Don Estelle was an English actor and singer, best known as Gunner "Lofty" Sugden in It Ain't Half Hot Mum.
Windsor Davies was a British actor. He is best remembered for playing Battery Sergeant Major Williams in the sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum (1974–1981) over its entire run. The show's popularity resulted in Davies and his co-star Don Estelle achieving a UK number-one hit with a version of "Whispering Grass" in 1975. He later starred with Donald Sinden in Never the Twain (1981–1991), and his deep Welsh-accented voice was heard extensively in advertising voice-overs.
Brian Norman Roger Rix, Baron Rix, was an English actor-manager, who produced a record-breaking sequence of long-running farces on the London stage, including Dry Rot, Simple Spymen and One for the Pot. His one-night TV shows made him the joint-highest paid star on the BBC. He often worked with his wife Elspet Gray and sister Sheila Mercier, who became the matriarch in Emmerdale Farm.
Harold Edward Snoad is a British television producer, writer and director. He is best known for the television sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, starring Patricia Routledge and Clive Swift. He is also well known for having directed and produced Ever Decreasing Circles starring Richard Briers and Peter Egan, as well as Don't Wait Up starring Tony Britton and Nigel Havers.
Carol Hawkins is an English actress, best known for her various comic roles in numerous television sitcoms and films in the 1970s and 1980s.
Michael Darbyshire was an English actor of stage and screen. He is perhaps best known for his role as Hubert Davenport, the Victorian ghost, in the long running BBC TV children's comedy series Rentaghost.
Sparrows Can't Sing is a 1963 British kitchen sink comedy film directed by Joan Littlewood and starring James Booth and Barbara Windsor. It was written by Stephen Lewis based on his 1960 play Sparrers Can't Sing, first performed at Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in the Theatre Royal Stratford East. The producer was Donald Taylor.
Sheila Betty Mercier was an English actress, of stage and television, best known for playing Annie Sugden in the soap opera Emmerdale for over 20 years, from the programme's first episode in 1972 until the mid-1990s, with a guest return in 2009.
Raymond George Alfred Cooney OBE is an English playwright, actor, and director.
Trafalgar Theatre is a West End theatre in Whitehall, near Trafalgar Square, in the City of Westminster, London. The Grade II listed building was built in 1930 with interiors in the Art Deco style as the Whitehall Theatre; it regularly staged comedies and revues. It was converted into a television and radio studio in the 1990s, before returning to theatrical use in 2004 as Trafalgar Studios, the name it bore until 2020, with the auditorium converted to two studio spaces. It re-opened in 2021 following a major multi-million pound project to reinstate it to its original single-auditorium design.
Run for Your Wife is a 1983 comedy play by Ray Cooney.
Not Now, Darling is a 1973 British comedy film directed by Ray Cooney and David Croft and starring Trudi Van Doorn, Leslie Phillips and Julie Ege. It was adapted from the 1967 play of the same title by John Chapman and Ray Cooney. The film is a farce centred on a shop in London that sells fur coats. A loosely related sequel Not Now, Comrade was released in 1976.
Dry Rot is a 1956 British comedy film directed by Maurice Elvey, and starring Ronald Shiner, Brian Rix, Peggy Mount, and Sid James. The screenplay is by John Chapman, adapted from his 1954 Whitehall farce of the same name.
The Whitehall farces were a series of five long-running comic stage plays at the Whitehall Theatre in London, presented by the actor-manager Brian Rix, in the 1950s and 1960s. They were in the low comedy tradition of British farce, following the Aldwych farces, which played at the Aldwych Theatre between 1924 and 1933.
The Spy with a Cold Nose is a 1966 British comedy film directed by Daniel Petrie and starring Laurence Harvey, Daliah Lavi, Lionel Jeffries, Denholm Elliott, and Colin Blakely. It was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.
John Roy Chapman was a British actor, playwright and screenwriter, known for his collaborations with Ray Cooney.
The Night We Dropped a Clanger, is a 1959 black and white British comedy film directed by Darcy Conyers and starring Brian Rix, Cecil Parker, William Hartnell and Leslie Phillips.
Nearly a Nasty Accident is a 1961 British comedy film directed by Don Chaffey and starring Jimmy Edwards, Kenneth Connor, Shirley Eaton and Eric Barker.
Reluctant Heroes is a 1952 British comedy film directed by Jack Raymond and starring Ronald Shiner, Derek Farr and Christine Norden. It is based on the popular farce of the same title by Colin Morris. The play, which had its West End premiere at the Whitehall Theatre in September 1950, was the first of the Brian Rix company's Whitehall farces. The film was shot at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith in West London. It's sets were designed by the art director Wilfred Arnold.
Leo Franklyn was an English actor. Much of his early career was in Edwardian musical comedy; in his later career he was chiefly associated with farce.
