Peter Sellers was an English actor and comedian. He first came to prominence performing in the BBC Radio comedy series The Goon Show. Sellers featured on a number of hit comic songs, and became known to a worldwide audience through his many film roles, among them Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series.
William Melvin Hicks was an American stand-up comedian and satirist. His material—encompassing a wide range of social issues including religion, politics, and philosophy—was controversial and often steeped in dark comedy.
Alfred Hawthorne "Benny" Hill was an English comedian. He is remembered for his television programme The Benny Hill Show, an amalgam of slapstick, burlesque and double entendre in a format that included live comedy and filmed segments, with Hill at the focus of almost every segment.
Mark Robert Bailey, known professionally as Bill Bailey, is an English musician, comedian and actor. He is known for his role as Manny in the sitcom Black Books and his appearances on the panel shows Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You, and QI, as well as for his stand-up comedy work. He plays a variety of musical instruments and incorporates music into his performances.
Jane Asher is an English actress and author. She achieved early fame as a child actress and has worked extensively in film and TV throughout her career.
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most important stand-up comedians of all time. Pryor won a Primetime Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards. He received the first Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 1998. He won the Writers Guild of America Award in 1974. He was listed at number one on Comedy Central's list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians. In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked him first on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.
William Henry Kerr was a British and Australian actor, comedian, and vaudevillian.
Phyllis Virginia "Bebe" Daniels was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer, and producer.
Stan Laurel was an English comic actor, writer, and film director who was one half of the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. He appeared with his comedy partner Oliver Hardy in 107 short films, feature films, and cameo roles.
John Morrison Clarke was a New Zealand comedian, writer and satirist who lived and worked in Australia from the late 1970s. He was a highly regarded actor and writer whose work appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in both radio and television and also in print. He is principally known for his character Fred Dagg and his long-running collaboration with fellow satirist Bryan Dawe, which lasted from 1989 to his death in 2017, as well as for his success as a comic actor in Australian and New Zealand film and television.
Walter Frederick George Williams, better known by his stage name Bill Maynard, was an English comedian and actor. He began working in television in the 1950s, notably starring alongside Terry Scott in Great Scott - It's Maynard! (1955–56). In the 1970s and 1980s, he starred in the successful British sitcoms Oh No It's Selwyn Froggitt and The Gaffer and appeared in five films in the Carry On series. After a hiatus from television work in the late 1980s, Maynard starred as Claude Jeremiah Greengrass in the long-running television series Heartbeat from 1992 to 2000, reprising the character in the spin-off The Royal from 2002 to 2003.
Kevin Eldon is an English actor and comedian. He featured in British comedy television shows of the 1990s including Fist of Fun, This Morning with Richard Not Judy, Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, Big Train, Brass Eye and Jam. In 2013, Eldon appeared in his own BBC sketch series It's Kevin. He has also appeared in minor speaking roles in the HBO series Game of Thrones.
Sean Lock was an English comedian and actor. He began his comedy career as a stand-up comedian and in 2000 he won the British Comedy Award, in the category of Best Live Comic, and was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. He was a team captain on the Channel 4 comedy panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats from 2005 to 2015, and on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown from 2012 until his death in 2021.
Thomas Ross Bond was an American actor, director, producer and writer. He was best known for his work as a child actor for two nonconsecutive periods in Our Gang comedies. Also, he is noted for being the first actor to appear onscreen as DC Comics character Jimmy Olsen, in the film serials Superman (1948) and Atom Man vs. Superman (1950).
Ronald Dee White is an American stand-up comedian, actor and author, best known as a charter member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. Nicknamed "Tater Salad", he is the author of the book I Had the Right to Remain Silent But I Didn't Have the Ability, which appeared on the New York Times best seller list.
Thomas Edward Trinder CBE was an English stage, screen and radio comedian whose catchphrase was "You lucky people!". Described by cultural historian Matthew Sweet as "a cocky, front-of-cloth variety turn", he was one of the United Kingdom's foremost entertainers during the Second World War.
William Henry Mettam "Robin" Bailey was an English actor. He was born in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.
Benjamin Harvey Bailey Smith, also known by the stage name Doc Brown, is an English actor, comedian, rapper, screenwriter, songwriter, and voiceover artist. He portrayed DS Joe Hawkins in the television series Law & Order: UK. He is also known for portraying Nathan Carter in the CBBC television series 4 O'Clock Club from 2012 to 2015, and Imperial Security Bureau agent Lieutenant Supervisor Blevin in Andor.
The following events occurred in December 1940:
