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French And Saunders
''French and Saunders'' is a British sketch comedy television series written by and starring comedy duo and namesake Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders that originally broadcast on BBC2 from 1987 to 1993, and later on BBC One until 2017. It is also the name by which the performers are known when they appear elsewhere as a double act. The show was given one of the highest budgets in BBC history to create detailed spoofs and satires of popular culture, movies, celebrities, and art. French and Saunders continued to film holiday specials for the BBC, and both have been individually successful starring in other shows. In a 2005 poll to find ''The Comedian's Comedian'', the duo were voted among the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. Their last special, ''French and Saunders Christmas Celebrity Special'', aired on 27 December 2005 on BBC One. In 2006, both French and Saunders announced their sketch show was dead and that they had moved on to more age-approp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dawn French
Dawn Roma French (born 11 October 1957) is a British actress, comedian and writer. She is known for writing and starring on the BBC sketch comedy series '' French and Saunders'' (1987–2007) with her best friend and comedy partner Jennifer Saunders, and for starring in the BBC comedy anthology series '' Murder Most Horrid'' (1991–1999) and the BBC sitcom '' The Vicar of Dibley'' (1994–2007). French has been nominated for seven British Academy Television Awards and won a BAFTA Fellowship with Saunders in 2009. Early life French was born on 11 October 1957 in Holyhead, Wales, to English parents Felicity Roma (née O'Brien; 1934 – 2012) and Denys Vernon French (5 August 1932 – 11 September 1977), who married in their home town of Plymouth in 1953. French has an older brother, Gary. Her father served in the Royal Air Force, stationed at RAF Valley and later RAF Leconfield, where Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother went to tea at French's home when French was three years ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Tube (1982 TV Series)
''The Tube'' is a United Kingdom music television programme, which ran for five series, from 5 November 1982 to 24 April 1987. It was filmed in Newcastle upon Tyne and produced for Channel 4 by Tyne Tees Television, which had previously produced the similar music show '' Alright Now'' and the music-oriented youth show '' Check it Out'' for ITV; production of the latter ended in favour of ''The Tube''. ''The Tube'' was presented live by hosts including Jools Holland, Paula Yates, Leslie Ash, Muriel Gray, Gary James, Mark Miwurdz (Mark Hurst), Michel Cremona, Felix Howard, Tony Fletcher, Nick Laird-Clowes and Mike Everitt. The show was directed by Gavin Taylor; Geoff Wonfor directed some of the insert videos along with other staff programme director of Tyne Tees Television Martin Cairns. Many other specials were made, including one for the eve of the millennium. The brand name was relaunched by Channel 4 as an online radio station in November 2006. Showcase for contemp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheimer and then acquired by the Penguin Group in 1975. Imprints * Viking Kestrel * Viking Adult, who got in legal trouble in 1946 due to John Steinbeck's bold eulogy, and fell out of public favor in 1947 * Viking children's Books * Viking Portable Library * Pamela Dorman Books Viking Children's In 1933, Viking Press founded a department called Junior Books to publish children's books. The first book published was '' The Story About Ping'' in 1933 under editor May Massee. Junior Books was later renamed Viking Children's Books. Viking Kestrel was one of its imprints. Its books have won the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, and include such books as '' The Twenty-One Balloons'', written and illustrated by William Pene du Bois (1947, Newbery medal winner for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Light Entertainment
Light entertainment encompasses a broad range of television and radio programming that includes comedies, variety shows, game shows, quiz shows and the like. In the UK In the early days of the BBC, virtually all broadcast entertainment would be considered light by today's standards, as great pains were taken not to offend audiences—which is not to say that they always succeeded in this. Singers, magicians and comedians were drafted from the music hall circuit to fill the schedules. Stage acts were transferred directly to screen; in the case of productions such as ''Sunday Night at the London Palladium'', the broadcasts actually came from large theatres. Many future household names, including The Beatles, were given their first public airings during these programmes, which attempted to cater for varying tastes through staging variety acts. Bruce Forsyth was one of several hosts for the show. He went on himself to present the studio-based '' Generation Game,'' which rema ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joan Armatrading
Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading (, born 9 December 1950) is an English singer-songwriter and guitarist. Her first major commercial success came with her third and fourth albums, '' Joan Armatrading'' (1976) and '' Show Some Emotion'' (1977), and she continues to play live and record studio albums. A three-time Grammy Award nominee, Armatrading has also been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist. She received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996. Early life and education Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, the third of six children, was born in 1950 in the town of Basseterre in what was then the British colony of Saint Christopher and Nevis. Her father was a carpenter and her mother a housewife. When she was three years old, her parents moved with their two eldest boys to Birmingham in England, sending Armatrading to live with her grandmother on the West Indian island of Antigua. In early 1958, at the age of seven, she join ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alison Moyet
