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The Mark Thomas Comedy Product
''The Mark Thomas Comedy Product'' (from series 2 onwards - known as ''The Mark Thomas Product'') was a television show fronted by the English comedian, presenter, political activist and reporter, Mark Thomas and directed by Michael Cumming. It was broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 from 23 February 1996 to 22 October 2003. The show, described as "a brilliantly ludicrous alternative to Watchdog Watchdog or watch dog may refer to: Animals *Guard dog, a dog that barks to alert its owners of an intruder's presence * Portuguese Watch Dog, Cão de Castro Laboreiro, a dog breed * Moscow Watchdog, a breed of dog that was bred in the Soviet ...", was a hybrid of comedy and serious politics, with Thomas often using silly or surreal methods to gain interviews with politicians and corporations and to highlight issues. Episode guide References External linksOfficial Mark Thomas site* 1996 British television series debuts 2003 British television series endings 199 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoff Atkinson
Geoff Atkinson is a British comedy writer and producer. He has written and produced shows featuring Rory Bremner. He is managing director of ''Vera Productions'', an Independent production company he established with Bremner. Beginning his career in ''Punch'' magazine, he worked with many prominent figures in British comedy, such as Douglas Adams and John Lloyd. He was one of the main writers on ''Spitting Image''. He has also written for Alistair McGowan, and Lenny Henry, and Cannon and Ball. In 1990 he wrote the short-lived and highly controversial sitcom ''Heil Honey I'm Home!'' for British Satellite Broadcasting scrapped after only one episode was transmitted. It was intended as a parody of 1950s American sitcoms, but featuring Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun as the lead characters. In 2007, he was executive producer on the documentary '' Dispatches: Mark Thomas on Coca Cola'' with Mark Thomas Mark Clifford Thomas (born 11 April 1963) is an English comedian, presenter, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Thomas
Mark Clifford Thomas (born 11 April 1963) is an English comedian, presenter, political satirist, and journalist. He first became known as a guest comic on the BBC Radio 1 comedy show ''The Mary Whitehouse Experience'' in the late 1980s. He is best known for political stunts on his show, ''The Mark Thomas Comedy Product'' on Channel 4. Thomas describes himself as a " libertarian anarchist". Biography Early life and education Mark Thomas was born in South London. His mother was a midwife and his father a self-employed builder (and ex-lay preacher). Thomas was educated at Macaulay Church of England Primary School, Victoria Rise, Clapham until 1974, where his party trick was to recite the first verses of the four gospels from memory. He then won a scholarship to attend the independent Christ's Hospital School, where he attained O-levels and A-levels in English, history, and politics and economics. At school, Thomas was influenced by his drama teacher, Duncan Noel-Paton, and by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service in the United Kingdom. At the time, the only other channels were the television licence, licence-funded BBC One and BBC Two, and a single commercial broadcasting network ITV (TV network), ITV. The network's headquarters are based in London and Leeds, with creative hubs in Glasgow and Bristol. It is publicly owned and advertising-funded; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which was established in 1990 and came into operation in 1993. Until 2010, Channel 4 did not broadcast in Wales, but many of its programmes were re-broadcast ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Cumming
Michael Cumming is a British director and filmmaker. He is best known for directing comedy shows such as: ''Brass Eye'', '' Toast Of London'', '' Toast Of Tinseltown'', ''The Mark Thomas Product'', ''Snuff Box,'' '' The Mark Steel Lectures'' and ''Rock Profile''. After graduating from the Royal College of Art film school in the late 1980s, Cumming began directing at the BBC on ''Tomorrow's World'' and then as a freelance director on shows including ''Lonely Planet'', ''The Word'' & ''The Sunday Show'' before moving into comedy. Alongside comedy directing, Cumming also makes independent films. His 2017 cinema only release - ''Oxide Ghosts: The Brass Eye Tapes'' - played to sell out audiences throughout the UK. Cumming's 2021 feature film documentary King Rocker - made with & fronted by Stewart Lee - was praised by Film Critic Mark Kermode as: 'One of my all time favourite rock docs'. The Observer described it as 'Charming & Experimental' whilst MOJO hailed it as 'Ferociously E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Watchdog (TV Series)
''Watchdog'' is a British consumer investigative journalism programme, broadcast on BBC One from 1985 to 2019. The programme focused on investigating complaints and concerns made by viewers and consumers over problematic experiences with traders, retailers and other companies around the UK, over customer services, products, security, and possible fraudulent/criminal behaviour. Since it first began, the programme had achieved great success in changing the awareness consumers have of their purchasing rights, as well as pushing forward for changes in company policies and consumer laws, and in some cases helping to close down businesses whose practices have left many people dissatisfied and out of pocket. The show's longstanding slogan was "the programme you cannot afford to miss". In the course of its history, ''Watchdog'' would spawn a number of spin-off shows, and be presented by a variety of hosts. It started as a feature on '' Nationwide'' in 1980 before it became a standalone ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Select (magazine)
