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Ronald Chesney
Ronald Chesney (born René Lucien Cadier; 4 May 1920 – 12 April 2018) and Ronald Wolfe (born Harvey Ronald Wolfe-Luberoff; 8 August 1922 – 18 December 2011) were British television comedy scriptwriters, best known for their 1960s and 1970s sitcoms ''The Rag Trade'' (1961–63, 1977–78), '' Meet the Wife'' (1963–66), ''On the Buses'' (1969–73) and ''Romany Jones'' (1972–75). When their partnership began in the mid-1950s, Chesney was already known to the public as a harmonica player. Early life Ronald Chesney Chesney, who was of French descent, was the son of Marius, a silk trader, and Jeanne ('' née'' Basset). He left the French Lycée school in London at the age of 16, and began using his English name. He became a chromatic harmonica player, performing professionally from the age of 17. Touring the ABC Cinema chain, he played on BBC Radio broadcasts from 1937, the first being ''Palace of Varieties''. Declared unfit to serve in the Second World War because of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Screenwriter
A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. Terminology In the silent era, writers now considered screenwriters were denoted by terms such as photoplaywright, photoplay writer, photoplay dramatist and screen playwright.Steven Maras. ''Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice.'' Wallflower Press, 2009. pp. 82–85. Screenwriting historian Steven Maras notes that these early writers were often understood as being the authors of the films as shown and argues that they cannot be precisely equated with present-day screenwriters because they were responsible for a technical product, a brief "scenario", "treatment", or "synopsis" that is a written synopsis of what is to be filmed. Profession Screenwriting is a freelance profession. No education is required to be a professional scree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Harmonica League
HarmonicaUK (formerly the National Harmonica League) is a UK-based organisation for harmonica players and enthusiasts of all styles of harmonica – chromatic, diatonic, tremolo, chord, bass – and music – traditional, blues, popular, jazz and classical. It has been active since 1935. HarmonicaUK is a registered Charity (England & Wales), and its current President is Paul Jones. Previous Presidents include Larry Adler and Ronald Chesney. The current Chair is Barry Elms. Previous Chairs include Pete Hewitt, Ben Hewlett, Roger Trobridge, Colin Mort and John Walton. The Charity changed its name to HarmonicaUK at the AGM in Nov 2020. HarmonicaUK is based in Great Britain, but has members and contributors from around the world, and membership is open to anyone. It welcomes players of all levels, including beginners, and it can help with questions about getting started or improving your playing ability. It organises festivals, events and tuition meetings. The festival includes w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archie Andrews (puppet)
Archie Andrews was a ventriloquist's dummy used by ventriloquist Peter Brough in radio and television shows in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps the most popular show in its radio format was called ''Educating Archie'', regularly attracting over 15 million listeners. Archie was invariably dressed in a broad-striped blazer, and addressed the ventriloquist as "Brough". The television scripts were written by Marty Feldman and Ronald Chesney. The radio show had a children's fan club that at one time had 250,000 members. Among future stars who appeared on the show were Tony Hancock, Dick Emery, Max Bygraves, Harry Secombe, Benny Hill, Beryl Reid and 14-year-old Julie Andrews. During this period Max Bygraves together with Archie Andrews/Peter Brough recorded "The Dummy Song" which is still available on Max Bygraves' compilation albums. Archie went missing several times. *In 1947, he was in Peter Brough's car when it was stolen from Lower Regent Street, London, but found two d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Brough
Peter Brough (26 February 1916 – 3 June 1999) was an English radio ventriloquist who became a well-known name to audiences in the 1950s. He is associated with his puppet Archie Andrews. Early career Peter Brough’s father, Arthur Brough, was a ventriloquist and a frequent performer on the variety stages around London. Brough senior gave up performing in the early 1920s and concentrated on a textile business. Young Peter left school at 15 and worked for a Bayswater department store called Whiteleys, first as an errand boy and later as a counter salesman. He emulated his father by developing his ventriloquist skills, which he continued to practice whilst working at Whiteleys. Early press reports show Brough entertaining the patients at Acton hospital on Christmas Day, 1935. He continued entertaining at clubs and at concerts in the Acton area and by 1939 he was becoming a regular on the variety stage. His stage performances increased and in 1941 he was described as “Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ventriloquist
Ventriloquism, or ventriloquy, is a performance act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) creates the illusion that their voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered prop known as a "dummy". The act of ventriloquism is ventriloquizing, and the ability to do so is commonly called in English the ability to "throw" one's voice. History Origins Originally, ventriloquism was a religious practice. The name comes from the Latin for 'to speak from the stomach: (belly) and (speak). The Greeks called this gastromancy ( grc-gre, εγγαστριμυθία). The noises produced by the stomach were thought to be the voices of the unliving, who took up residence in the stomach of the ventriloquist. The ventriloquist would then interpret the sounds, as they were thought to be able to speak to the dead, as well as foretell the future. One of the earliest recorded group of prophets to use this technique was the Pythia, the priestess at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes (4 May 1923 – 4 July 2012) was an English radio, stage, television and film writer, comedian, actor, and director whose performing career spanned more than 50 years. He frequently wrote for and performed with many other leading comedy performers and writers of the period, including Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, Peter Sellers, John Antrobus, and Johnny Speight. Sykes first came to prominence through his many radio credits as a writer and actor in the 1950s, most notably through his collaboration on ''The Goon Show'' scripts. He became a TV star in his own right in the early 1960s when he appeared with Hattie Jacques in several popular BBC comedy television series. Early life Sykes was born on 4 May 1923 in Oldham, Lancashire; his mother died three weeks later, leaving him and his two-year-old brother Vernon motherless. Their father was a labourer in a cotton mill and a former army sergeant. When Sykes was two, his father remarried and he gained a half- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Educating Archie
