1.
Michael Palin
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Michael Edward Palin CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter. He was one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python, Palin wrote most of his comedic material with fellow Python member Terry Jones. Before Monty Python, they had worked on shows such as the Ken Dodd Show, The Frost Report. Palin appeared in some of the most famous Python sketches, including Argument Clinic, Dead Parrot sketch, The Lumberjack Song, The Spanish Inquisition, Bicycle Repair Man, Palin continued to work with Jones after Python, co-writing Ripping Yarns. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedians Comedian, he was voted the 30th favourite by fellow comedians, after Python, he began a new career as a travel writer and travel documentarian. His journeys have taken him across the world, including the North and South Poles, the Sahara Desert, in 2000 Palin was honoured as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to television. From 2009 to 2012 Palin was the president of the Royal Geographical Society, on 12 May 2013, Palin was made a BAFTA fellow, the highest honour that is conferred by the organisation. Palin was born in Broomhill, Sheffield, the child and only son of Edward Moreton Palin. His father was a Shrewsbury School and Cambridge University-educated engineer working for a steel firm and his maternal grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Lockhart Ovey, DSO, was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1927. He started his education at Birkdale Preparatory School, Sheffield, and his sister Angela was nine years older than he was. Despite the age gap the two had a relationship until her suicide in 1987. He has ancestral roots in Letterkenny, County Donegal, when he was five years old, Palin had his first acting experience at Birkdale playing Martha Cratchit in a school performance of A Christmas Carol. At the age of 10, Palin, still interested in acting, made a comedy monologue, after his school days in 1962 he went on to read modern history at Brasenose College, Oxford. With fellow student Robert Hewison he performed and wrote, for the first time, Terry Jones, also a student in Oxford, saw that performance and began writing together with Hewison and Palin. In the same year Palin joined the Brightside and Carbrook Co-operative Society Players and he also performed and wrote in the Oxford Revue with Jones. In 1966 he married Helen Gibbins, whom he first met in 1959 on holiday in Southwold in Suffolk and this meeting was later fictionalised in Palins play East of Ipswich. The couple have three children and two grandchildren, Rachel is a BBC TV director, whose work includes MasterChef, The Professionals, shown on BBC2 throughout October and November 2010. A photograph of William as a baby briefly appeared in Monty Python and his nephew is the theatre designer Jeremy Herbert
2.
BBC
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The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. It is headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, the BBC is the worlds oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total,16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting, the total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed contract staff are included. The BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and used to fund the BBCs radio, TV, britains first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mails Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian Soprano Dame Nellie Melba, the Melba broadcast caught the peoples imagination and marked a turning point in the British publics attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts. But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests, John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved manufacturers, to this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to inform, educate and entertain. The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate, set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee and this was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired. The BBCs broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, the BBC was also banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00, and required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee, by now the BBC under Reiths leadership had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production and with restrictions on news bulletins waived the BBC suddenly became the source of news for the duration of the crisis. The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position, the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PMs own
3.
Television in the United Kingdom
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Television in the United Kingdom started in 1936 as a public service which was free of advertising. There are six main channel owners who are responsible for most viewing, there are 27,000 hours of domestic content produced a year at a cost of £2.6 billion. Since 24 October 2012, all broadcasts in the United Kingdom are in a digital format. Digital content is delivered via terrestrial, satellite and cable as well as over IP, set-top boxes are generally used to receive these services, however integrated digital televisions can also be used to receive Freeview or Freesat. Most TVs sold in the UK come with a DVB-T tuner for Freeview – a rare thing in Europe, BT TV and TalkTalk Plus TV, both based on YouView, utilise hybrid boxes which receive Freeview as well as additional subscription services. Households viewing TV from the internet are not tracked by Ofcom, the UKs five most watched channels, BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, are available from all providers. Digital terrestrial television launched in 1998 as a service named ONdigital. Since October 2002, the broadcaster is Freeview, with BT TV providing additional subscription services. In all cases cable TV is a subscription service normally bundled with a phone line, smallworld Cable is available in south-west Scotland and north-west England. Pricing ranges from £10.50 to £80 per month, wightFibre is available in the Isle of Wight. Virgin Media is available to 55% of UK households, pricing ranges from £11 a month to £30.50 a month, with additional fees for premium services such as Sky Sports. Virgin also market V+, a video recorder and high-definition receiver. Virgin Media is the cable provider to supply high-definition television and video on demand. There are three distinctly marketed direct-broadcast satellite services, Sky is a subscription service owned by Sky plc. It is the satellite provider to offer premium channels with the largest total number of channels compared to all other television providers. As of January 2017, subscriptions starts at £22 per month for the basic package, there is an upfront cost of £15 on sign up. Sky TV markets SkyQ Silver & SkyQ boxes as well as SkyQmini boxes, Sky TV also provides video on demand branded as SkyTV On Demand. As of October 2016, Sky UK stopped offering there aging Sky+HD hardware, Freesat from Sky, is a free satellite service owned by Sky plc
4.
