• British acting legend, Geoffrey Palmer, passes away at 93. RIP, Geoffrey.
    November 6, 2020

    British acting legend, Geoffrey Palmer, passes away at 93. RIP, Geoffrey.

    From Jimmy Anderson in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin to Ben Parkinson in Butterflies to Lionel Hardcastle in As Time Goes By, Geoffrey Palmer has been a constant fixture in our collective British comedy lives for the better part of four decades with these three series alone. Palmer, who had numerous guest roles in series such as Doctor Who, Inspector Morse, Blackadder Goes Forth, Poirot, Ashes to Ashes and Rev, had perhaps his most well-known guest starring role as Dr Price in “The Kipper and the Corpse” episode of Fawlty Towers in 1979. With a celebrated career that spanned seven decades, Palmer, who turned 93 years young in June of this year, passed away peacefully at his home on Thursday, 5 November.

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  • Sir Lenny Henry, a.k.a. ‘Chef’, to enter the world of children’s book writing!
    November 5, 2020

    Sir Lenny Henry, a.k.a. ‘Chef’, to enter the world of children’s book writing!

    You could easily argue that the character of Gareth Blackstock, the chef/owner of the two Michelin star, Le Château Anglais in the British situation comedy, Chef, was defined as much by a simple but brilliantly written three-minute tirade against an individual dining at the restaurant for his indiscriminate use of salt before tasting his dinner as he […]

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  • Happy belated 81st — John Cleese
    October 28, 2020

    Happy belated 81st — John Cleese

    What better way to celebrate John Cleese’s 81st birthday, belated or otherwise, than with a look back at, perhaps, the two most classic clips from the greatest British comedy of all time, Fawlty Towers.

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  • Let us pray as Dibley’s Vicar teases something special for Christmas.
    October 25, 2020

    Let us pray as Dibley’s Vicar teases something special for Christmas.

    Since everything you read on the Internet is true, I’m taking Dawn French’s teasing of something special from the creators of The Vicar of Dibley this season to the bank. Ok, fine, I can only find one mention of the absolutely brilliant news reportedly dropped recently by French, who plays Dibley’s vicar, Geraldine Granger, but I’m taking that as meaning ‘there is a chance’ that this possibility could be worth the paper it was printed on.

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  • Friday Funny — ‘Jeeves and Wooster’ with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie
    October 9, 2020

    Friday Funny — ‘Jeeves and Wooster’ with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie

    Tellyspotting digs deep into the ‘Friday Funny’ vault for this weeks entry. With Hugh Laurie’s upcoming effort in Roadkill, which premieres on PBS beginning Sunday, November 1, we thought we’d go ‘classic comedy’ with a look back at Jeeves and Wooster. Based on the ‘Jeeves’ short stories and novels by P.G. Wodehouse, the series ran for 4 seasons […]

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  • Happy belated 45th, ‘Fawlty Towers’!
    September 20, 2020

    Happy belated 45th, ‘Fawlty Towers’!

    On Saturday, as Planet Earth quietly celebrated the 45th anniversary of Fawlty Towers, series co-creator/co-writer John Cleese posed a question on Twitter to which the ability to come up with an answer is next to impossible, if not impossible. Easily the funniest comedy of all-time, the 12 episodes (yes, there were only 12) are wall-to-wall […]

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