Michael Bentine, was a British comedian, comic actor and founding member of the Goons. His father was a Peruvian Briton.
Roy Mitchell Kinnear was a British character actor. He was known for his roles in films directed by Richard Lester; including Algernon in The Beatles' Help! (1965), Clapper in How I Won the War (1967) and Planchet in The Three Musketeers (1973). He reprised the role of Planchet in the 1974 and 1989 sequels, and died following an accident during filming of the latter. He is also known for playing Private Monty Bartlett in The Hill (1965), Henry Salt in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and cruise director Curtain in Juggernaut (1974).
Richard Gilbert Emery was an English comedian and actor. His broadcasting career began on radio in the 1950s, and his self-titled television series ran from 1963 to 1981.
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 seasons and 2 specials as well.
The Rag Trade is a British television sitcom broadcast by the BBC between 1961 and 1963 and by LWT 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". His best-known achievements were to produce all of Tony Hancock's Half Hours for BBC TV during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and later, also with Hancock's former writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, the sitcom Steptoe and Son for most of its run. From 1970 to 1973, he was the BBC's Head of Comedy. He left in 1973 to become Head of Light Entertainment at Yorkshire Television and was responsible for commissioning Rising Damp.
Oil Strike North is a BBC television drama series produced in 1975.
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'.
Robert Dorning was a musician, dance band vocalist, ballet dancer and stage, film and television actor. He is known to have performed in at least 77 television and film productions between 1940 and 1988.
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 produced by Out of This World creator Irene Shubik after she left ABC.
Fable is a British television play, shown on 27 January 1965 as an episode of The Wednesday Play series on BBC 1. Written by John Hopkins, the play is set in a parallel totalitarian Britain where those in authority are black people, and white people are their social underdogs - a reversal of the situation in contemporary apartheid South Africa.
The Doctor novels are a series of 18 comic novels by British physician Richard Gordon, covering the antics of a group of young doctors. They were published between 1952 and 1986.
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).
Clive Robert Benjamin Dunn was an English actor. Despite being only 48 and one of the youngest cast members, he was cast in a role many years his senior, as the elderly Lance Corporal Jones in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army, which ran for 9 series and 80 episodes between 1968 and 1977.
The World of Wooster is a comedy television series, based on the Jeeves stories by author P. G. Wodehouse. The television series starred Ian Carmichael as English gentleman Bertie Wooster and Dennis Price as Bertie's valet Jeeves.
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.
After Hours is a British television sketch show with musical and sporting guests, starring Michael Bentine, produced by ABC Weekend TV for ITV in 1958 and 1959. The show cast included Dick Emery, Clive Dunn, David Lodge, Joe Gibbons and Benny Lee. It was produced at Alpha Studios in Birmingham.