Comedy
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In a modern sense, comedy refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, and stand-up comedy. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece, in the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a Society of Youth and a Society of the Old, a revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. Satire and political satire use comedy to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, parody subverts popular genres and forms, critiquing those forms without necessarily condemning them. Similarly scatological humour, sexual humour, and race humour create comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comic ways, a comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society and uses humor to parody or satirize the behaviour and mannerisms of its members. Romantic comedy is a genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous terms. The adjective comic, which means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage. Of this, the word came into usage through the Latin comoedia and Italian commedia and has, over time. The Greeks and Romans confined their use of the comedy to descriptions of stage-plays with happy endings. Aristotle defined comedy as an imitation of men worse than the average, however, the characters portrayed in comedies were not worse than average in every way, only insofar as they are Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others, the mask, for instance, in the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings. It is in this sense that Dante used the term in the title of his poem, as time progressed, the word came more and more to be associated with any sort of performance intended to cause laughter. During the Middle Ages, the comedy became synonymous with satire. They disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation and instead identified it with Arabic poetic themes and forms and they viewed comedy as simply the art of reprehension, and made no reference to light and cheerful events, or to the troubling beginnings and happy endings associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century, the term gained a more general meaning in medieval literature. Starting from 425 BCE, Aristophanes, a playwright and satirical author of the Ancient Greek Theater wrote 40 comedies,11 of which survive. Aristophanes developed his type of comedy from the satyr plays
5.
Parody
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A parody is a work created to imitate, make fun of, or comment on an original work—its subject, author, style, or some other target—by means of satiric or ironic imitation. As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon puts it, parody … is imitation, another critic, Simon Dentith, defines parody as any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice. Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, music, animation, gaming, the writer and critic John Gross observes in his Oxford Book of Parodies, that parody seems to flourish on territory somewhere between pastiche and burlesque. According to Aristotle, Hegemon of Thasos was the inventor of a kind of parody, in ancient Greek literature, a parodia was a narrative poem imitating the style and prosody of epics but treating light, satirical or mock-heroic subjects. Indeed, the components of the Greek word are παρά para beside, counter, against, Thus, the original Greek word παρῳδία parodia has sometimes been taken to mean counter-song, an imitation that is set against the original. The Oxford English Dictionary, for example, defines parody as imitation turned as to produce a ridiculous effect, because par- also has the non-antagonistic meaning of beside, there is nothing in parodia to necessitate the inclusion of a concept of ridicule. Old Comedy contained parody, even the gods could be made fun of, the Frogs portrays the hero-turned-god Heracles as a Glutton and the God of Drama Dionysus as cowardly and unintelligent. The traditional trip to the Underworld story is parodied as Dionysus dresses as Heracles to go to the Underworld, roman writers explained parody as an imitation of one poet by another for humorous effect. In French Neoclassical literature, parody was also a type of poem where one work imitates the style of another to produce a humorous effect, the Ancient Greeks created satyr plays which parodied tragic plays, often with performers dressed like satyrs. In classical music, as a term, parody refers to a reworking of one kind of composition into another. The term is sometimes applied to procedures common in the Baroque period. The musicological definition of the parody has now generally been supplanted by a more general meaning of the word. In its more contemporary usage, musical parody usually has humorous, even satirical intent, in which familiar musical ideas or lyrics are lifted into a different, often incongruous, context. Musical parodies may imitate or refer to the style of a composer or artist. For example, The Ritz Roll and Rock, a song and dance performed by Fred Astaire in the movie Silk Stockings, parodies the Rock. Conversely, while the work of Weird Al Yankovic is based on particular popular songs. The first usage of the parody in English cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is in Ben Jonson, in Every Man in His Humour in 1598, A Parodie. The next citation comes from John Dryden in 1693, who also appended an explanation, suggesting that the word was in common use, in the 20th century, parody has been heightened as the central and most representative artistic device, the catalysing agent of artistic creation and innovation
6.
