Sir Michael Edward Palin is an English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. He received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2013 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.
Graham William Walker, better known by his stage name Graham Norton, is an Irish comedian, actor, author, and television host known for his work in the UK. He is a five-time BAFTA TV Award winner for his comedy chat show The Graham Norton Show (2007–present) and an eight-time award-winner overall—he received the British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance three times for So Graham Norton. Originally shown on BBC Two before moving to other slots on BBC One, his chat show succeeded Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in BBC One's late-Friday-evening slot in 2010.
The Independent is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the Indy, it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition.
Christopher James Evans is an English television presenter, radio DJ and producer for radio and television. He started his broadcasting career working for Piccadilly Radio, Manchester, as a teenager, before moving to London as a presenter for the BBC's BBC Radio London and then Channel 4 television, where The Big Breakfast made him a star. Soon he was able to dictate highly favourable terms, allowing him to broadcast on competing radio and TV stations. Slots like Radio 1 Breakfast and TFI Friday provided a mix of celebrity interviews, music and comic games, delivered in an irreverent style that attracted high ratings, though often also generated significant numbers of complaints. By 2000 he was the UK's highest paid entertainer, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. In the tax year to April 2017, he was the BBC's highest-paid presenter, earning between £2.2m and £2.25m annually.
Armando Giovanni Iannucci is a Scottish satirist, writer, director, producer, performer and panellist. Born in Glasgow to Italian parents, Iannucci studied at the University of Glasgow followed by the University of Oxford. Starting on BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4, his early work with Chris Morris on the radio series On the Hour transferred to television as The Day Today.
Christopher David Moyles is an English radio and television presenter, author and presenter of The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X.
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg of Wigton in the County of Cumbria, is an English broadcaster, author and parliamentarian. He is the editor and presenter of The South Bank Show, and the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 documentary series In Our Time.
I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! is a reality television format in which a number of celebrities live together in a jungle environment for a number of weeks, competing to be crowned "King" or "Queen of the Jungle". The show was originally created in the United Kingdom by Granada Television and produced by its subsidiary, ITV's then London franchise London Weekend Television (LWT) and developed by a team including James Allen, Natalka Znak, Brent Baker and Stewart Morris. The first episode aired on 25 August 2002 hosted by Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, also known as Ant and Dec. It is now produced by ITV Studios and has been licensed globally to countries including the United States, Germany, France, Hungary, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Romania, Russia, Australia and India.
Janet Vera Street-Porter is an English broadcaster, journalist, writer, producer, and media personality. She began her career as a fashion writer and columnist at the Daily Mail and was later appointed fashion editor of the Evening Standard in 1971. In 1973, she co-presented a mid-morning radio show with Paul Callan on LBC.
Kay Mellor was an English actress, scriptwriter, producer and director. She was known for creating television series such as Band of Gold, Fat Friends, and The Syndicate, as well as co-creating CITV's children's drama Children's Ward (1989–2000).
John Walker Motson was an English football commentator. Beginning as a television commentator with the BBC in 1971, he commentated on over 2000 games on television and radio. From the late 1970s to 2008, Motson was the dominant football commentary figure at the BBC, apart from a brief spell in the mid-1990s.
There are several different types of mass media in the United Kingdom: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and websites. The United Kingdom is known for its large music industry, along with its new and upcoming artists. The country also has a large broadcasting, film, video games and book publishing industries.
Springwatch, Autumnwatch until 2022 and Winterwatch, sometimes known collectively as The Watches, are annual BBC television series which chart the fortunes of British wildlife during the changing of the seasons in the United Kingdom. The programmes are broadcast live from locations around the country in a primetime evening slot on BBC Two. They require a crew of 100 and over 50 cameras, making them the BBC's largest British outside broadcast events. Many of the cameras are hidden and operated remotely to record natural behaviour, for example, of birds in their nests and badgers outside their sett.
Christopher Gary Packham CBE is an English naturalist, nature photographer, television presenter and author, best known for his television work including the CBBC children's nature series The Really Wild Show from 1986 to 1995. He has also presented the BBC nature series Springwatch, including Autumnwatch and Winterwatch, since 2009.
Fay Ripley is an English actress, television presenter and recipe author. She is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (1990). Her first professional role was in the chorus of a pantomime version of Around the World in 80 Days. Ripley's early film and television appearances were limited, so she supplemented her earnings by working as a children's entertainer and by selling menswear door-to-door. After her scenes as a prostitute were cut from Frankenstein (1994), Ripley gained her first major film role playing Karen Hughes in Mute Witness (1995).
Sir Martyn John Dudley Lewis is a Welsh television news presenter and broadcast journalist who anchored ITN news bulletins between 1978 and 1986 and BBC News television shows from 1986 to 1999. Lewis attended Dalriada School and Trinity College, Dublin, before working as a freelance correspondent for BBC Northern Ireland and Harlech Television (HTV). He joined ITN in 1970 and headed its Northern Bureau from 1971 to 1978. Between 1978 and 1986, Lewis was an anchor for ITN's News at 5.45 and half-hour News at Ten bulletins, creating the "And finally..." segment that features positive stories at the end of each News at Ten programme.
Michael James Whale is a British radio personality, television presenter, podcast host and author. He gained initial prominence in the 1980s as the host of The James Whale Radio Show on Radio Aire in Leeds, which was simulcast on national television. From 1995 to 2008, Whale hosted a night time radio show on talkSPORT, followed by stints on LBC 97.3 and various BBC radio stations.
During the early hours of 31 August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died from injuries sustained earlier that night in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris, France. Diana's partner, Dodi Fayed, and the driver of the Mercedes-Benz W140, Henri Paul, were found dead inside the car. Dodi's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was seriously injured and was the only survivor of the crash.
Jack the Ripper is a six-part BBC police procedural made in 1973, in which the case of the Jack the Ripper murders is reopened and analysed by Detective Chief Superintendents Barlow and Watt. These characters were hugely popular with UK TV viewers at the time from their appearances on the long-running police series Z-Cars and its sequels Softly, Softly and Barlow at Large. The programme was presented partly as a discussion between the two principals in the present day, interspersed with dramatised-documentary scenes set in the 19th century. The series discusses suspects and conspiracies, but concludes there is insufficient evidence to determine who was Jack the Ripper. The experiment was seen to be a success, and the formula was repeated in 1976 with Second Verdict, in which Barlow and Watt cast their gaze over miscarriages of justice and unsolved mysteries from the past.
The BBC Sports Personality of the Year is an awards ceremony that takes place annually in December. Devised by Paul Fox in 1954, it originally consisted of just a singular award of the same name. Several new awards have been introduced, and currently eight awards are presented.
