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Michael Fenton Stevens | |
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| Born | Michael Stevens 12 February 1958 |
| Occupation(s) | Actor, comedian |
Michael Fenton Stevens (born 12 February 1958) [1] is an English actor and comedian. He was a founder member of The Hee Bee Gee Bees and sang the lead on the Spitting Image 1986 number 1 hit "The Chicken Song". [2] He also starred in KYTV , its Radio 4 predecessor Radio Active , Benidorm , and was an anchor on 3rd & Bird on CBeebies.
Fenton Stevens was one of the principal performers in the Radio 4 comedy series Radio Active during the 1980s, alongside Helen Atkinson-Wood, Angus Deayton, Geoffrey Perkins and Philip Pope, which later led to the television series KYTV. [3] [4]
He also appeared in various roles in the Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series. [5] In 2007, he played the similarly named Michael Wenton Weeks in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency . [6] He plays the eponymous Inspector Steine in Lynne Truss' long-running Radio 4 comedy series. [7]
He has also played a long-running role in the radio soap The Archers . [8]
In 2020, Fenton Stevens released the first of a podcast series, My Time Capsule, produced by his son John Fenton Stevens. [9] The show involves guests choosing four memories they would preserve in a time capsule, and a fifth memory they would wish to bury in the ground and never think about again. Guests have included Stephen Fry, Rebecca Front, Rick Wakeman, Mark Gatiss, Rufus Hound, David Mitchell, Anthony Head, Chris Addison, Rev Richard Coles, Griff Rhys Jones, Richard Herring and David Baddiel. [10] In June 2023, it celebrated its 300th episode.
Fenton Stevens featured in regular roles as Hank in the 1996 series The Legacy of Reginald Perrin , and as Ralph in Andy Hamilton's 2003 television sitcom Trevor's World of Sport , as well as in the Radio 4 version of the latter which was broadcast in 2004. He had previously appeared in a guest role in Drop the Dead Donkey , another television comedy series written by Hamilton, and appears regularly in various roles in Hamilton's Radio 4 sitcom Old Harry's Game . He has also featured in Ian Hislop's sitcom My Dad's the Prime Minister as the Home Secretary.
From 2004 until 2005 he appeared in two series of Julia Davis's dark comedy series Nighty Night as the Reverend Gordon Fox. [11]
He has provided the voice of Mr Beakman, a toucan, in the CBeebies show 3rd & Bird , and has a recurring role in the sitcom My Family as Mr Griffith, the boss of the dental corporation Cavitex. He has played Sir Henry in Benidorm since series four, which was first broadcast in 2011.
Notable guest appearances have included the next door hotel guest in "Mr. Bean in Room 426", and the brother-in-law of Hee Bee Gee Bees bandmate, Angus Deayton's character in an episode of One Foot in the Grave . [12] He played Alan Perkins, a holiday rep in Spain in "The Unlucky Winner Is" episode of Only Fools And Horses. [13] He also played a guest role in Coronation Street in November 2004. In 2006, he guest-starred in the Doctor Who audio adventure The Kingmaker . He appeared in Series 3 Episode 3 of Outnumbered , as a substitute player called 'Lance' in a tennis match, and in the "Music 2000" episode of Look Around You as the chairman of the Royal Pop and Rock Association. In 2022 he appeared as Tony Vanoli in a fourth season episode of Ghosts. [14]
Fenton Stevens has appeared as a Pantomime Dame in a number of pantomimes. From December 2006 until January 2007, he starred in and wrote the Cambridge Arts Theatre pantomime version of Aladdin in the role of Widow Twankey. [15] In 2015, Stevens appeared as Dr. John Radcliffe in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Helen Edmundson's Queen Anne . [16]
In 2014, his mother, Olive Stevens, was accidentally killed by her own car when another motorist attempted to help her turn her vehicle around after fly-tipped rubbish blocked her path. She fell and hit her head which caused a bleed on the brain causing her death in hospital. [17]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | The Riddle | Alistair Forsyth M.P. | |
| 2007 | Lady Godiva: Back in the Saddle | Roger Tompkins | |
| 2016 | Mob Handed | The Police Spokesman | |
| 2017 | Carnage | Peter Smithball | |
| 2022 | Rogue Agent | Richard Archer | |
| 2023 | Harvey Greenfield Is Running Late | Jason Mason |
Radio Active is a radio comedy programme, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 during the 1980s. The series grew out of a 1979 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show presented by The Oxford Revue and starred Angus Deayton, Geoffrey Perkins, Michael Fenton Stevens, Helen Atkinson-Wood and Philip Pope. The first episode was broadcast in 1980, and it ran for seven series.
