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John Fortune
John Fortune (born John C. Wood; 30 June 1939 – 31 December 2013) was an English satirist, comedian, writer, and actor, best known for his work with John Bird and Rory Bremner on the TV series ''Bremner, Bird and Fortune''. Early life Fortune was born John Wood in Bristol in 1939. He was educated at Bristol Cathedral School and King's College, Cambridge, where he was to meet and form a lasting friendship with John Bird. He was a member of the semi-secretive Cambridge Apostles society, a debating club largely reserved for the brightest students. Career Fortune's early work included contributions to Peter Cook's Establishment Club team in 1962, and as a regular member of the cast of the BBC-TV satire show ''Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life'', both alongside Eleanor Bron and John Bird. Fortune and Bird also worked together on the TV show ''A Series of Birds'' in 1967, and Fortune and Bron wrote and performed a series of sketches for TV in '' Where Was Spring?'' in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bristol
Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in South West England. The wider Bristol Built-up Area is the eleventh most populous urban area in the United Kingdom. Iron Age hillforts and Roman villas were built near the confluence of the rivers Frome and Avon. Around the beginning of the 11th century, the settlement was known as (Old English: 'the place at the bridge'). Bristol received a royal charter in 1155 and was historically divided between Gloucestershire and Somerset until 1373 when it became a county corporate. From the 13th to the 18th century, Bristol was among the top three English cities, after London, in tax receipts. A major port, Bristol was a starting place for early voyages of exploration to the New World. On a ship out of Bristol in 1497, John Cabot, a Venetia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barclays Bank
Barclays () is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces its origins to the goldsmith banking business established in the City of London in 1690. James Barclay became a partner in the business in 1736. In 1896, twelve banks in London and the English provinces, including Goslings Bank, Backhouse's Bank and Gurney's Bank, Gurney, Peckover and Company, united as a joint-stock company, joint-stock bank under the name Barclays and Co. Over the following decades, Barclays expanded to become a nationwide bank. In 1967, Barclays deployed the world's first Automated teller machine, cash dispenser. Barclays has made numerous corporate acquisitions, including of London, Provincial and South Western Bank in 1918, British Linen Bank in 1919, Mercantile Credit in 1975, the Woolwich in 2000 and the North Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joking Apart
''Joking Apart'' is a BBC television sitcom written by Steven Moffat about the rise and fall of a relationship. It juxtaposes a couple, Mark (Robert Bathurst) and Becky (Fiona Gillies), who fall in love and marry, before getting separated and finally divorced. The twelve episodes, broadcast between 1993 and 1995, were directed by Bob Spiers and produced by Andre Ptaszynski for independent production company Pola Jones. The show is semi-autobiographical; it was inspired by the then-recent separation of Moffat and his first wife. Some of the episodes in the first series followed a non-linear parallel structure, contrasting the rise of the relationship with the fall. Other episodes were ensemble farces, predominantly including the couple's friends Robert ( Paul Raffield) and Tracy (Tracie Bennett). Paul Mark Elliott also appeared as Trevor, Becky's lover. Scheduling problems meant that the show attracted low viewing figures. However, it scored highly on the Appreciation Index an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saving Grace (2000 Film)
''Saving Grace'' is a 2000 British comedy film, directed by Nigel Cole, starring Brenda Blethyn and Craig Ferguson. The screenplay was written by Ferguson and Mark Crowdy. Set in Cornwall, the film tells the story of a middle aged widow whose irresponsible husband left her in an enormous debt, forcing her to grow cannabis in her greenhouse along with her gardener Matthew to avoid losing her house. It was co-produced by Fine Line Features, Homerun Productions, Portman Entertainment, Sky Pictures, and Wave Pictures and filmed in London and the villages of Boscastle and Port Isaac in Cornwall. Distributed by 20th Century Fox in major territories, the film premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, where it won Cole the Audience Award for World Cinema. Critical reaction to ''Saving Grace'' was generally positive and it received favourable commercial notice for an independent British comedy film, eventually grossing $26,330,482 worldwide, following its theatrical release in the Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maybe Baby (2000 Film)
''Maybe Baby'' (released in the Philippines as ''Sex Bomb'') is a 2000 United Kingdom, British comedy film starring Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson. It was written and directed by Ben Elton, with Laurie directing some scenes in an uncredited role, and based upon Elton's 1999 novel, ''Inconceivable (novel), Inconceivable''. A critical failure, the film did poorly at the box office, despite a cast including many of the best-known names within comedy in Britain. Plot Sam Bell (Hugh Laurie) and his wife Lucy (Joely Richardson) are a married couple struggling for a baby, having tried everything they can think of to improve their chances of conceiving. At the same time, Sam begins to find his job (as a commissioning editor of drama at the BBC) increasingly unfulfilling. While he resolves to write his own screenplay, he begins to suffer writer's block. The idea dawns upon him to write about his own predicament, something to which Lucy objects strongly. He uses her diary entries to he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England, My England
''England, My England'' is a 1995 British historical film directed by Tony Palmer and starring Michael Ball, Simon Callow, Lucy Speed and Robert Stephens. It depicts the life of the composer Henry Purcell, seen through the eyes of a playwright in the 1960s who is trying to write a play about him. It was written by John Osborne and Charles Wood. Cast * Simon Callow ... Charles II * Michael Ball ... Henry Purcell * Rebecca Front ... Mary II * Lucy Speed ... Nell Gwyn * Letitia Dean ... Lady Castlemaine * Nina Young ... Frances Purcell * John Shrapnel ... Samuel Pepys * Robert Stephens ... John Dryden * Terence Rigby ... Captain Henry Cooke * Bill Kenwright ... Bill * Murray Melvin ... Earl of Shaftesbury * Corin Redgrave ... William of Orange * John Fortune ... Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon * Guy Henry ... James II * Peter Woodthorpe ... Kiffen * Edward Michie ... Young Harry * Tom Shrapnel ... Young Pelham * Antonia de Sancha ... Louise * Constantine Gregory ... Colo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bloodbath At The House Of Death