''Select'' was a United Kingdom music magazine of the 1990s. It was known for covering indie rock, but featured a wide array of music. Launched in July 1990, its first cover star was Prince. After EMAP Metro bought ''Select'', they revamped its image, and it became known for its coverage of Britpop, a term coined in the magazine by Stuart Maconie. Its 1993 "Yanks Go Home" edition, featuring The Auteurs, Denim, Saint Etienne, Pulp and Suede's Brett Anderson on the cover in front of a Union Flag, was an important impetus in defining the movement's opposition to American genres such as grunge. Later, John Harris stepped down as editor, and was replaced by former ''Mixmag'' editor Alexis Petridis. Under Petridis, the magazine's image moved back towards its coverage on an eclectic array of music, aiming to reach what Petridis described as "a wide range of music fans". The magazine folded in late 2000, amid competition on the internet. Tagline * Pop Babylon! (circa 1994) * Mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
EMAP
Ascential plc, formerly EMAP, is a British business-to-business media business specialising in exhibitions & festivals and information services. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. History Richard Winfrey purchased the ''Spalding Guardian'' in 1887 and later purchased the ''Lynn News'' and the '' Peterborough Advertiser''; he also started the ''North Cambs Echo''. He became a Liberal politician and campaigner for agricultural rights and the papers were used to promote his political views in and around Spalding, Boston, Sleaford and Peterborough. During World War II Winfrey's newspaper interests began to be passed over to his son, Richard Pattinson Winfrey (1902–1985). In 1947, under the direction of 'Pat' Winfrey, the family's newspaper titles were consolidated to form the East Midland Allied Press (EMAP): this was achieved by the merger of the Northamptonshire Printing and Publishing Co., the Peterborough Advertiser Co., the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UK Arms Export
UK arms export refers to trades of UK-made weapons around the world. The country is one of the world’s most successful arms exporters. According to the analysis by Action on Armed Violence, Military arms deals have been prepared £39bn between 2008 and 2017. According to the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CATT), the UK mostly has exported arms to United States, India, France, Germany, Italy, Oman, South Africa, Turkey, South Korea, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. History UK Trade and investment reveals that "The UK is one of the world's most successful defence exporters, averaging second place in the global rankings on a rolling ten-year basis, making it Europe's leading defence exporter in the period". Also, the UK is known as the most robust export control government in the world. Every application is considered on a case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria. It is proctored, as reported by a spokesman for the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Robinson (politician)
Geoffrey Robinson (born 25 May 1938) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry North West for 43 years, from 1976 to 2019. He was Paymaster General from May 1997 to December 1998, resigning after it was revealed that he had lent his government colleague Peter Mandelson £373,000 to buy a house. From 1996 to 2008 he was the owner of the ''New Statesman'', a centre-left weekly political magazine. Background Robinson was born in Sheffield, England, and educated at Emanuel School in Battersea, London, Clare College, Cambridge, and Yale University. On completing his formal education he became a Labour Party researcher before joining the newly created entity the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, at a time when the British government was promoting a merger between the Leyland Motor Corporation and BMC. The merger duly took place amid high hopes that a solution to the BMC problem was in sight. Business career A change of governm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1996 British Television Series Debuts
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on board; Eight people die in a blizzard on Mount Everest; Dolly the Sheep becomes the first mammal to have been cloned from an adult somatic cell; The Port Arthur Massacre occurs on Tasmania, and leads to major changes in Australia's gun laws; Macarena, sung by Los del Río and remixed by The Bayside Boys, becomes a major dance craze and cultural phenomenon; Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 crash-ditches off of the Comoros Islands after the plane was hijacked; the 1996 Summer Olympics are held in Atlanta, marking the Centennial (100th Anniversary) of the modern Olympic Games., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Centennial Olympic Park bombing rect 200 0 400 200 TWA FLight 800 rect 400 0 600 200 1996 Mount Everest disaster rect 0 200 300 400 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2003 British Television Series Endings
3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societies. Evolution of the Arabic digit The use of three lines to denote the number 3 occurred in many writing systems, including some (like Roman and Chinese numerals) that are still in use. That was also the original representation of 3 in the Brahmic (Indian) numerical notation, its earliest forms aligned vertically. However, during the Gupta Empire the sign was modified by the addition of a curve on each line. The Nāgarī script rotated the lines clockwise, so they appeared horizontally, and ended each line with a short downward stroke on the right. In cursive script, the three strokes were eventually connected to form a glyph resembling a with an additional stroke at the bottom: ३. The Indian digits spread to the Caliphate in the 9th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1990s British Comedy Television Series
Year 199 ( CXCIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was sometimes known as year 952 '' Ab urbe condita''. The denomination 199 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Mesopotamia is partitioned into two Roman provinces divided by the Euphrates, Mesopotamia and Osroene. * Emperor Septimius Severus lays siege to the city-state Hatra in Central-Mesopotamia, but fails to capture the city despite breaching the walls. * Two new legions, I Parthica and III Parthica, are formed as a permanent garrison. China * Battle of Yijing: Chinese warlord Yuan Shao defeats Gongsun Zan. Korea * Geodeung succeeds Suro of Geumgwan Gaya, as king of the Korean kingdom of Gaya (traditional date). By topic Religion * Pope Zephyrinus succeeds Pope Victor I, as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
