The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island is a 2007 short film, directed by James Griffiths, and written by and starring Tim Key and Tom Basden. It was nominated for a 2008 BAFTA Award for Best Short Film award, [1] and won the UK Film Council Award for Best British Short Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. [2]
Lottery winner Charles Heath (Tim Key) pays a folk singer Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) to visit his private island and perform for him for a fee of half a million pounds. Isolated from the world, the jaded folk singers' passion for music is slowly reignited.
Anne Archer is an American actress. Archer was named Miss Golden Globe in 1971, and in the year following, appeared in her feature film debut The Honkers (1972). She had supporting roles in Cancel My Reservation (1972), The All-American Boy (1973), and Trackdown (1976), and appeared in Good Guys Wear Black (1978), Paradise Alley (1978) and Hero at Large (1980).
The Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), established in 1947, is the world's oldest continually running film festival. EIFF presents both UK and international films, in all genres and lengths. It also presents themed retrospectives and other specialized programming strands.
Ainslie Thomas Henderson is a Scottish animator and singer-songwriter. He gained fame via his participation in the BBC's television programme, Fame Academy, in 2002. He signed a recording contract with Mercury Records after leaving the show, having been placed fourth. His subsequent single, "Keep Me a Secret", written alongside fellow contestants in Fame Academy, reached the fifth position on the UK Singles Chart.
Cowards are a British four-man comedy act, composed of Tim Key, Stefan Golaszewski, Tom Basden and Lloyd Woolf. The group has created eponymous radio and TV series of their sketch comedy.
Carey Hannah Mulligan is an English actress. She has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and a Tony Award.
Timothy Key is an English poet, comedian, actor and screenwriter. He has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, both as a solo act and as part of the comedy group Cowards, and plays Alan Partridge's sidekick Simon in film and television. In 2009, he won the Edinburgh Comedy Award and was nominated for the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality.
Timothy Marc Plester is a British actor, playwright, and filmmaker, best known for the documentaries Way of the Morris and The Ballad of Shirley Collins - plus a multifarious number of cameo roles for film and TV.
Colin Archibald Low was a Canadian animation and documentary filmmaker with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was known as a pioneer, one of Canada's most important filmmakers, and was regularly referred to as "the gentleman genius". His numerous honors include five BAFTA awards, eight Cannes Film Festival awards, and six Academy Award nominations.
Thomas William Basden is an English actor, writer and comedian. He is best known for co-creating and starring in Plebs, which won the Royal Television Society award for Best Scripted Comedy in 2014. He was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2007 Edinburgh Comedy Awards and is a member of the sketch group Cowards.
Stefan Golaszewski is a British writer, performer and director. He is part of the comedy troupe Cowards and is the writer and creator of BAFTA-winning sitcoms Him & Her and Mum.
Lloyd Woolf is a British comedy actor and writer from Swansea, Wales.
Matthew Greenhalgh is an English screenwriter from Manchester. He is best known for writing the screenplays of several biopic films, including Control (2007), Nowhere Boy (2009), Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017), and Back to Black (2024). He has received five BAFTA nominations, winning once for Most Promising Newcomer for Control—which also earned him an Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Screenplay.
Scotland has produced many films, directors and actors.
Adrian John McDowall is a BAFTA award-winning Scottish filmmaker.
Jonathan Huw Sweet is a British comedian and the recipient of the 2009 Edinburgh Comedy Award for best newcomer.
Adam Stafford is a Scottish musician, filmmaker, film writer, photographer and broadcaster based in Falkirk, Scotland. He was the lead singer and songwriter with the Scottish band Y'all is Fantasy Island as well as a short film maker and solo artist. Stafford was born in Sunderland, England. In the late 1980s, his family moved to Falkirk, where he still resides with his wife and daughter.
Daniel Rigby is an English actor and comedian. He received a BAFTA TV Award for his leading role as Eric Morecambe in the 2011 BBC television film Eric and Ernie.
James Griffiths is a British television and film director and producer. Griffiths is currently a producer on A Million Little Things, Black-ish, and its Freeform spinoff, Grown-ish. Griffiths also directed and executive produced ABC’s newest series, Stumptown.
Lucy Pearman is a BAFTA-nominated British comedian, actor and writer. She was nominated for Best Newcomer in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 for her solo show. In July 2021 she wrote and starred in the BBC Three sitcom pilot Please Help, which was nominated for a BAFTA in 2022.
The Ballad of Wallis Island is an upcoming film produced by Baby Cow Productions and starring Carey Mulligan, Tom Basden and Tim Key. Basden and Key co-wrote the script. James Griffiths is directing with Rupert Majendie producing.