Tracey Ullman is a British-American actress, comedian, singer, writer, producer, and director. Her earliest mainstream appearances were on British television sketch comedy shows A Kick Up the Eighties and Three of a Kind. After a brief singing career, she appeared as Candice Valentine in Girls on Top with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.
Victoria Wood was an English comedian, actress, lyricist, singer, composer, pianist, screenwriter, producer and director. Wood wrote and starred in dozens of sketches, plays, musicals, films and sitcoms over several decades and her live comedy act was interspersed with her own compositions which she performed at the piano. Much of her humour was grounded in everyday life and included references to activities, attitudes and products that are considered to exemplify Britain. She was noted for her skills in observational comedy and in satirising aspects of social class.
Jennifer Jane Saunders is an English actress, comedienne, and screenwriter. Saunders originally found attention in the 1980s, when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with her best friend and comedy partner, Dawn French. With French, she co-wrote and starred in their eponymous sketch show, French and Saunders, for which they jointly received a BAFTA Fellowship in 2009. Saunders later received acclaim in the 1990s for writing and playing her character Edina Monsoon in her sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
Dame Julia Mary Walters, known professionally as Julie Walters, is an English actress. She is the recipient of four British Academy Television Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, two International Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Laurence Olivier Award.
The Young Ones is a British sitcom written by Rik Mayall, Ben Elton, and Lise Mayer, starring Adrian Edmondson, Mayall, Nigel Planer, Christopher Ryan, and Alexei Sayle, and broadcast on BBC Two for two series, first shown in 1982 and 1984. The show focused on the lives of four dissimilar students and their landlord's family on different plots that often included anarchic, offbeat, surreal humour. The show often included slapstick gags, visual humour and surreal jokes sometimes acted out by puppets, with each episode also featuring a notable selection of guest stars and musical numbers from various performers.
Dawn Roma French is a British actress, comedian, presenter and writer. French is known for writing and starring on the BBC comedy sketch show French and Saunders with her best friend and comedy partner, Jennifer Saunders, and played the lead role as Geraldine Granger in the BBC sitcom The Vicar of Dibley. She has been nominated for seven BAFTA TV Awards and won a BAFTA Fellowship with Saunders in 2009.
Richard Michael Mayall was an English comedian, actor and writer. He formed a close partnership with Ade Edmondson while they were students at Manchester University and was a pioneer of alternative comedy in the 1980s.
Saturday Live is a British television comedy and music show, made by LWT and initially broadcast on Channel 4 from 1985 to 1988, with a brief revival on ITV in 1996. A few one-off editions have also been screened sporadically, including a contribution to the BBC's 1993 Comic Relief telethon. It was based on the American sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live but otherwise had no direct connection to the show.
Maggie Steed is an English actress and comedian.
A Kick Up the Eighties was a 1981–1984 BBC 2 comedy sketch show starring Robbie Coltrane, Tracey Ullman, Richard Stilgoe, Miriam Margolyes, Rik Mayall, Ron Bain and Roger Sloman.
Gregory Daniel Davies is a Welsh comedian, actor, presenter, and writer. He is best known for his roles as Greg in We Are Klang, Mr Gilbert in The Inbetweeners, Ken Thompson in Cuckoo, the Taskmaster in Taskmaster and Dan Davies in Man Down; he has also appeared as Paul "Wicky" Wickstead in The Cleaner which he wrote. He has appeared on Mock the Week, Fast and Loose, Live at the Apollo, and Would I Lie to You?
Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV is a British comedy sketch series written by and starring comedian Victoria Wood, with appearances from Julie Walters, Celia Imrie, Duncan Preston, Susie Blake and Patricia Routledge. The show was televised on BBC Two between 1985 and 1987 and included sketches that became famous in the United Kingdom.
Victoria Wood is a series of six one-off situation comedies written by and starring Victoria Wood in 1989, who took a break from sketches, two years after her successful sketch series Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV. Wood appeared as a fictionalised version of herself in all six episodes; she was generally identified only as "Victoria", but in the first episode was also addressed as "Miss Wood". Her real-life career was occasionally a plot point: in "The Library", it was said that she "worked in TV", and in Over To Pam characters recognised her as a comedian, though two confused her with Dawn French. Most notably, in the final episode, Staying In, she was taken to a party to perform as a stand-up comedian. Her character sometimes broke the fourth wall of TV and spoke directly to the camera, but not in every episode.
Geoffrey Harold Posner is a British television producer and director. Posner has directed and produced some of Britain's most successful comedy shows since the early 1980s.
Talent is a play written by Victoria Wood, first performed in 1978. It centres on two friends, one of whom is about to enter a talent contest in a run down nightclub. Commissioned for the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, it received much acclaim and transferred to a London run in 1979. That same year a television adaptation was broadcast. It was the first time Victoria Wood and Julie Walters appeared together on TV.
Happy Since I Met You is a television play written by Victoria Wood, and broadcast on ITV on 9 August 1981.
Peter Eckersley was a British television producer. His television career began on Granada's Scene at 6.30 programme where he worked with his friend Michael Parkinson. He went on to become Head of Drama at Granada Television in the 1960s and '70s.
There's Nothing to Worry About! is a British television series that ran on ITV Granada in 1982. The sketch comedy show was the first screen collaboration between the comedy duo Fry and Laurie. Other cast members include Emma Thompson, Ben Elton, Paul Shearer and Siobhan Redmond.
Adrian Charles Edmondson is an English actor, comedian, musician, writer and television presenter. He was part of the alternative comedy boom in the early 1980s and had roles in the television series The Young Ones (1982–1984) and Bottom (1991–1995), which he wrote together with his collaborator Rik Mayall. Edmondson also appeared in The Comic Strip Presents... series of films throughout the 1980s and 1990s. For two episodes of this he created the spoof heavy metal band Bad News, and for another he played his nihilistic alter-ego Eddie Monsoon, an offensive South African television star.
Katie Cariad Lloyd is a British comedian, actress, writer, and podcaster who has been performing since 2007. She is a member of the improvisational comedy group Austentatious, the host and creator of Griefcast, and an improv teacher.
