Top Gear was a boutique established in the 1960s by James Wedge and Pat Booth on the Kings Road, London. [1] It was an influential shop which Barbara Hulanicki was "most envious of", [2] and acquired a reputation for selling Mod clothing to the "rich and influential". [3] Customers included Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger and The Beatles. [4]
The carrier bags had a distinctive bullseye design — which became a popular Mod icon used by The Who.
Carry On is a British comedy franchise comprising 31 films released between 1958 and 1992. Produced by Peter Rogers and directed by Gerald Thomas, the films starred a regular ensemble that included Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor, Peter Butterworth, Hattie Jacques, Terry Scott, Bernard Bresslaw, Barbara Windsor, Jack Douglas, and Jim Dale. The humour of Carry On was in the British comic tradition of music hall and bawdy seaside postcards. The success of the series led to several spin-offs, including four Christmas television specials (1969–1973), a 1975 television series of thirteen episodes, and three West End stage shows that also toured the United Kingdom.
The Discovery Institute (DI) is a politically conservative non-profit think tank based in Seattle, Washington, that advocates the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design (ID). It was founded in 1990 as a non-profit offshoot of the Hudson Institute.
Phillip E. Johnson was a UC Berkeley law professor, opponent of evolutionary science, co-founder of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement, author of the "Wedge strategy" and co-founder of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC). He described himself as "in a sense the father of the intelligent design movement". He was a critic of Darwinism, which he described as "fully naturalistic evolution, involving chance mechanisms and natural selection". The wedge strategy aims to change public opinion and scientific consensus, and seeks to convince the scientific community to allow a role for theism, or causes beyond naturalistic explanation, in scientific discourse. Johnson argued that scientists accepted the theory of evolution "before it was rigorously tested, and thereafter used all their authority to convince the public that naturalistic processes are sufficient to produce a human from a bacterium, and a bacterium from a mix of chemicals."
Barbara Jill Walters was an American broadcast journalist and television personality. Known for her interviewing ability and popularity with viewers, she appeared as a host of numerous television programs, including Today, the ABC Evening News, 20/20, and The View. Walters was a working journalist from 1951 until her retirement in 2015. Walters was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1989, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NATAS in 2000 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007.
The Mod Squad is an American crime drama series, originally broadcast for five seasons on ABC from September 24, 1968, to March 1, 1973. It starred Michael Cole as Peter "Pete" Cochran, Peggy Lipton as Julie Barnes, Clarence Williams III as Lincoln "Linc" Hayes, and Tige Andrews as Captain Adam Greer. The executive producers of the series were Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas.
Mod, from the word modernist, is a subculture that began in London and spread throughout Great Britain and elsewhere, eventually influencing fashions and trends in other countries, and continues today on a smaller scale. Focused on music and fashion, the subculture has its roots in a small group of stylish London-based young men in the late 1950s who were termed modernists because they listened to modern jazz. Elements of the mod subculture include fashion ; music and motor scooters. In the mid-1960s, the subculture listened to rock groups with mod following, such as the Who and Small Faces, after the peak Mod era. The original mod scene was associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night jazz dancing at clubs.
The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), is part of the Discovery Institute (DI), a conservative Christian think tank in the United States. The CSC lobbies for the inclusion of creationism in the form of intelligent design (ID) in public-school science curricula as an explanation for the origins of life and the universe while trying to cast doubt on the theory of evolution. These positions have been rejected by the scientific community, which identifies intelligent design as pseudoscientific neo-creationism, whereas the theory of evolution is overwhelmingly accepted as a matter of scientific consensus.
Biba was a London fashion store of the 1960s and 1970s. Biba was started and primarily run by the Polish-born Barbara Hulanicki with help of her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon.
The Wedge Strategy is a creationist political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document. Its goal is to change American culture by shaping public policy to reflect politically conservative fundamentalist evangelical Protestant values. The wedge metaphor is attributed to Phillip E. Johnson and depicts a metal wedge splitting a log.
Denis Stamper Lawson is a Scottish actor and director. He is known for his roles as John Jarndyce in the BBC's adaptation of Bleak House, as Gordon Urquhart in the film Local Hero, as Retired DI Steve McAndrew in BBC One's New Tricks, as Kit Curran in The Kit Curran Radio Show, and as Wedge Antilles in the original Star Wars trilogy, later reprising the role in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019.
Barbara Carroll Forrest is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. She is a critic of intelligent design and the Discovery Institute.
Itala was a car manufacturer based in Turin, Italy, from 1904 to 1934, started by Matteo Ceirano and five partners in 1903.
Barbara Hulanicki is a fashion designer, born in Warsaw, Poland, to Polish parents and best known as the founder of clothes store Biba.
Eddie Piller is a British DJ, radio show host, and founder/managing director of Acid Jazz Records.
Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design is a 2004 book by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross on the origins of intelligent design, specifically the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture and its wedge strategy. The authors are highly critical of what they refer to as intelligent design creationism, and document the intelligent design movement's fundamentalist Christian origins and funding.
Gompholobium, commonly known as glory peas or wedge-peas, is a genus of plants in the pea family Fabaceae and is endemic to Australia. Most species have compound leaves composed of three leaflets and all have ten stamens which are free from each other and a distinctive arrangement of their sepals.
The Port Eliot Lit Fest is an annual celebration of all things literary taking place at Port Eliot in Cornwall, in the United Kingdom. It was founded by the late Jago Eliot. Guests who have attended the festival in past years are Hanif Kureishi, James Flint, Hari Kunzru and Louis de Bernières.
Kiki Byrne was a Norwegian-born, London-based fashion designer who is mainly remembered as Mary Quant's rival on the King's Road in the late 1950s and 1960s.
Rod Melvin is an English, London-based pianist and singer, appearing regularly at residencies such as the Groucho Club and previously Le Pont de la Tour.
The Army Sergeant Major is the most senior member of the other ranks of the British Army. The three appointment holders have actually been commissioned officers holding the rank of captain, although uniform and insignia similar to that of a warrant officer class 1 is worn while holding the appointment. The appointment was created as part of the changes to the British Army's top ranks around February 2015. The ASM sits on the Executive Committee of the Army Board (ECAB) and works with the Secretary of State for Defence, top civil servants and other high-ranking members to shape British Army policy. The first appointment was made in March 2015.