''Educating Archie'' was a BBC Light Programme comedy show which was broadcast for nearly ten years between June 1950 and February 1960, mostly at lunchtime on Sundays. The programme featured ventriloquist Peter Brough and his doll Archie Andrews. The show was very popular, despite its unlikely central premise of a ventriloquist act on radio. ''Educating Archie'' averaged 15 million listeners, and a fan club boasted 250,000 members. It was so successful that in 1950, after only four months on the air, it won the '' Daily Mail''s Variety Award. The programme introduced comedians who later became well known, including Tony Hancock as Archie's tutor, who would greet Archie with a weary "Oh, it's you again" and always replied to any put-down from him with "flipping kids". Other "tutors" included Benny Hill, Harry Secombe, Dick Emery, Bernard Bresslaw, Hattie Jacques, and Bruce Forsyth – together with a young Julie Andrews as Archie's girlfriend. Later, Beryl Reid took this rol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beryl Reid
Beryl Elizabeth Reid, (17 June 1919 – 13 October 1996), was a British actress of stage and screen. She won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for ''The Killing of Sister George'', the 1980 Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance for '' Born in the Gardens'', and the 1982 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for ''Smiley's People''. Her film appearances included '' The Belles of St. Trinian's'' (1954), ''The Killing of Sister George'' (1968), ''The Assassination Bureau'' (1969), and ''No Sex Please, We're British'' (1973). Early life Born in Hereford in 1919,Jonathan Cecil, "Reid, Beryl Elizabeth (1919–1996)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, Sept 200available online Retrieved 30 August 2020. Reid was the daughter of Scottish parents and grew up in Manchester, where she attended Withington and Levenshulme High Schools. As a child, she established a lifelong friendship with Nancy Wrigley, the daughter of the prominent classica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Light Programme
The BBC Light Programme was a national radio station which broadcast chiefly mainstream light entertainment and light music from 1945 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 1. It opened on 29 July 1945, taking over the long wave frequency which had earlier been used – prior to the outbreak of the Second World War on 1 September 1939 – by the National Programme. The service was intended as a domestic replacement for the wartime General Forces Programme which had gained many civilian listeners in Britain as well as members of the British Armed Forces. History The long wave signal on 200 kHz/1500 metres was transmitted from Droitwich in the English Midlands (as it still is today for BBC Radio 4, although adjusted slightly to 198 kHz/1515 metres from 1 February 1988) and gave fairly good coverage of most of the United Kingdom, although a number of low-power medium wave transmitters (using 1214 kHz/247 metres) were added later to fill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Bacon (actor)
Max David Bacon (1 March 1904, London, England – 3 December 1969, London, England) was a British actor, comedian and musician (drummer and occasional vocalist in Ambrose (bandleader), Ambrose's band). Although he was British-born, his comedic style centred on his pseudo-European, Yiddish accent and in his straight-faced mispronunciation of words. Biography Bacon's father came from a leather-working family to London from Katowice, then in Galicia (Eastern Europe), Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In London, his father worked as a basket-weaver. Before becoming a character actor, Bacon was a drummer in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s. He was taught by the vocalist and drummer Harry Bentley. After a couple of years at the Florida Club with Ronnie Munro's band he began a long association with Ambrose (bandleader), Ambrose's Orchestra, with whom he recorded as drummer and occasionally as Yiddish vocalist. In the late 1930s he had become well known enough to tour the halls ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marconi Company
The Marconi Company was a British telecommunications and engineering company that did business under that name from 1963 to 1987. Its roots were in the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company founded by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 1897, which underwent several changes in name after mergers and acquisitions. The company was a pioneer of wireless long distance communication and mass media broadcasting, eventually becoming one of the UK's most successful manufacturing companies. In 1999, its defence equipment manufacturing division, Marconi Electronic Systems, merged with British Aerospace (BAe) to form BAE Systems. In 2006, financial difficulties led to the collapse of the remaining company, with the bulk of the business acquired by the Swedish telecommunications company, Ericsson. History Naming history *1897–1900: The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company *1900–1963: Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company *1963–1987: Marconi Company Ltd *1987–1998: GEC-Marconi Ltd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'', which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1966. In general, the political position of ''The Times'' is considered to be centre-right. ''The Times'' is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, such as ''The Times of India'', ''The New York Times'', and more recently, digital-first publications such as TheTimesBlog.com (Since 2017). In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as , or as , although the newspaper is of nationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