Videotape
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Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either a signal or digital signal. Videotape is used in video tape recorders or, more commonly, videocassette recorders and camcorders. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the produced by an electrocardiogram. Tape is a method of storing information and thus imposes delays to access a portion of the tape that is not already under the heads. The early 2000s saw the introduction and rise to prominence of high quality video recording media such as hard disks. Since then, videotape has been relegated to archival and similar uses. The electronics division of entertainer Bing Crosbys production company, Bing Crosby Enterprises, overall the picture quality was still considered inferior to the best kinescope recordings on film. Bing Crosby Enterprises hoped to have a version available in 1954. The BBC experimented from 1952 to 1958 with a high-speed linear videotape system called VERA and it used half-inch tape traveling at 200 inches per second. RCA demonstrated the magnetic recording of both black-and-white and color television programs at its Princeton laboratories on December 1,1953. The high-speed longitudinal tape system, called Simplex, in development since 1951, could record, the color system used half-inch tape to record five tracks, one each for red, blue, green, synchronization, and audio. The black-and-white system used quarter-inch tape with two tracks, one for video and one for audio, both systems ran at 360 inches per second. RCA-owned NBC first used it on The Jonathan Winters Show on October 23,1956 when a song sequence by Dorothy Collins in color was included in the otherwise live television program. BCE demonstrated a color system in February 1955 using a longitudinal recording on half-inch tape. CBS, RCAs competitor, was about to order BCE machines when Ampex introduced the superior Quadruplex system, BCE was acquired by 3M Company in 1956. Quad employed a transverse four-head system on a tape. On January 22,1957, the NBC Television game show Truth or Consequences, produced in Hollywood, Ampex introduced a color videotape recorder in 1958 in a cross-licensing agreement with RCA, whose engineers had developed it from an Ampex black-and-white recorder
7.
William Walton
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Sir William Turner Walton, OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several genres and styles. His best-known works include Façade, the cantata Belshazzars Feast, the Viola Concerto, born in Oldham, Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, Façade, which at first brought him notoriety as a modernist, in middle age, Walton left Britain and set up home with his young wife Susana on the Italian island of Ischia. By this time, he had ceased to be regarded as a modernist and his only full-length opera, Troilus and Cressida, was among the works to be so labelled and has made little impact in opera houses. In his last years, his works back into critical fashion, his later compositions. Walton was a worker, painstakingly perfectionist, and his complete body of work across his long career is not large. His most popular compositions continue to be performed in the twenty-first century. Walton was born into a family in Oldham, Lancashire. His father, Charles Alexander Walton, was a musician who had trained at the Royal Manchester College of Music under Charles Hallé, charless wife, Louisa Maria, had been a singer before their marriage. William Waltons musical talents were spotted when he was still a young boy and he was more successful as a singer, he and his elder brother sang in their fathers choir, taking part in performances of large-scale works by Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn and others. Walton was sent to a school, but in 1912 his father saw a newspaper advertisement for probationer choristers at Christ Church Cathedral School in Oxford. The boy and his mother missed their intended train from Manchester to Oxford because Waltons father had spent the money for the fare in a public house. Louisa Walton had to borrow the fares from a greengrocer, although they arrived in Oxford after the entrance trials were over, Mrs Walton successfully pleaded for her son to be heard, and he was accepted. He remained at the school for the next six years. At the age of sixteen Walton became an undergraduate of Christ Church and it is sometimes said that he was Oxfords youngest undergraduate since Henry VIII, and though this is probably not correct, he was nonetheless among the youngest. He came under the influence of Hugh Allen, the dominant figure in Oxfords musical life, Allen introduced Walton to modern music, including Stravinskys Petrushka, and enthused him with the mysteries of the orchestra
8.