Gordon Angus Deayton is an English actor, writer, musician, comedian and broadcaster.
Philip R. J. Pope is a British composer and actor.
Geoffrey Howard Perkins was a British comedy producer, writer and performer. He was BBC head of comedy between 1995 and 2001, and produced the first two radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He is one of the people credited with creating the panel game Mornington Crescent for I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. In December 2008 he posthumously received an Outstanding Contribution to Comedy Award.
Valerie Singleton is an English television and radio presenter best known as a regular presenter of the popular children's series Blue Peter from 1962 to 1972. She also presented the BBC Radio 4 PM programme for ten years as well as a series of radio and television programmes on financial and business issues including BBC's The Money Programme from 1980 to 1988.
Marti Webb is an English actress and singer, who appeared on stage in Evita, before starring in Andrew Lloyd Webber's one-woman show Tell Me on a Sunday in 1980. This included her biggest hit single, "Take That Look Off Your Face", a UK top three hit, with the parent album also reaching the top three.
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC since 1 October 1975. Voted by TV executives in Broadcast magazine as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has produced more than six hundred episodes directed by, among others, Frederick Baker, Jana Boková, Jonathan Demme, Nigel Finch, Mary Harron, Vikram Jayanti, Vivian Kubrick, Paul Lee, Adam Low, Bernard MacMahon, James Marsh, Leslie Megahey, Volker Schlondorff, Martin Scorsese, Julien Temple, Anthony Wall, Leslie Woodhead, and Alan Yentob.
Mark Preston Curry is an English actor as well as a television and radio presenter. He is best known for his career on the British-television children's show Blue Peter (1986–1989) as a host, as well as his run as host on ITV British gameshow Catchphrase (2002).
15 Storeys High is a British sitcom, set in a tower block in south London. Created and co-written by Sean Lock, it originated as two radio series broadcast in 1998–2000, transferring to television in 2002–2004. The television series starred Sean Lock and Benedict Wong.
Kenneth MacDonald was an English actor who was best known for the parts of Gunner Nobby Clark in It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Mike Fisher in Only Fools and Horses.
Victoria Wicks is a British actress. She is known for her role as Sally Smedley in Channel 4's comedy series Drop the Dead Donkey (1990–1998), Mrs. Gideon in The Mighty Boosh (2004), and the College Director in Skins (2007–08). Her film appearances include The Imitation Game (2014) and High-Rise (2015). She is an associate of Howard Barker's theatre company, The Wrestling School.
El Nombre is a children's educational programme about an anthropomorphic Mexican gerbil character, originally from a series of educational sketches on Numbertime, the BBC schools programme about mathematics. He was also the only character to appear in all Numbertime episodes. His voice was provided by Steve Steen, while the other characters' voices were provided by Sophie Aldred, Kate Robbins, and former Blue Peter host Janet Ellis. For the ninth series of Numbertime in 2001, Michael Fenton-Stevens also provided voices of certain other characters in the El Nombre sketches.
Philip Jackson is an English actor. He appeared as Chief Inspector Japp in both the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot and in BBC Radio dramatisations of Poirot stories; as Melvin "Dylan" Bottomley in Porridge; and as Abbot Hugo, one of the recurring adversaries in the 1980s series Robin of Sherwood.
Miles Hugh Barrett Jupp is an English actor, singer, and comedian. He began his career as a stand-up comedian before playing the role of the inventor Archie in the children's television series Balamory. He also played John Duggan in The Thick of It, Nigel in the sitcom Rev and appeared on many comedy panel shows. In September 2015, Jupp replaced Sandi Toksvig as the host of The News Quiz on BBC Radio 4.
Perry Benson is a British character actor, having had regular roles in British television sitcoms You Rang, M'Lord? (1988–1993), Oh, Doctor Beeching! (1995–1997) and Operation Good Guys (1997–2000). Other credits include Scum (1979), Love, Honour and Obey (2000), Alien Autopsy (2006), This Is England (2006), Mum & Dad (2008), Vinyl (2012), Get Santa (2014), Benidorm (2014-2015), Accident Man (2018), and Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday (2022).
Whicker's World was a British television documentary series that ran from 1958 to 1994, presented by journalist and broadcaster Alan Whicker.
George Black was a British theatrical impresario who controlled many entertainment venues during the 1930s and 1940s and was a pioneer of the motion picture business.
This is a list of British television related events from 1994.
Douglas William Squires was an English choreographer, known best for his work in television from the mid-1950s. He was born in Nottingham.
Singing Together was a BBC Radio schools series which ran from 25 September 1939 to 29 March 2001, with repeats until 25 June 2004. Its origins were in Community Singing which was considered necessary at the outbreak of the Second World War following the mass evacuation of children.
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