Michael Bentine was a British comedian, comic actor and founding member of the Goons. His father was a Peruvian Briton.
John Michael Bird was an English actor, director, writer and satirist. He performed in the television satire boom of the 1960s, appearing in That Was the Week That Was. His television work included many appearances with John Fortune. Bird had an acting career in film, television, theatre and radio for over 55 years. He appeared in films including Take A Girl Like You (1970) and Jabberwocky (1977) as well as in television shows such as Joint Account, Marmalade Atkins, El C.I.D. and Chambers. He and Fortune also starred with Rory Bremner in the sketch show Bremner, Bird and Fortune (1993–2010), on Channel 4, which was nominated for BAFTA TV Awards.
Richard Gilbert Emery was an English comedian and comic actor. His broadcasting career began on radio in the 1950s, and his self-titled television series ran from 1963 to 1981.
Dick Clement is an English writer, director and producer. He became known for his writing partnership with Ian La Frenais for television series including The Likely Lads, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, Porridge, Lovejoy and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
Ian La Frenais is an English writer best known for his creative partnership with Dick Clement. They are most famous for television series including The Likely Lads, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, Porridge and its sequel Going Straight, Lovejoy and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
David Peter Renwick is an English author, television writer, actor, director and executive producer. He created the sitcom One Foot in the Grave and the mystery series Jonathan Creek. He was awarded the Writers Guild Ronnie Barker Award at the 2008 British Comedy Awards.
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by ABC Weekend TV. Its successor Thames Television took over from mid-1968.
Michael Bentine's Potty Time was a British children's show, written by and starring Michael Bentine, and directed and produced by Leon Thau for Thames Television on ITV. It ran from 1973 to 1980. Bentine had introduced The Potties on a BBC show Michael Bentine Time a year earlier. The episodes consisted largely of bearded puppets, comically re-enacting famous historical situations. The Potties' faces were always obscured by facial hair, with only their noses protruding. They were operated from beneath and had two distinct sizes - approximately two feet (60 cm) and one foot (30 cm) tall. All of the Potty characters were designed by Bentine, who also provided all of their voices. Their operators were from The Barry Smith Theatre of Puppets.
The Frost Report is a satirical television show hosted by David Frost. It introduced John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbett to television, and launched the careers of other writers and performers. It premiered on BBC1 on 10 March 1966 and ended on 12 December 1967, with a total of 26 regular episodes over the course of 2 series and 2 specials as well.
The Rag Trade is a British television sitcom broadcast by the BBC between 1961 and 1963 and by ITV between 1977 and 1978. Although a comedy, it shed light on gender, politics and the "class war" on the factory floor.
Wilfred Duncan Wood was a British comedy producer, director and writer, who has been described as "the founding father of the British TV sitcom".
The World of Beachcomber was a surreal television comedy show produced by the BBC inspired by the Beachcomber column in the Daily Express newspaper.
The Dick Emery Show is a British sketch comedy show starring Dick Emery. It was broadcast on the BBC from 1963 to 1981. It was directed and produced by Harold Snoad. The show was broadcast over 18 series with 166 episodes. The show experienced sustained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. The BBC described the show as featuring 'a vivid cast of comic grotesques'.
A Kick Up the Eighties is a British comedy sketch show originally broadcast on BBC2 from 1981 to 1984. It starred Robbie Coltrane, Tracey Ullman, Richard Stilgoe, Miriam Margolyes, Rik Mayall, Ron Bain and Roger Sloman.
Out of This World is a British science fiction anthology television series made by the ITV franchise ABC Weekend TV for ITV. It was broadcast on ITV in 1962. A spin-off from the Armchair Theatre anthology series, each episode was introduced by the actor Boris Karloff. Many of the episodes were adaptations of stories by science fiction writers including Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and Clifford D. Simak. The series is described by the British Film Institute as a precursor to the BBC science fiction anthology series Out of the Unknown, which was created and produced by Out of This World creator Irene Shubik after she left ABC.
Irene Shubik was a British television producer and story editor, known for her contribution to the development of the single play in British television drama. Beginning her career in television at ABC Weekend TV, she worked on Armchair Theatre as a story editor, where she devised the science fiction anthology series Out of this World.
Geoffrey Harold Posner is a British television producer and director. Posner has directed and produced some of Britain's most successful comedy shows since the early 1980s.
The Long Banana Skin is the first of three autobiographies by Michael Bentine, comedy entertainer, particularly known as a member of The Goons and for his television shows It's a Square World. It covers his life and entertainment career up to 1975. Subsequent autobiographical books are The Door Marked Summer (1981) and The Reluctant Jester (1992). The Daily Telegraph's reviewer explained, "The title, The Long Banana Skin, comes from the fact that Mr Bentine believes that fate is always lying in wait to remove his feet from under him when all seems to be going well."
Leon Thau was a British actor, TV producer and director. He played the part of Frankie Wing in the 1960 London production of the musical Flower Drum Song. As an actor, he became known in the BBC TV comedy series It's a Square World (1960–64), and also appeared in Comedy Playhouse, The Gnomes of Dulwich, Z-Cars, Up Pompeii! and The Avengers. He had parts in the films The Magic Christian, Carry On Up the Khyber, The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery and The Sandwich Man.
Michael Cole was a British writer. He created a number of children's programmes from the 1970s to the 1990s, including Alphabet Castle, Heads and Tails and Ragtime, for which he won a Society of Film and Television Award for Best Children's Programme. Together with his wife Joanne Cole, he created Bod, originally published as four books in 1965 and made into a TV show in the 1970s, as well as Fingerbobs and Gran.