The Golden Girls
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The Golden Girls is an American sitcom created by Susan Harris that originally aired on NBC from September 14,1985, to May 9,1992, with a total of 180 half-hour episodes spanning over seven seasons. The show stars Beatrice Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and it was produced by Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions, in association with Touchstone Television, and Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas, and Harris served as the original executive producers. The Golden Girls received critical acclaim throughout most of its run and won several awards and it also won three Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy. Each of the four received a Emmy Award, making it one of only three sitcoms in the awards history to achieve this. The series also ranked among the top-10 highest-rated programs for six of its seven seasons, in 2013, TV Guide ranked The Golden Girls number 54 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time. In 2014, the Writers Guild of America placed the sitcom at number 69 in their list of the 101 Best Written TV Series of All Time, the series revolves around four older, single women sharing a house in Miami, Florida. In the pilot episode, the three were joined by Dorothys 80-year-old mother, Sophia Petrillo, after the retirement home where she lived burned down. The pilot episode featured a gay character named Coco, who worked as a cook for the women, after six consecutive seasons in the top 10, and the seventh season at number 30, The Golden Girls came to an end when Bea Arthur chose to leave the series. In the hour-long series finale, which aired in May 1992, Dorothy meets and marries Blanches Uncle Lucas, Sophia was to join her, but in the end, Sophia stays behind with the other women in Miami, leading into the spin-off series, The Golden Palace. The series finale was watched by 27.2 million viewers, as of 2016, it was the 17th-most watched television finale. Stan and Dorothy eventually moved to Miami, but divorced after 38 years when Stan left her for a flight attendant. According to the timeline presented, Dorothy and Stan would have had three children, with their oldest son or daughter near 40 by the beginning of the series. However, due to a lack of continuity in the writing, Michael and Kate were repeatedly shown as being in their 20s during the run of the show, thus not being old enough to be the child with whom Dorothy got pregnant in high school. In the series episode, Dorothy marries Blanches uncle, Lucas Hollingsworth. Arthur also played Dorothys grandmother, Sophias mother, in an episode to when they lived in Brooklyn. Upon Charlies death, she moved to Miami and she eventually found work at a grief counseling center, though she later ended up as the assistant to a consumer reporter at a local TV station. In later seasons, Rose became romantically involved with college professor Miles Webber, during season six, Miles was placed into the Witness Protection Program, but returned later in the season. Their relationship continued throughout the series, and shortly into the sequel series, in season one, Rose is stated to be 55
9.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (TV series)
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The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was a BBC television adaptation of Douglas Adamss The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy broadcast in January and February 1981 on UK television station BBC Two. The adaptation follows the radio series in 1978 and 1980, the first novel and double LP, in 1979. The series stars Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, David Dixon as Ford Prefect, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox, Sandra Dickinson as Trillian, the voice of the guide is by Peter Jones. Simon Jones, Peter Jones, Stephen Moore and Mark Wing-Davey had already provided the voices for their characters in the radio series in 1978/80. In addition, the features a number of notable cameo roles. A fully animated version was briefly discussed in the autumn of 1978, the script for the pilot was delivered in December 1979, and terms for the five remaining scripts were agreed upon in January 1980. While there was resistance to a project considered unfilmable, Alan J. W. Bell was given the duties to produce. John Lloyd was signed as associate producer, in early 1980, production on the pilot episode began on several fronts. Rod Lord of Pearce Animation Studios directed a 50-second pilot, hand-animated, Bell were both pleased with the animation, and Lord was given the go-ahead to do all of the animation for Episode 1, and subsequently the complete TV series. Narration for the first episode was recorded by Peter Jones in March 1980, the filming of two green-skinned aliens reacting to Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters was done on 8 May 1980. Further filming of crowd reactions to the Vogons, location filming of Arthurs house, scenes aboard the Vogon ship were recorded on 7 June 1980, in the BBCs TC1 studio. The final edit of the episode was completed on 2 July 1980. Further test screenings were held in August 1980, based on successful test screenings, the cast was reassembled to complete the six episodes of the series in September 1980. Production continued through the autumn, with filming and recording occurring out of order, recording and production of the final episode continued into January 1981. The gap in production made for some continuity problems between the episode and the remainder. Notably, Simon Joness hair was cut short for another role, conversely, David Dixons hair appears longer. One major change first appeared in the show and LP adaptations. Nearly all of the sequences from Fit the Fifth and Fit the Sixth in the first radio series that were originally co-written with John Lloyd were completely cut, Lloyd does receive a co-writers credit on Episode 5, for the material on the statistics about the universe
10.
