in 1952 and which ran for the next 38 years. He produced, with Myles North, Witherby's Sound Guide to British Birds with recordings of 194 species. In 1961 Simms joined the new BBC Schools TV Service, for which he produced live television programmes and directed and presented films on natural history. After six years, however, he decided to go freelance, so that he could speak freely on matters of conservation. For 11 years he presented the weekly Nature Notebook Programme on the BBC World Service and for another 11 he had a weekly spot on LBC in London. When he appeared on Desert Island Discs he played a recording of a blackbird, which had been made in his garden at Neasden. He also interviewed the Duke of Edinburgh, and spent six hours in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, for a programme called The Queen's Visitors (1975). 18 Mar 2009 08:40:30 GMT http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/5007637/Eric-Simms.html BEEB1F9A-449F-4DC7-A01F-35DF1CB7EEFF With his rugged looks and strong baritone voice the Canadian-born singer Edmund Hockridge was one of the West End's biggest stars in the 1950s. He played leading roles in a string of popular musicals including Carousel, Guys and Dolls, Can Can and The Pajama Game and had recording hits with songs such as Young and Foolish, No Other Love, The Fountains of Rome and More than Ever. A song from The Pajama Game, Hey There, gave him his biggest record hit and became his signature tune. Immensely popular with British audiences, Hockridge eventually made his home in the UK and for more than 40 years topped bills around the country in musicals, variety, radio and TV shows. He often worked with the Glen Miller Band and the Canadian band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces led by Robert Farnon. He sang and produced more than 400 shows with the BBC Forces Network and as the war ended he sang with big bands such as Geraldo's. Throughout the 1950s he recorded a host of show tune LPs and was a frequent guest star on television. He appeared in early editions of The Benny Hill Show as well as Sunday Night at the London Palladium and he starred in a six-month, sell-out variety season again at the Palladium. In 1953 he was in the Royal Variety Show along with stars such as Max Bygraves and Tommy Cooper and the same year he was Canada's representative in the Westminster Abbey choir at the Coronation. He made his film debut in 1944 with a brief appearance in Starlight Serenade but he had more substantial roles in the 1950s in films such as For Better, for Worse (1954), the romantic drama starring Dirk Bogarde, and King's Rhapsody (1955), co-starring with Anna Neagle and Errol Flynn. 17 Mar 2009 08:48:52 GMT http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5919521.ece 59FA367C-9F62-4EC4-A06F-2FEEF7E08A59 Three weeks after the yuletide kiss-and-tell was released, the song was No. 1 on the Billboard charts. It sold 2 million records in less than 10 weeks. Tens of millions of copies of the much-covered song written by Tommie Connors have been sold over the decades. It has been interpreted by such artists as the Jackson Five, John Mellencamp and Amy Winehouse. Although it came to be regarded as a holiday classic, the ditty about a child who can't understand why Mommy is cheating on Daddy with Santa Claus caused controversy in some quarters when the original featuring Boyd's childish treble was released. The Catholic Church condemned the song for implying even a tenuous link between sex and the religious holiday, and radio stations in several markets banned it. The ban was lifted after the 13-year-old Boyd appeared before church leaders to talk about the lyrics. His recording career essentially lasted until 1967 and encompassed such hits as "Dennis the Menace," sung with Rosemary Clooney, and several duets with Frankie Laine, including "The Little Boy and the Old Man," "Poor Little Piggy Bank" and "Tell Me a Story." On television, Boyd made several appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in the early 1950s and moved into acting. From 1958 to 1961, he portrayed Howard Meechim, the high school boyfriend on "Bachelor Father," a sitcom that starred John Forsythe and Noreen Corcoran. He also played the teenage nephew of Betty White's character on "Date with the Angels," a late-1950s sitcom. 11 Mar 2009 08:59:22 GMT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Boyd 1C749F5E-C624-46BB-A78E-880A81A710E8 Locklin had a huge hit in 1960 with Please Help Me, I'm Falling, considered among the most successful country singles of the rock and roll era. Locklin's songs epitomised the rich vocal and instrumental style known as the "Nashville Sound". Rated one of the greatest tenors in the genre, he possessed a distinctive nasal voice ideally suited to the lachrymose ballads in which he specialised. His first big success came in 1958 with Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On, a song he had written in 1949. Locklin enjoyed a particularly large following in Ireland, where he was voted most popular country singer for five consecutive years. In the United States he became a revered figure both on stage and backstage at the Grand Ole Opry - the Nashville theatre from which country music's celebrated radio show of the same name is broadcast - and he was the oldest living member of the Opry regulars. He made his radio debut singing on a station at Pensacola, strumming his guitar for instrumental backing. In 1948 Locklin and his band, The Rocky Mountain Playboys, landed a morning radio show in Houston, Texas. He made his first record on the Gold Star label in the same year before joining Four Star Records in 1949. In 1954 he had a number two hit with Let Me Be The One before signing to Decca later that year. A switch to the RCA label in 1957 led to a string of major hits, notably Send Me The Pillow That You Dream On, which spent 35 weeks in the country music charts. Other hits for Locklin included Geisha Girl (1957), Happy Journey (1961), Happy Birthday To Me (1962), and The Country Hall Of Fame (1968). He also enjoyed a long recording career with RCA Victor. 10 Mar 2009 08:30:08 GMT http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/4963874/Hank-Locklin.html 931A0659-E0FC-4D43-9A3C-6B23F2301A85 Ali Bongo, real name William Wallace, was a hard-working stage magician with a prodigious talent for inventing tricks; although he eventually became the inspiration for the outlandish magician-detective Adam Klaus in the BBC's Jonathan Creek, Ali spent most of his career in television behind the scenes, devising routines for performers such as David Nixon and Paul Daniels. Having played the part of a wizard called Ali Bongo in a village hall pantomime, he borrowed the name for his stage act. On stage Bongo always claimed himself to be of "Pongolian" descent, but the character he created was no doubt partly inspired by his Indian upbringing. He wore brightly-coloured clothing, spoke in a ringing Asian accent, and tore through his act at a frantic pace, with a litany of endearingly absurd catchphrases - "hokus-pokus fishbones chokus" or "uju buju suck another juju" - thrown in for good measure. After National Service, Bongo became a manager at the magic department of Hamleys in Regent Street. When eventually he left the store to become a full-time professional, he came to the attention of David Nixon, a likeable and witty magician with his own show at the BBC. By the 1950s Ali was working as a magician in variety theatres and clubs throughout the country. Billed as "The Shriek of Araby" he wore outrageously colourful costumes and his act was a combination of brilliantly mimed, zany comedy with expertly performed magic tricks. Casseroles of fire turned into colourful displays of doves and silks, bouquets of flowers changed colour, ladies were sawn in half and he involved his audiences with hilarious mind-reading feats. Impressed by Bongo's ingenuity and grasp of stage technique, Nixon employed him as an adviser on David Nixon's Magic Box until 1971, when Bongo was given his own slot on the children's entertainment series Zokko. His reputation grew and in 1972 he was voted Magic Circle Magician of the Year. But he continued to be employed as an adviser on such television shows as Tarot Ace of Wands, Doctor Who, The Tomorrow People, and later worked with Nixon's successor at the BBC, Paul Daniels, with whom he was to remain a close friend. In 2008 he was elected president of the Magic Circle and remained a frequent visitor to its premises near Euston, helping to run the Young Magicians' Club where he passed on the tricks of his trade to the next generation of performers. 9 Mar 2009 08:11:54 GMT http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/4958574/Ali-Bongo.html B3F784EB-69ED-48B9-8F4A-FA7FA51EA820 3 Jun 2009 08:34:34 GMT