Prunella Scales, best known for her brilliant portrayal of Sybil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, turned 92 years young Friday (22 June). Her 7-decade career began in 1951 where she worked as the assistant stage manager at the Bristol Old Vic. Her career big break came with the early 1960s sitcom Marriage Lines starring opposite Richard Briers (Good […]
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Harold Snoad, long-time sitcom producer and director for the BBC passed away 2 June at the age of 88. Best known for Keeping Up Appearances, it was Snoad who cast Dame Patricia Routledge in the lead role, explaining: “I wanted the character of Hyacinth to be a sort of stately galleon. I didn’t want somebody lightweight, […]
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“A towel, [The Guide] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Not only does it have great practical value, a towel has immense psychological value” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Today, H2G2 fans are marking the 23rd anniversary since the all-too-early passing of creator/writer, Douglas […]
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Today, William Shakespeare would have been a mere 460 years old. While his true birthdate remains a mystery (he was baptized on April 26, 1564), it is generally celebrated on April 23, the same day England’s patron saint is celebrated with a laundry list of ‘happenings’, St. George’s Day. It was a mere 408 years ago […]
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Four thought to be lost episodes of The Complete and Utter History of the British Isles, created in 1969 by soon-to-be Pythoners Michael Palin and Terry Jones, have been found by the ITV Archive team as part of a huge project to fully identify every archive asset ITV holds, “The series had been sitting in the ITV vaults […]
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Red Nose Day has to be the single most brilliant example known to man and/or woman of how an entire country demonstrates the ability to create brilliant content and rally around a charitable cause. To label Red Nose Day in the UK as a cultural phenomenon is doing it an injustice. It’s an institution. The entire country gets […]
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On the heels of the welcome news of the commissioning of two new series of All Creatures Great and Small comes the brilliant news that the Kumars are returning to television in new format Meet The Kumars, which has been commissioned by the Fox network in the U.S. While Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal and Vincent Ebrahim will reprise their characters, Shaheen […]
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One of the few upsides of digging out after another year of semi-living under an ever-present pandemic cloud is the opportunity to send good wishes for a very happy birthday to the brilliant Dame Katherine Patricia Routledge, who turns 95 today. Given Hyacinth would have been appalled at the possibility that I might forget to drop […]
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I’m re-posting this 2020 blog post to remember the greatness of Terry Jones. He passed away four years ago on January 21, all too soon. ======== January 23, 2020 — These R.I.P. posts seems to be coming at an alarmingly fast rate these days and while all of them are devastating to those of us […]
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While, clearly, a majority of my formative years were shaped by the greatness of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, there was a small amount quietly tucked away that I remember was reserved for The Benny Hill Show. On the surface, the slapstick, mime and double entendre sketches were definitely cringe-worthy but there was a underscored brilliance behind […]
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