Last of the Summer Wine
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Last of the Summer Wine is a British sitcom created and written by Roy Clarke that was originally broadcast on the BBC. It premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse on 4 January 1973, from 1983 to 2010, Alan J. W. Bell produced and directed all episodes of the show. The BBC confirmed on 2 June 2010 that Last of the Summer Wine would no longer be produced, subsequently, the final episode was broadcast on 29 August 2010. Tom Owen criticised the BBC for not permitting a special final episode, Roy Clarke, however, stated that he was fully aware this was the last series, and preferred the show to have a quiet ending. The final line was said by Peter Sallis, the longest serving actor, since its original release, all thirty-one series—including the pilot and all Christmas specials—have been released on DVD. Repeats of the show are broadcast in the UK on Gold, Yesterday and it is also seen in more than twenty-five countries, including various PBS stations in the United States and on VisionTV in Canada. Last of the Summer Wine is the comedy programme in Britain. The original trio consisted of Bill Owen as the mischievous and impulsive Compo Simmonite, Peter Sallis as easy-going everyman Norman Clegg, the men never seem to grow up, and they develop a unique perspective on their equally eccentric fellow townspeople through their stunts. Due to the age of the main cast, a new trio was formed during the 30th series featuring somewhat younger actors, Sallis and Thornton, both past members of the trio, continued in supporting roles alongside the new actors. Many members of the Royal Family enjoyed the show, the programme was nominated for numerous awards and won the National Television Award for Most Popular Comedy Programme in 1999. There were twenty-one Christmas specials, three films and a documentary film about the series. Last of the Summer Wine inspired other adaptations, including a prequel, several novelisations. In 1972, Duncan Wood, the BBCs Head of Comedy, impressed by writer Roy Clarkes ability to inject both comedy and drama into the sitcom, Wood offered Clarke the opportunity to write a sitcom. Clarke nearly turned the job down as he felt that the BBCs idea for a programme about three old men was a concept for a half-hour sitcom. Clarke chose the title, The Last of the Summer Wine, to convey the idea that the characters are not in the autumn of their lives but the summer. BBC producers hated this at first and insisted that it remain a working title, while the cast worried that viewers would forget the name of the show. The working title was changed later to The Library Mob, a reference to one of the trios regular haunts early in the show. Clarke switched back to his original preference shortly before production began, the Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of BBCs Comedy Playhouse on 4 January 1973
11.
