Fawlty Towers is a British television sitcom written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, originally broadcast on BBC Two in 1975 and 1979. Two series of six episodes each were made. The show was ranked first on a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000 and, in 2019, it was named the greatest ever British TV sitcom by a panel of comedy experts compiled by the Radio Times.
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, and presenter. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s, he cofounded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus. Along with his Python costars Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Graham Chapman, Cleese starred in Monty Python films, which include Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), and The Meaning of Life (1983).
Monty Python's Life of Brian is a 1979 British comedy film starring and written by the comedy group Monty Python. It was directed by Jones. The film tells the story of Brian Cohen, a young Jewish-Roman man who is born on the same day as—and next door to—Jesus, and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah.
Monty Python were a British comedy troupe formed in 1969 consisting of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. The group came to prominence for the sketch comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus, which aired on the BBC from 1969 to 1974. Their work then developed into a larger collection that included live shows, films, albums, books, and musicals; their influence on comedy has been compared to the Beatles' influence on music. Their sketch show has been called "an important moment in the evolution of television comedy".
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.
Felicity Ann Kendal is an English actress, working principally in television and theatre. She has appeared in numerous stage and screen roles over a more than 70-year career, but the role that brought attention to her career was that of Barbara Good in the 1975 television series The Good Life.
Peter Malcolm Gordon Moffett, known professionally as Peter Davison, is an English actor with many credits in television dramas and sitcoms. He made his television acting debut in 1975 and became famous in 1978 as Tristan Farnon in the BBC's television adaptation of James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small stories.
A Fish Called Wanda is a 1988 American slapstick farce heist black comedy film directed by Charles Crichton and written by Crichton and John Cleese. It stars Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin. The film follows a gang of diamond thieves who double-cross one another to recover stolen diamonds hidden by their jailed leader. His barrister becomes a central figure – and jealousies rage – as femme fatale Wanda seduces him to locate the loot.
Sir William Sterndale Bennett was an English composer, pianist, conductor and music educator. At the age of ten Bennett was admitted to the London Royal Academy of Music (RAM), where he remained for ten years. By the age of twenty, he had begun to make a reputation as a concert pianist, and his compositions received high praise. Among those impressed by Bennett was the German composer Felix Mendelssohn, who invited him to Leipzig. There Bennett became friendly with Robert Schumann, who shared Mendelssohn's admiration for his compositions. Bennett spent three winters composing and performing in Leipzig.
Clockwise is an absurdist 1986 British comedy road film starring John Cleese, directed by Christopher Morahan, written by Michael Frayn and produced by Michael Codron. The film's music was composed by George Fenton.
Christopher Anton Rea is an English rock and blues singer and guitarist from Middlesbrough. Known for his distinctive voice and his slide guitar playing, Rea has recorded twenty five solo albums, two of which topped the UK Chart, The Road to Hell in 1989 and its successor, Auberge, in 1991. He had already become "a major European star by the time he finally cracked the UK Top 10" with the single "The Road to Hell ".
Yellowbeard is a 1983 American comedy film directed by Mel Damski and written by Graham Chapman, Peter Cook, Bernard McKenna, and David Sherlock, with an ensemble cast featuring Chapman, Cook, Peter Boyle, Cheech & Chong, Martin Hewitt, Michael Hordern, Eric Idle, Madeline Kahn, James Mason, and John Cleese, and the final cinematic appearances of Marty Feldman, Spike Milligan, and Peter Bull.
Royal Flash is a 1975 British adventure comedy film based on the second Flashman novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It stars Malcolm McDowell as Flashman. Additionally, Oliver Reed appeared in the role of Otto von Bismarck, Alan Bates as Rudi von Sternberg, and Florinda Bolkan played Lola Montez. Fraser wrote the screenplay and the film was directed by Richard Lester.
Desperate Hours is a 1990 American neo-noir action thriller film directed by Michael Cimino. It is a remake of the 1955 film of the same name and an adaptation the 1954 novel by Joseph Hayes, who also co-wrote the script with Cimino based on a treatment by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal. Cimino was not credited as writer on the finished product. The film stars Mickey Rourke, Anthony Hopkins, Mimi Rogers, Kelly Lynch, Lindsay Crouse, Elias Koteas and David Morse. It marks Cimino's third collaboration with Rourke, having previously worked with him on the films Heaven's Gate and Year of the Dragon.
Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? is a 1969 British musical film directed by Anthony Newley and starring himself, Joan Collins, Milton Berle, George Jessel and Bruce Forsythe.
The Call of the Wild is a 1972 family adventure film directed by Ken Annakin and starring Charlton Heston, Michèle Mercier, Raimund Harmstorf, George Eastman, and Maria Rohm.
The System is a 1964 British drama film directed by Michael Winner and starring Oliver Reed, Jane Merrow and Barbara Ferris. The writer was Peter Draper, who in this film popularised the word 'grockle' to mean a holiday visitor.
This is a list of British television related events from 1946.
Al Davison is an English comic book writer and artist from Newcastle, England. He now resides in Coventry, where he runs The Astral Gypsy, his studio and comic shop in Fargo Village, Far Gosford Street, with his wife Maggie. He is most famous for his autobiographical graphic novel The Spiral Cage, which describes his lifelong struggle with spina bifida and his rise to successful comic book creator, martial arts instructor, film maker, and performer. The Spiral Cage featured in Tony Isabella's 1000 Comic Books You Must Read.
