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David Renwick
David Peter Renwick (; born 4 September 1951) is an English author, television writer, actor, director and executive producer. He created the sitcom ''One Foot in the Grave'' and the mystery series ''Jonathan Creek''. He was awarded the Writers Guild Ronnie Barker Award at the 2008 British Comedy Awards. Early life The son and only child of James George Renwick and Winifred May Smith, who were married in 1948, David Renwick was born and brought up in Luton, Bedfordshire, England. He was educated through to sixth form level at Luton Grammar School, a former state grammar school. The school became known as Luton Sixth Form College while he was still a pupil. He studied journalism at Harlow Technical College. Career 1970s Before becoming a comedy writer Renwick worked as a journalist, reporter and sub-editor on his home town newspaper, the '' Luton News''. On beginning his comedy writing career in the mid-1970s he initially submitted material for BBC radio comedies including ''We ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luton
Luton () is a town and borough in Bedfordshire, England. The borough had a population of 225,262 at the 2021 census. Luton is on the River Lea, about north-west of London. The town's foundation dates to the sixth century as a Saxon settlement on the river, from which Luton derives its name. Luton is recorded in the Domesday Book as ''Loitone'' and ''Lintone''. One of the largest churches in Bedfordshire, St Mary's Church, was built in the 12th century. There are local museums which explore Luton's history in Wardown Park and Stockwood Park. Luton was once known for hatmaking and also had a large Vauxhall Motors factory. Car production at the plant began in 1905 and continued until its closure in 2002. Production of commercial vehicles continues and the head office of Vauxhall Motors is in the village of Chalton on the northern border of the borough . London Luton Airport opened in 1938 and is now one of Britain's major airports, with three railway stations also in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television (LWT; now part of the non-franchised ITV London region) was the ITV (TV network), ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm (7:00 pm from 1968 until 1982) to Monday mornings at 6:00. From 1968 until 1992, when LWT's weekday counterpart was Thames Television, there was an on-screen handover to LWT on Friday nights (there was no handover back to Thames on Mondays, as from 1968 to 1982 there was no programming in the very early morning, and from 1983, when a national breakfast franchise was created, LWT would hand over to TV-am at 6:00am, which would then hand over to Thames at 9:25am). From 1993 to 2002, when LWT's weekday counterpart was Carlton Television, the transfer usually occurred invisibly during a commercial break, for Carlton and LWT shared studio and transmission facilities (although occasionally a Thames-to-LWT-style handover would appear). Like most ITV ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gordon Sinclair
John Gordon Sinclair (born Gordon John Sinclair; 4 February 1962) is a Scottish actor. He is best known for playing Gregory in the 1981 film '' Gregory's Girl''. There was a Gordon Sinclair already registered with Equity, so he took John Gordon Sinclair as his professional name. In 2019, Sinclair played Drew Cubbin in the BBC drama '' Traces''. Life and career Sinclair was born on 4 February 1962 in Glasgow and started work as an apprentice electrician. At 15, he joined Glasgow's Youth Theatre after he visited one night and met Robert Buchanan, a fellow fan of Canadian progressive rock group Rush. As a result, he starred in a number of films by director Bill Forsyth, perhaps the most notable of which is 1981's '' Gregory's Girl'', shot when he was 19 years old. He reprised the role nearly two decades later in '' Gregory's Two Girls'' (1999), and also appeared in Forsyth's '' Local Hero'' (1983). His other film roles included appearances in '' Britannia Hospital'' (1982), '' T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Palmer (actor)
Geoffrey Dyson Palmer (4 June 1927 – 5 November 2020) was an English actor. His roles in British television sitcoms include Jimmy Anderson in ''The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin'' (1976–79), Ben Parkinson in ''Butterflies'' (1978–1983) and Lionel Hardcastle in '' As Time Goes By'' (1992–2005). His film appearances include ''A Fish Called Wanda'' (1988), '' The Madness of King George'' (1994), '' Mrs Brown'' (1997), ''Tomorrow Never Dies'' (1997) and ''Paddington'' (2014). He also made guest appearances in television series such as '' The Avengers'', ''Doctor Who'', ''Fawlty Towers'' and '' Bergerac''. Early life and education Geoffrey Dyson Palmer was born on 4 June 1927 in North Finchley, Middlesex. He was the son of Frederick Charles Palmer, who was a chartered surveyor, and Norah Gwendolen (née Robins). He attended Highgate School from September 1939 to December 1945. He served as a corporal instructor in small arms and field training in the Royal Marines during ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Hardy
Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy (29 October 1925 – 3 August 2017) was an English actor who had a long career in theatre, film and television. He began his career as a classical actor and later earned widespread recognition for roles such as Siegfried Farnon in the BBC television series '' All Creatures Great and Small'', Cornelius Fudge in the ''Harry Potter'' film series, and Winston Churchill in several productions, beginning with the Southern Television series '' Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years''. He was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Actor for ''All Creatures Great and Small'' in 1980 and ''Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years'' in 1982. Aside from acting, Hardy was an acknowledged expert on the medieval English longbow and wrote two books on the subject. Early life Hardy was born in Cheltenham on 29 October 1925 to Henry Harrison Hardy, MBE, of Old Farm, Bishop's Cleeve, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, and Edith Jocelyn, daughter of Rev. Sydney Dugdale, rector ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hot Metal