Geneviève Alison Jane Ballard (; ; born 18 June 1961), formerly known as Alf, is an English singer. Noted for her powerful bluesy contralto voice, she came to prominence as a member of the synth-pop duo Yazoo (band), Yazoo (known as Yaz in North America), but has since mainly worked as a solo artist. By June 2023 her worldwide album sales have reached a certified 23 million, with over two million singles sold. All of Moyet's ten studio albums and three compilation albums have charted in the top 30 of the UK Albums Chart, with two of them reaching number one, and she has had several top-10 hits on the UK Singles Chart. Early life and education Geneviève Alison Jane Moyet was born on 18 June 1961 in Basildon, Essex, to a French father and English mother. She did not grow up bilingual, but spoke "Franglais", and was called Alison from a young age. She grew up in Basildon, where she attended Janet Duke Junior School and then James Hornsby School, Nicholas Comprehensive at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rowland Rivron
Rowland John Rivron (born 28 September 1958) is a British writer, comedic actor and television personality. Early career Rivron played the comic character 'Dr Martin Scrote' on the Jonathan Ross chat show ''The Last Resort'', and also played Scrote on Night Network's ''Bunker Show''. This became a series for Channel 4 called ''Set of Six'' about Scrote and his brothers. In 1989 he and Jools Holland starred in ''The Groovy Fellers''. In the early 1990s he presented his own chat show, ''Rivron'', in which he, his guests and the entire set floated in the River Thames. He also made an appearance in the children's schools series ''Cats' Eyes''. Music Rivron played drums on Fat Les's 1998 single " Vindaloo". As one half of the band "Raw Sex" (with Simon Brint) he also featured regularly on BBC TV's '' French and Saunders'' show. Rivron featured on drums in the "Sophisticated Fool" song and "All We've Got To Do Is..." song from ''A Bit of Fry and Laurie'', also on BBC TV. He was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon Brint
Simon Tracey Brint (26 September 1950 – 29 May 2011) was a British musician, best known for his role as part of the comedy duo Raw Sex with Rowland Rivron. He also composed for many British television comedy and drama programmes. Early life Son of Stephen Brint and Anne Tracey (née Watts), Simon Brint was born in High Ham, Somerset. His father, from a large working-class family, had lied about his age to join the army; his mother was the St Anne's College, Oxford-educated daughter of a high court judge. The Brint family moved to Hythe in Kent when he was 16, and he developed an interest in eccentric musical projects. Brint studied at Reading University, graduating in English literature in 1972, before taking part in various artistic collaborations as both a musician and prop designer. He worked with the artist Anthony Benjamin, the singer and tightrope walker Hermine Demoriane, and theatre director Ken Campbell, as well as helping to disguise elephants as mammoths for the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bongo Drum
Bongos ( Spanish: ''bongó'') are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. The pair consists of the larger ''hembra'' () and the smaller ''macho'' (), which are joined by a wooden bridge. They are played with both hands and usually held between the legs, although in some cases, as in classical music, they may be played with sticks or mounted on stands. Bongos are mainly employed in the rhythm section of son cubano and salsa ensembles, often alongside other drums such as the larger congas and the stick-struck timbales. In these groups, the bongo player is known as ''bongosero'' and often plays a continuous eight-stroke pattern called ''martillo'' () as well as more rhythmically free parts, providing improvisatory flourishes and rhythmic counterpoint. Bongos originated in eastern Cuba at the end of the 19th century, possibly from a pair of larger drums such as the bokú. These older, larger bongos are known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comic Relief (charity)
Comic Relief is a British charity, founded in 1986 by the comedy scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian Sir Lenny Henry in response to the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia. The concept of Comic Relief was to get British comedians to make the public laugh, while raising money to help people around the world and in the United Kingdom. A new CEO, Samir Patel, was announced in January 2021. The highlight of Comic Relief's appeal is Red Nose Day, an annual (previously biennial) telethon held in March. The first live fundraising evening, held on 4 April 1986, featured comedians and pop stars, including Rowan Atkinson, Billy Connolly, Stephen Fry, Kate Bush and co-founder Lenny Henry. A prominent annual event on British television, Comic Relief is one of two high-profile telethon events held in the UK, the other being Children in Need, held annually in November. At the end of the Red Nose Day telethon on 14 March 2015, it was announced that in the 30-year history of Comic Relief, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruby Wax
Ruby Wax (; born 19 April 1953) is an American-British actress, comedian, writer, television presenter, and mental health campaigner. A classically-trained actress, Wax co-starred on the ITV sitcom '' Girls on Top'' (1985–1986), and came to prominence as a comic interviewer, playing up to British perceptions of the strident American style on television shows including ''The Full Wax'' (1991–1994), ''Ruby Wax Meets...'' (1994–1998), ''Ruby'' (1997–2000), and ''The Ruby Wax Show'' (2002). She was a script editor for the BBC sitcom '' Absolutely Fabulous'' (1992–2012), also appearing in two episodes. Wax holds both American and British citizenship and has resided in the United Kingdom since the 1970s. In 2013, she gained a master's degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy from Kellogg College, Oxford. In 2015, she was appointed a Visiting Professor in Mental Health Nursing at the University of Surrey. Wax was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Order of the Bri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
