Gyles Daubeney Brandreth is a British broadcaster, writer and former politician. He has worked as a television presenter, theatre producer, journalist, author and publisher.
George Wild Galvin, better known by the stage name Dan Leno, was a leading English music hall comedian and musical theatre actor during the late Victorian era. He was best known, aside from his music hall act, for his dame roles in the annual pantomimes that were popular at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, from 1888 to 1904.
A teddy bear museum is a museum about teddy bears. There are many teddy bear museums around the world.
Dame Sheila Cameron Hancock is an English actress, singer, and author. She has performed in theatre - plays and musicals in London, and her Broadway debut in Entertaining Mr Sloane (1966) earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Lead Actress in Play. She won a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical for her role in Cabaret (2007) and was nominated at the Laurence Olivier Awards five other times for her work in Annie (1978), Sweeney Todd (1980), The Winter's Tale (1982), Prin (1989) and Sister Act (2010).
Susie Dent is an English lexicographer, etymologist, and media personality. She has appeared in "Dictionary Corner" on the Channel 4 game show Countdown since 1992. She also appears on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, a post-watershed comedy version of the show.
Zipp is a bicycle parts manufacturer.
Dr Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket were characters devised by George Logan and Patrick Fyffe for their comedy and musical act. Hinge and Bracket were elderly, intellectual female musicians; in these personae, the male Logan and Fyffe played and sang songs to comic effect. They made many appearances on television and radio. The two generally performed together, but on rare occasions appeared separately.
The Duchess Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster, London, located in Catherine Street near Aldwych.
The Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) is the principal funding body and provider of theatrical services to the many independent student productions put on by students in Oxford, England. Not all student productions at Oxford University are awarded funding from the society. However it is rare, for example, for any student production at the Oxford Playhouse not to receive substantial funding from the society. The society funds many types of shows, mostly at the Oxford Playhouse, Burton Taylor Theatre, and the individual college theatres such as the Moser Theatre at Wadham and the O'Reilly Theatre at Keble. All productions put on by Oxford University students can use the society's services, such as the website, the auditions portal, and advice from the committee, providing their production company is registered.
Beatrice "Binnie" Mary Hale-Monro was an English actress, singer and dancer. She was one of the most successful musical theatre stars in London in the 1920s and 1930s, able to sing leading roles in operetta as well as musicals, and she was popular as a principal boy in pantomime. Her best-remembered roles were in the musicals No, No, Nanette (1925) and Mr. Cinders (1929), in which she sang "Spread a Little Happiness".
Jeremiah Brandreth was an out-of-work stocking maker, living in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, who was executed for treason after being convicted of plotting to overthrow the Government of the United Kingdom. He and two others, who were known as the Pentrich martyrs, were the last people to be beheaded by an axe in an execution in Britain.
I.D. and Urgent Calls is a Big Finish Productions audio drama based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It is the first play to be released as a three-part story with a separate one-part story included.
Judy Campbell was an English film, television and stage actress, widely known to be Noël Coward's muse. Her daughter was the actress and singer Jane Birkin, her son the screenwriter and director Andrew Birkin, and among her grandchildren are the actresses Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon, the late poet Anno Birkin, the artist David Birkin and the late photographer Kate Barry.
Just a Minute is a BBC Radio 4 radio comedy panel game, hosted by Sue Perkins since 2021. For more than 50 years, with a few exceptions, it was hosted by Nicholas Parsons. Following Parsons' death in 2020, Perkins assumed the host's chair permanently, starting with the 87th series. Just a Minute was first transmitted on Radio 4 on 22 December 1967, three months after the station's launch. The programme won a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award in 2003.
Dan Leno was an English comedian and stage actor of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, famous for performing in music hall. As a child, he was known for his clog dancing, and in his teen years, he became the star of his family's music hall act throughout Britain. He was an increasingly popular solo artist during the late 1880s and 1890s. He also performed in pantomimes and a few Victorian burlesques and comic plays and musicals, especially in the last two decades of his career.
Rosalind Maud Shand was a British aristocrat, daughter of Roland Cubitt, 3rd Baron Ashcombe. She was the wife of army officer Major Bruce Shand and the mother of Queen Camilla.
The OSO Arts Centre is a theatre and arts centre located in Barnes in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The building was previously the postal sorting office, but was redeveloped into a mixture of residential and commercial space with the first residents moving in in 1999. In 2002 the arts centre opened and in 2012 the OSO Arts Centre came under the direction of a new board of trustees. The building is located on Barnes Green, and provides arts services to the community, both in the form of evening performances in the theatre space, and daytime dance and art classes. Some well-known names have performed at the OSO over the years including Patricia Hodge, Timothy West, Stephanie Cole, Julian Glover, Janie Dee, Issy van Randwyck, Harriet Thorpe, Lee Nelson and Robert Pattinson.
The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes is an anthology of theatrical anecdotes comprising four-hundred years of world theatre history, from Shakespeare to the present day, edited by "lifelong theatre-lover Gyles Brandreth in the Oxford tradition."
Sonia Rosemary Cubitt, was a British socialite, author and aristocrat. She was the first wife of Roland Cubitt, 3rd Baron Ashcombe and, through her only daughter Rosalind, was the maternal grandmother of Queen Camilla. Sonia is also known as the daughter of Alice Keppel, a mistress of King Edward VII.