John Le Mesurier
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John Le Mesurier was an English actor. He is perhaps best remembered for his role as Sergeant Wilson in the BBC television situation comedy Dads Army. A self-confessed jobbing actor, Le Mesurier appeared in more than 120 films across a range of genres, Le Mesurier became interested in the stage as a young adult and enrolled at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art in 1933. From there he took a position in repertory theatre and made his debut in September 1934 at the Palladium Theatre in Edinburgh in the J. B. He later accepted an offer to work with Alec Guinness in a John Gielgud production of Hamlet and he first appeared on television in 1938 as Seigneur de Miolans in the BBC broadcast of The Marvellous History of St Bernard. During the Second World War Le Mesurier was posted to British India and he returned to acting and made his film debut in 1948, starring in the second feature comedy short Death in the Hand, opposite Esme Percy and Ernest Jay. He undertook a number of roles on television in 1951 including Educating Archie alongside Tony Hancock, Le Mesurier had a prolific film career, appearing mostly in comedies, usually in roles portraying figures of authority such as army officers, policemen and judges. As well as Hancocks Half Hour, Le Mesurier appeared in Hancocks two principal films, The Rebel and The Punch and Judy Man. He took an approach to acting and felt that his parts were those of a decent chap all at sea in a chaotic world not of his own making. Le Mesurier was married three times, most notably to the actress Hattie Jacques, a heavy drinker of alcohol for most of his life, Le Mesurier died in 1983, aged 71, from a stomach haemorrhage, brought about by a complication of cirrhosis of the liver. After his death, critics reflected that, for an actor who took minor roles. Le Mesurier was born John Elton Le Mesurier Halliley, in Bedford on 5 April 1912, while John was an infant the family settled in Bury St Edmunds, in West Suffolk. He was sent to school, first to Grenham House in Kent, Le Mesurier disliked both schools intensely, citing insensitive teaching methods and an inability to accept individualism. These experiences fuelled an early desire to make a career on the stage, Le Mesurier received a Certificate of Fellowship, while Guinness won the Fay Compton prize. After the revue, rather remain at the studio for further tuition Le Mesurier took an opportunity to join the Edinburgh-based Millicent Ward Repertory Players at a salary of £3. 10s a week. Under his birth name John Halliley, Le Mesurier made his debut in September 1934 at the Palladium Theatre in Edinburgh in the J. B. Priestley play Dangerous Corner, along three other newcomers to the company. The reviewer for The Scotsman thought that Le Mesurier was well cast in the role, appearances in While Parents Sleep and Cavalcade were followed by a break, as problems arose with the lease of the theatre
12.
Fawlty Towers
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Fawlty Towers is a BBC television sitcom first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975 and 1979. The show was created and written by John Cleese and Connie Booth and they were married at the time of series 1, but divorced before recording series 2. One of the best loved shows in British popular culture, it was ranked No.1 on a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000. The series is set in Fawlty Towers, a hotel in the seaside town of Torquay — pronounced taw-key in the English vernacular — on the English Riviera. In May 1970 the Monty Python team stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay while filming on location, John Cleese became fascinated with the behavior of the owner, Donald Sinclair, whom Cleese later described as the rudest man Ive ever come across in my life. Sinclair justified his actions by claiming the hotel had staff problems and he also criticised the American-born Terry Gilliams table manners for not being British. Cleese and Booth stayed on at the hotel after filming, furthering their research of the hotel owner, Cleese later played a hotel owner called Donald Sinclair in the 2001 movie Rat Race. At the time, Cleese was a writer on the 1970s British TV sitcom Doctor in the House for London Weekend Television, an early prototype of the character that became known as Basil Fawlty was developed in an episode of the third Doctor series. In this edition, the character checks into a small town hotel, his very presence seemingly winding up the aggressive. The show was broadcast on May 30,1971, Cleese parodied the contrast between organizational dogma and sensitive customer service in many personnel training videotapes issued with a serious purpose by his company, Video Arts. Cleese said in 2008 that the first Fawlty Towers script he, and Jimmy himself said, Youre going to have to get them out of the hotel, John. You cant do the thing in the hotel. Whereas, of course, its in the hotel that the pressure cooker builds up. Cleese was paid £6,000 for 43 weeks work and supplemented his income by appearing in television advertisements. He said that when he read the first scripts he could see nothing funny in them and he said the commercial channels, with their emphasis on audience ratings, never would have let the program get to the production stage on the basis of the scripts. Although the series is set in Torquay in Devon, no part of it was shot in Southwest England, for the exterior filming, the Wooburn Grange Country Club in Buckinghamshire was used instead of a hotel. In several episodes of the series the entrance gate at the bottom of the states the real name of the location. This listed building later served for a time as a nightclub named Basils after the series ended
