Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey is a Welsh singer. Best known for her career longevity, powerful voice and recording the theme songs to three James Bond films, Bassey is widely regarded as one of the most popular vocalists in Britain.
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien, better known by her stage name Dusty Springfield, was an English singer. With her distinctive mezzo-soprano sound, she was a popular singer of blue-eyed soul, pop and dramatic ballads, with French chanson, country, and jazz in her repertoire. During her 1960s peak, she ranked among the most successful British female performers on both sides of the Atlantic. Her image – marked by a peroxide blonde bouffant/beehive hairstyle, heavy makeup and evening gowns, as well as stylised, gestural performances – made her an icon of the Swinging Sixties.
Lulu Kennedy-Cairns is a Scottish singer, actress, and television personality. With a career spanning six decades, her debut single a cover version of The Isley Brothers song "Shout", reached the top ten of the UK Singles Charts in 1964. In 1967, she rose to international prominence after appearing in the box office film To Sir, with Love, singing the theme song which topped the US Billboard Hot 100 for five consecutive weeks.
The Young Ones is a British sitcom written by Rik Mayall, Ben Elton, and Lise Mayer, starring Adrian Edmondson, Mayall, Nigel Planer, Christopher Ryan, and Alexei Sayle, and broadcast on BBC Two for two series, first shown in 1982 and 1984. The show focused on the lives of four dissimilar students and their landlord's family on different plots that often included anarchic, offbeat, surreal humour. The show often included slapstick gags, visual humour and surreal jokes sometimes acted out by puppets, with each episode also featuring a notable selection of guest stars and musical numbers from various performers.
Top of the Pops (TOTP) is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and broadcast weekly between 1 January 1964 and 30 July 2006. The programme was the world's longest-running weekly music show. For most of its history, it was broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One. Each show consisted of performances of some of the week's best-selling popular music records, usually excluding any tracks moving down the chart, including a rundown of that week's singles chart. This was originally the Top 20, though this varied throughout the show's history. The Top 30 was used from 1969, and the Top 40 from 1984.
Minnie Julia Riperton Rudolph was an American soul singer and songwriter best known for her 1975 single "Lovin' You", her five-octave vocal range, and her use of the whistle register.
Mary Hopkin, credited on some recordings as Mary Visconti from her marriage to Tony Visconti, is a Welsh singer best known for her 1968 UK number 1 single "Those Were the Days". She was one of the first artists to be signed to the Beatles' Apple label.
Clodagh Rodgers is a retired singer from Northern Ireland, best known for her hit singles including "Come Back and Shake Me", "Goodnight Midnight", and "Jack in the Box".
Roy Mitchell Kinnear was an English character actor and comedian. He was known for his acting roles in movies such as Henry Salt in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, 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.
Michael David d'Abo is an English singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist of Manfred Mann from 1966 to their dissolution in 1969, and as the composer of the songs "Handbags and Gladrags" and "Build Me Up Buttercup", the latter of which was a hit for The Foundations. With Manfred Mann, d'Abo achieved six top twenty hits on the UK Singles Chart including "Semi-Detached, Suburban Mr. James", "Ha! Ha! Said the Clown" and the chart topper "Mighty Quinn".
Anthony Burrows is an English pop singer and recording artist. As a prolific session musician, Burrows was involved in several transatlantic hit singles throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, most of which were one-hit wonders, including "Love Grows " by Edison Lighthouse, "United We Stand" by Brotherhood of Man, "My Baby Loves Lovin'" by White Plains, "Gimme Dat Ding" by The Pipkins and "Beach Baby" by The First Class. During 1970, four singles by four different acts with whom he performed all charted at or near the top of the UK Singles Chart and additionally reached the top 20 in the United States.
Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, more commonly known simply as Swap Shop, is a British children's television series that aired on BBC1 from 2 October 1976 to 27 March 1982. It was groundbreaking in many ways: by broadcasting on Saturday mornings, being live, being three hours in length, and using the phone-in format extensively for the first time on TV.
Julie Ann Felix was an American-British folk singer and recording artist who achieved success, particularly on British television, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She later performed and released albums on her own record label.
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.
White Plains were a British pop music group that existed from 1969 to 1976. They had an ever-changing line-up of musicians and five UK hit singles, all on the Deram Records label, in the early 1970s.
The World of Beachcomber was a surreal television comedy show produced by the BBC inspired by the Beachcomber column in the Daily Express newspaper.
"Chocolate Rain" is a song by American singer Tay Zonday. It quickly became popular after the music video for the song was uploaded to YouTube on April 22, 2007, and has since been viewed more than 137 million times. "Chocolate Rain" was ranked as the hottest viral video of summer 2007 by CTV and was awarded the 2008 YouTube Award in the category "Music". Lyrically, the song is a metaphor for racism against African Americans.
Colour Me Pop was a British music TV programme broadcast on BBC2 from 1968–1969. It was a spin-off from the BBC 2 arts magazine show Late Night Line-Up. Designed to celebrate the new introduction of colour to British television, it was directed by Steve Turner, and showcased half-hour sets by pop and rock groups of the period. The programme was a pioneering precursor to the better-remembered BBC music programme The Old Grey Whistle Test (1971–87). Unlike its successor, most of the editions of Colour Me Pop are missing, due to the BBC's archival policy of the time.
"Jack in the Box", written by David Myers and composed by John Worsley, was the United Kingdom's entry at the Eurovision Song Contest 1971, performed by the Northern Irish singer Clodagh Rodgers.
Stanley Dorfman is a British music television director, producer, and painter. He is known as the co-creator and original producer and director of the world's longest running music television series, Top of the Pops. His work on the program contributed to the development of music videos.