''Bloodbath at the House of Death'' is a 1984 British comedy horror film directed by Ray Cameron and starring the comedian Kenny Everett and featuring Vincent Price. It is an over-the-top spoof loosely inspired by ''The Amityville Horror'' and other horror films from the same period. Plot The film opens in 1975 at a place called Headstone Manor, which is being used as a "businessman's weekend retreat and girls' summer camp". A few minutes into the film, a group of satanic monks enter the house and kill 18 of its occupants. In 1983, Doctor Lukas Mandeville (Kenny Everett) and Doctor Barbara Coyle (Pamela Stephenson) are sent to investigate radioactive readings in the area that have been traced to Headstone Manor, now known by locals as the House of Death. Along with several other scientists, Mandeville and Coyle set up their equipment in the house, while the Sinister Man (Vincent Price), a 700-year-old Satanic priest, prepares a rite in the nearby woods to purge the house of its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenny Everett
Kenny Everett (born Maurice James Christopher Cole; 25 December 1944 – 4 April 1995) was an English comedian, radio disc jockey and television presenter. After spells on pirate radio and Radio Luxembourg in the mid-1960s, he was one of the first DJs to join BBC Radio's newly created BBC Radio 1 in 1967. It was here he developed his trademark voices and surreal characters which he later adapted for television. Everett was dismissed from the BBC in 1970 after making remarks about a government minister's wife. He was later re-instated at the BBC, working both on local and national radio, but, in the Autumn of 1973, when commercial radio became licenced in the UK, he joined Capital Radio. Starting in the late 1970s, he transitioned to television where he made numerous comedy series on ITV and BBC, often appearing with Cleo Rocos, whose glamorous and curvaceous figure was often used to comic effect. Rocos would be his assistant in the 1987 BBC gameshow ''Brainstorm''. He was a high ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Take A Girl Like You (film)
''Take a Girl Like You'' is a 1970 British romantic comedy drama film directed by Jonathan Miller and starring Hayley Mills, Oliver Reed and Noel Harrison. Based on the 1960 novel ''Take a Girl Like You'' by Kingsley Amis, it was adapted by George Melly. Synopsis Northerner Jenny arrives in a town near London, where she has taken lodgings with a Labour candidate in order to take up a job as a teacher. She quickly meets Patrick, who knows another girl at the lodging house but shares the goal, along with his friend Julian, of having sex with as many women as possible. After a first date which ends at Patrick's flat for coffee, Patrick is shocked when Jenny tells him she is a virgin and intends to stay that way until she meets the right man. Jenny is attracted to Patrick, so they get into a volatile relationship as Patrick tries to change Jenny's mind, without giving up his bachelor status. Cast Production Amis' novel was published in 1960. In April 1961, Roy Ward Baker annou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West End Theatre
West End theatre is mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres in and near the West End of London.Christopher Innes, "West End" in ''The Cambridge Guide to Theatre'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 1194–1195, Along with New York City's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. Seeing a West End show is a common tourist activity in London. Famous screen actors, British and international alike, frequently appear on the London stage. There are a total of 39 theatres in the West End, with the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, opened in May 1663, the oldest theatre in London. The Savoy Theatre – built as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan – was entirely lit by electricity in 1881. Opening in October 2022, @sohoplace is the first new West End theatre in 50 years. The Society of London Theatre (SOLT) announced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wyndham's Theatre
Wyndham's Theatre is a West End theatre, one of two opened by actor/manager Charles Wyndham (the other is the Criterion Theatre). Located on Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster, it was designed c.1898 by W. G. R. Sprague, the architect of six other London theatres between then and 1916. It was designed to seat 759 patrons on three levels; later refurbishment increased this to four seating levels. The theatre was Grade II* listed by English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ... in September 1960. History Wyndham had always dreamed of building a theatre of his own, and through the admiration of a patron and the financial confidence of friends, he was able to realise his dream. Wyndham's Theatre opened on 16 November 1899, in the presence of the Ed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Art (play)
''Art'' is a French-language play by Yasmina Reza that premiered in 1994 at Comédie des Champs-Élysées in Paris. The play subsequently ran in London in 1996 and on Broadway in 1998. Productions The play premiered on 28 October 1994 at Comédie des Champs-Élysées in Paris. The English-language adaptation, translated by Christopher Hampton and directed by Matthew Warchus opened in London's West End on 15 October 1996 at the Wyndham's Theatre (before moving to the Whitehall Theatre in October 2001) starring Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Ken Stott, produced by David Pugh and Sean Connery running for eight years until 3 January 2003, with Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and Mark Gatiss (aka The League of Gentlemen) in the final cast. ''Art'' played on Broadway in New York at the Royale Theatre from 12 February 1998 to 8 August 1999, again produced by Pugh and Connery, plus Joan Cullman. The opening cast featured Alan Alda (Marc), Victor Garber (Serge), and Alfred Molina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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