Actor Peter Bowles, famous for starring opposite Penelope Keith in BBC comedy series To the Manor Born, has died at the age of 85, his agent has confirmed. He also appeared in films such as The Bank Job, Eyewitness and the Steal as well as TV shows including Victoria, Magnolia Street and Only When I…
On the Buses was broadcast on ITV from 1969 to 1973. Stan Butler played by Reg Varney was the cheeky bus driver in this classic LWT sitcom. He’s lucky enough to be paired with his best friend, Jack (Bob Grant), as the conductor on his bus, but still spends all of his time complaining. When they’re…
Sir Kenneth Arthur Dodd OBE (8 November 1927 – 11 March 2018) was a British comedian and singer-songwriter, famous for his frizzy hair or “fluff dom” and buck teeth or “denchers”, his favourite cleaner, the feather duster (or “tickling stick”) and his greeting “How tickled I am!”, as well as his send-off “Lots and Lots of Happiness!”….
Beyond Our Ken featured characters similar to those later featured in Round the Horne, for instance, Betty Marsden’s Fanny Haddock (which parodied Fanny Cradock). It was also notable for Pertwee’s Frankie Howerd impersonation, Hankie Flowered, and Hugh Paddick’s working-class pop singer Ricky Livid – the name being a mickey-take on contemporary pop singers’ stage names…
James Robinson Clitheroe (24 December 1921 – 6 June 1973) was a British comic entertainer. He never grew any taller than 4 feet 3 inches, and could easily pass for an 11-year-old boy, the character he played in The Clitheroe Kid. The Clitheroe Kid was a BBC radio comedy show featuring diminutive Northern comedian James…
Hancock’s Half Hour was a BBC radio comedy, and later television comedy, series of the 1950s. It starred Tony Hancock, with Sid James; the radio version co-starring Hattie Jacques, Bill Kerr and Kenneth Williams. The series was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson and produced by Dennis Main Wilson for most of its run….
Parsley Sidings was a BBC Radio sitcom created by Jim Eldridge. It starred Arthur Lowe and Ian Lavender (who were also starring in the television wartime sitcom Dad’s Army at that time), together with Kenneth Connor from the Carry On films. The scripts are by Jim Eldridge (who would later go on to write for many more series, the most successful being the BBC’s King Street Junior). The show is set in a…
“Dad’s Army” was a long running British comedy series created and written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft. The idea of a series came to Jimmy Perry when he realised that many people had forgotten about the contribution the Home Guard had made to the British Home Front during the years of the Second World…
Leslie “Les” Dawson was an extremely popular English comedian remembered for his deadpan style, curmudgeonly persona and jokes about his mother-in-law and wife. His career as an entertainer began as a pianist in a Parisian brothel, that is if you are to believe his very entertaining but factually unreliable autobiography. Even though he was an…
Steptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about two rag and bone men living in Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd’s Bush, London. Four series were broadcast by the BBC from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974. Its theme tune,…