''Hot Metal'' is a British sitcom produced by London Weekend Television about the newspaper industry, that aired for two series on the ITV network in 1986 and 1988, along with a special episode for Comic Relief in 1989, that was broadcast on BBC One. Written by David Renwick and Andrew Marshall, it is very much a continuation in style from their previous sitcom '' Whoops Apocalypse!''. It was produced by Humphrey Barclay Productions for LWT. After its original transmission, the series was repeated in 1988 on Channel 4 and in 2022 on Forces TV. Synopsis The ''Daily Crucible'', the dullest newspaper in Fleet Street, is suddenly taken over by media magnate Terence "Twiggy" Rathbone (Robert Hardy) (an obvious parody of real-life magnates, especially Rupert Murdoch and Robert Maxwell). Its editor Harry Stringer (Geoffrey Palmer) is 'promoted' to managing editor, and is replaced in his old job by Russell Spam (also played by Hardy). At first Stringer is convinced that Spam is in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parody
A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, etc), but a parody can also be about a real-life person (e.g. a politician), event, or movement (e.g. the French Revolution or Counterculture of the 1960s, 1960s counterculture). Literary scholar Professor Simon Dentith defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice". The literary theorist Linda Hutcheon said "parody ... is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, parody music, music, Theatre, theater, television and film, animation, and Video game, gaming. The writer and critic John Gross observes in his ''Oxford Book of Parodies'', that parody seems to flourish on te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thames Television
Thames Television, commonly simplified to just Thames, was a franchise holder for a region of the British ITV television network serving London and surrounding areas from 30 July 1968 until the night of 31 December 1992. Thames Television broadcast from 09:25 Monday morning to 17:15 Friday afternoon (19:00 Friday night until 1982) at which time it would hand over to London Weekend Television (LWT). Formed as a joint company, it merged the television interests of British Electric Traction (trading as Associated-Rediffusion) owning 49%, and Associated British Picture Corporation—soon taken over by EMI—owning 51%. Like all ITV franchisees at that time, it was a broadcaster, a producer and a commissioner of television programmes, making shows both for the local region it covered and, as one of the "Big Five" ITV companies, for networking nationally across the ITV regions. After its loss of franchise in 1992, it continued as an independent production company until 2006. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Weapons
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either nuclear fission, fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and nuclear fusion, fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. Nuclear bombs have had Nuclear weapon yield, yields between 10 tons (the W54) and 50 megatons for the Tsar Bomba (see TNT equivalent). Yields in the low kilotons can devastate cities. A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as can release energy equal to more than 1.2 megatons of TNT (5.0 Petajoule, PJ). Apart from the blast, Effects of nuclear explosions, effects of nuclear weapons include Firestorm, firestorms, extreme Thermal radiation, heat and ionizing radiation, radioactive nuclear fallout, an Nuclear electromagnetic pulse, electromagnetic pulse, and a radar blackout. The first nuclear weapons were deve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whoops Apocalypse
''Whoops Apocalypse'' is a six-part 1982 television sitcom by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, made by London Weekend Television for ITV. Marshall and Renwick later reworked the concept as a 1986 film of the same name from ITC Entertainment, with almost completely different characters and plot. The British budget label Channel 5 Video released a compilation VHS cassette of all six episodes edited together into one 137-minute chunk in 1987. The American video distributor EDDE Entertainment released a compilation VHS cassette of all six episodes edited together into one 121-minute chunk in 1991. In 2010, Network released both the complete, unedited series and the movie on a 2-DVD set ( Region 2) entitled ''Whoops Apocalypse: The Complete Apocalypse''. (Rights issues were simplified by the fact that both LWT and ITC Entertainment productions were by this time owned by Granada Television). In March 2022 the series was made available for streaming on BritBox. Series The seri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Little And Large
''Little and Large'' were a British comedy double act comprising straight man Syd Little (born Cyril John Mead; 19 December 1942) and comic Eddie Large (born Edward Hugh McGinnis; 25 June 1941 – 2 April 2020). Comedy duo They formed their partnership in 1962, originally appearing as singers in local pubs around north-west England. According to an interview with Eddie Large in ''Metro (British newspaper), Metro'' newspaper (11 January 2019), they went professional in October 1963. After deciding to concentrate on comedy, Little and Large's big break came in 1971 when they appeared on ITV talent show ''Opportunity Knocks (UK TV series), Opportunity Knocks''. They won the programme's vote, turning them into household names virtually overnight. Within five years, the duo had their own prime-time show on ITV (TV channel), ITV called ''The Little and Large Tellyshow''. It began with a pilot episode in 1976, which earned the pair a commission for a series in 1977. However, the duo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernie Winters
Bernie Winters (born Bernie Weinstein; 6 September 1930 – 4 May 1991) was an English comedian, actor, musician and TV presenter, and the comic foil of the double act Mike and Bernie Winters with his older brother, Mike. Winters later performed solo, often with the aid of his St Bernard dog, Schnorbitz. Biography Bernie Winters was born Bernard Weinstein at the City of London Maternity Hospital, 102 City Road, Holborn, on 6 September 1930. His father was a bookmaker. Winters served in the merchant navy and performed as a musician at dances and weddings before forming the double act Mike & Bernie Winters with his brother Mike, who he called "Choochie-Face" on stage. In October 1957, the duo appeared on ''Six-Five Special'' and were described in the ''Daily Mirror'' as top comics for Britain's teenage TV audience. They had been recommended to the show's presenter Josephine Douglas by Tommy Steele, with whom they had been on a stage tour. They both left the show the same da ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
