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Nan Kenway And Douglas Young
Kenway and Young were a British comedy duo popular in the 1930s and 1940s. They were a married couple, Helen Hemmings Young ( McCartney; 23 March 1905 – 25 June 2001), who performed as Nan Kenway, and Douglas Joseph Young (19 December 1900 – 29 November 1972), who also wrote their scripts. Careers Helen "Nellie" McCartney was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. She studied music at the Sydney Conservatorium, and won a piano scholarship to the London College of Music, moving to England in 1924. There, she took elocution lessons because of her accent, and as a result developed an interest in performing on stage. She joined Ronald Frankau's "Cabaret Kittens" concert party, and at an engagement in Newquay met Douglas Young. He had been born in London, and worked in the City and on a newspaper, before taking to the stage. They started working together, making their first appearances on experimental BBC television programmes in 1932, [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedy Duo
A double act (also known as a comedy duo) is a form of comedy originating in the British music hall tradition, and American vaudeville, in which two comedians perform together as a single act. Pairings are typically long-term, in some cases for the artists' entire careers. Double acts perform on the stage, television and film. The format is particularly popular in the UK where successful acts have included Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (Cook’s deadpan delivery contrasted with Moore’s buffoonery), Morecambe and Wise and ''The Two Ronnies''. The tradition is also present in the US with acts like Wheeler and Woolsey, Abbott and Costello, Gallagher and Shean, Burns and Allen, and Lyons and Yosco. The British-American comedy double act Laurel and Hardy has been described as the most popular in the world. Format Humor is often derived from the uneven relationship between two partners, usually of the same gender, age, ethnic origin, and profession but drastically different in terms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denis Gifford
Denis Gifford (26 December 1927 – 18 May 2000)Holland, Steve, Obituaries: Denis Gifford', ''The Guardian'', 26 May 2000. was a British writer, broadcaster, journalist, comic artist and historian of film, comics, television and radio. In his lengthy career, he wrote and drew for British comics; wrote more than fifty books on the creators, performers, characters and history of popular media; devised, compiled and contributed to popular programmes for radio and television; and directed several short films. Gifford was also a major comics collector, owning what was perhaps the largest collection of British comics in the world. Gifford's work in the history of film and comics, particularly in Britain, provided an account of the work in those media of previously unattempted scope, discovering countless lost films and titles and identifying numerous uncredited creators. He was particularly interested in the early stages in film and comics history, for which records were scarce an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorking
Dorking () is a market town in Surrey in South East England, about south of London. It is in Mole Valley District and the council headquarters are to the east of the centre. The High Street runs roughly east–west, parallel to the Pipp Brook and along the northern face of an outcrop of Lower Greensand. The town is surrounded on three sides by the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is close to Box Hill and Leith Hill. The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity is from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, and there are several Bronze Age bowl barrows in the local area. The town may have been the site of a staging post on Stane Street during Roman times, however the name 'Dorking' suggests an Anglo-Saxon origin for the modern settlement. A market is thought to have been held at least weekly since early medieval times and was highly regarded for the poultry traded there. The Dorking breed of domestic chicken is named after the town. The loca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio Luxembourg
Radio Luxembourg was a multilingual commercial broadcaster in Luxembourg. It is known in most non-English languages as RTL (for Radio Television Luxembourg). The English-language service of Radio Luxembourg began in 1933 as one of the earliest commercial radio stations broadcasting to the UK and Ireland. The station provided a way to circumvent British legislation which until 1973 gave the BBC a monopoly of radio broadcasting on UK territory and prohibited all forms of advertising over the domestic radio spectrum. It boasted the most powerful privately owned transmitter in Europe (200 kW, broadcasting on medium wave). In the late 1930s, and again in the 1950s and 1960s, it had large audiences in Britain and Ireland with its programmes of popular entertainment, and was an important forerunner of pirate radio and modern commercial radio in the United Kingdom. Radio Luxembourg's parent company, RTL Group, continued its involvement in broadcasts to a UK audience with the Brit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime, and was head of state of 15 realms at the time of her death. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the longest of any British monarch and the longest verified reign of any female monarch in history. Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother). Her father acceded to the throne in 1936 upon the abdication of his brother Edward VIII, making the ten-year-old Princess Elizabeth the heir presumptive. She was educated privately at home and began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In November 1947, she married Philip Mountbatten, a former prince ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ENSA
The Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) was an organisation established in 1939 by Basil Dean and Leslie Henson to provide entertainment for British armed forces personnel during World War II. ENSA operated as part of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes. It was superseded by Combined Services Entertainment (CSE) which now operates as part of the Services Sound and Vision Corporation (SSVC). The first big wartime variety concert organised by ENSA was broadcast by the BBC to the Empire and local networks from RAF Hendon in north London on 17 October 1939. Among the entertainers appearing on the bill were Adelaide Hall, The Western Brothers and Mantovani. A newsreel of this concert showing Hall singing "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line" accompanied by Mantovani and His Orchestra exists. Many members of ENSA later had careers in the entertainment industry after the war, including actors Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers and Kenneth Connor. Ta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Horne
Charles Kenneth Horne, generally known as Kenneth Horne, (27 February 1907 – 14 February 1969) was an English comedian and businessman. He is perhaps best remembered for his work on three BBC Radio series: ''Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh'' (1944–54), ''Beyond Our Ken'' (1958–64) and ''Round the Horne'' (1965–68). The son of a clergyman who was also a politician, Horne had a burgeoning business career with Triplex Safety Glass, which was interrupted by service with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. While serving in a barrage balloon unit, he was asked to broadcast as a quizmaster on the BBC radio show '' Ack-Ack, Beer-Beer''. The experience brought him into contact with the more established entertainer Richard Murdoch, and the two wrote and starred in the comedy series ''Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh''. After demobilisation Horne returned to his business career, and kept his broadcasting as a sideline. His career in industry flourished, and he later becam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
