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John Alexander Fairley FRTS (born 15 April 1938) [1] is a British former television producer from Liverpool, who now lives in Yorkshire. [2] With William Allison he wrote the 1978 book The Monocled Mutineer, made into a well-known 1986 BBC One controversial drama series, adapted by Alan Bleasdale.
He was born in Liverpool. [2] He attended MerchantTaylor's school in Crosby, Merseyside and then went to The Queen's College, Oxford.
He started at the Bristol Evening Post in 1963, then went to the London Evening Standard in 1964.
From 1965 to 1968 he was a radio producer with BBC Radio.
He worked for Yorkshire Television (now ITV Yorkshire). He was a television producer from 1968 to 1978. He became Managing Director of Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television in 1993 until April 1995. He was replaced on 15 May 1995 by Bruce Gyngell, the former managing director from 1984 to 1992 of TV-am. During his employment at Yorkshire Television, he was the Producer of the cave diving documentary The Underground Eiger . [3]
He has written numerous books with Simon Welfare.
He lives in North Yorkshire, in Eddlethorpe in Ryedale. He is married and has three daughters.
Paul John McGann is an English actor. He came to prominence for portraying Percy Toplis in the television serial The Monocled Mutineer (1986), then starred in the dark comedy Withnail and I (1987), which was a critical success and developed a cult following. McGann later became more widely known for portraying the eighth incarnation of the Doctor in the 1996 television film Doctor Who, and its audio drama continuations. He is also known for playing Lieutenant William Bush in the TV series Hornblower (1998–2003).
Alan George Bleasdale is an English screenwriter, best known for social realist drama serials based on the lives of ordinary people. A former teacher, he has written for radio, stage and screen, and has also written novels. Bleasdale's plays typically represented a more realistic, contemporary depiction of life in Liverpool than was usually seen in the media.
A Foreign Field is a 1993 British made-for-television drama film about British and American Second World War veterans returning to the beaches of Normandy as old men. It is more a drama than a comedy, although it combines aspects of both. It was directed by Charles Sturridge and featured an ensemble cast of American, Australian, British, and French actors and actresses. The title evokes the Rupert Brooke poem "The Soldier".
Blackwell is a village in Derbyshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 4,389. It is one of the four villages that make up the civil parish of Blackwell within the District of Bolsover - the other villages being Hilcote, Newton and Westhouses. The Parish Council meets monthly. A brief history of the Parish of Blackwell was published in 1994.
Francis Percy Toplis was an English criminal and imposter active during and after the First World War. Before the war he was imprisoned for attempted rape. During the war he served as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps, but regularly posed as an officer while on leave, wearing a monocle. After the war he became notorious following the murder of a taxi driver and the wounding of a police officer who attempted to apprehend him. The manhunt was major news at the time. He was tracked down and killed in a gunfight with police.
Vitrified forts are stone enclosures whose walls have been subjected to vitrification through heat. It was long thought that these structures were unique to Scotland, but they have since been identified in several other parts of western and northern Europe.
The Monocled Mutineer is a 1986 BBC television drama series starring Paul McGann about the Étaples mutiny in 1917 during the First World War. The four-part serial, which was the first historical screenplay written by Alan Bleasdale, dramatised the life of British Army deserter Percy Toplis. It was adapted from the 1978 book of the same name by William Allison and John Fairley.
The Étaples mutiny was a series of mutinies in September 1917 by British Army and British Imperial soldiers at a training camp in the coastal port of Étaples in Northern France during World War I.
A Woman of Substance is a British-American three-part television drama serial, produced in 1984. It is based on the 1979 novel of the same name by Barbara Taylor Bradford.
The Rosenheim poltergeist claim is the name given to claims of a poltergeist in Rosenheim in southern Bavaria in the late 1960s by German parapsychologist Hans Bender. Bender alleged that electrical and physical disturbances in the office of the lawyer Sigmund Adam were caused by the telekinetic powers of 19-year-old secretary Annemarie Schaberl. Bender's investigation has been criticized for omitting key details and avoiding naturalistic explanations.
Barry Cockcroft was a British television documentary director, writer and producer. He is best known for his documentary Too Long A Winter about the lady, Hannah Hauxwell who lived alone on a remote farm in the Pennines.
The Thornton Road Poltergeist refers to stone-throwing incidents in a residential area of Birmingham, England, in 1981 and the subsequent police investigation.
Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World is a thirteen-part British television series looking at unexplained phenomena from around the world. It was produced by Yorkshire Television for the ITV network and first broadcast on 6 September 1980.
Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers is a thirteen-part British television series looking at strange worlds of the paranormal. It was produced by Yorkshire Television for the ITV network and first broadcast in 1985. It was the sequel to the 1980 series Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World.
Michael Joseph Cassutt is an American television producer, screenwriter, and author. His notable TV work includes producing or writing, or both, for The Outer Limits, Eerie, Indiana, Beverly Hills, 90210, and The Twilight Zone. In addition to his work in television, Cassutt has written over thirty short stories, predominately in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. He has also published novels, including the 1986 The Star Country, the 1991 Dragon Season, the 2001 Red Moon and the 2011 Heaven's Shadow, in collaboration with David S. Goyer. In addition, Cassutt contributes non-fiction articles to magazines and is the author of the non-fiction book, The Astronaut Maker, a biography of NASA legend George W. S. Abbey (2018).
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was a British science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
The following is a list of works by Arthur C. Clarke.
Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe is a 26-part television series looking at unexplained phenomena across the universe. It was first broadcast in the United Kingdom by independent television network Discovery Channel. It premiered on 15 July 1994. It was the sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World and Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers.
Ethel Post-Parrish was an American Spiritualist medium.
The Underground Eiger is a made-for-television documentary that was released in 1979. It details a world record-breaking cave dive of 6,000 ft (1,800 m) made by Geoff Yeadon and Oliver Statham from West Kingsdale Master Cave, in North Yorkshire, England to Keld Head. An estimated 20 million viewers watched its television debut. It has been called "legendary in caving folklore," and notable cave diver Rick Stanton cites it as the impetus that sparked his interest in cave diving.