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.
Terry Jones
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Terence Graham Parry Terry Jones is a Welsh writer, actor, comedian, screenwriter, film director, presenter, poet, historian and author. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, Jones was born in the seaside town of Colwyn Bay, on the north coast of Wales. The family home was named Bodchwil and his father was stationed with the RAF in India. When Jones was 4½, the moved to Surrey in England. Jones attended primary school at Esher COE school and later attended the Royal Grammar School in Guildford and he read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, but strayed into history. While there, he performed comedy with future Monty Python castmate Michael Palin in The Oxford Revue, Jones appeared in Twice a Fortnight with Michael Palin, Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Jonathan Lynn, as well as the television series The Complete and Utter History of Britain. He appeared in Do Not Adjust Your Set with Palin, Eric Idle and he wrote for The Frost Report and several other David Frost programmes on British television. Along with Palin, he wrote lyrics for the 1968 Barry Booth album Diversions, Jones took a keen interest in the direction of the show. Of Jones contributions as a performer, his depictions of middle-aged women are among the most memorable and his humour, in collaboration with Palin, tends to be conceptual in nature. A typical Palin/Jones sketch draws its humour from the absurdity of the scenario, for example, in the Summarise Proust Competition, Jones plays a cheesy game show host who gives contestants 15 seconds to condense Marcel Prousts lengthy work À la recherche du temps perdu. Jones was also noted for his gifts as a Chaplinesque physical comedian and his performance in the Undressing in Public sketch, for instance, is done in total silence. Jones co-directed Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Terry Gilliam, as a film director, Jones finally gained fuller control of the projects and devised a visual style that complemented the humour. His later films include Erik the Viking and The Wind in the Willows, in 2008, Jones wrote and directed an opera titled Evil Machines. In 2011, he was commissioned to direct and write the libretto for another opera, Jones directed the comedy film Absolutely Anything, about a disillusioned schoolteacher who is given the chance to do anything he wishes by a group of aliens watching from space. The film features Simon Pegg, Kate Beckinsale and the voices of the five remaining members of Monty Python and it was shot in London during a 6-week shoot. Jones has written books and screenplays, including comic works. Jones co-wrote Ripping Yarns with Palin and he has also written numerous works for children, including Fantastic Stories, The Beast with a Thousand Teeth, and a collection of Comic Verse called The Curse of the Vampires Socks. Jones was also the co-creator of the animated TV series Blazing Dragons, reversing a common story convention, the series protagonists are anthropomorphic dragons beset by evil humans
3.
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
4.
BBC Worldwide
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BBC Worldwide Ltd. is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in 1995. The company monetises BBC brands, selling BBC and other British programming for broadcast abroad with the aim of supplementing the income received by the BBC through the licence fee. In 2013/14, BBC Worldwide generated headline profits of £157. 4m and headline sales of £1,042. 3m, in 2012/13 it made a profit of £156. 3m on a turnover of £1,115. 8m. The company had made a profit of £104m on a turnover of £1, 085m in the previous financial year. BBC Worldwides profit rate was 11. 2% in 2011/2012, up slightly from 9. 6% the previous year, down from a peak of 21. 5% in 2002/2003, contrasting with 7. 8% in 2003/2004. The highest profile of these products was the listings magazine Radio Times. Prior to 1979, several BBC departments dealt with the exploitation and sale of BBC brands and this was rectified however as the economic situation eased and by 1982 BBC Publications had a trading profit of £4.7 million. BBC Transcription Services licensed BBC Radio material to overseas broadcasters, the selling of television programmes was at first handled in 1958 with the establishment of a business manager post. This gradually expanded until the establishment of the Television Promotions department in 1960 under a general manager, in its first year, the department saw the sale of 550 programmes overseas with a turnover of £234,000, with a further 1,200 programmes sold the following year. Radio programmes were only exploited on the level with the creation of the Radio Enterprises department in 1965. However, following the retirement of the Radio Enterprises general manager in 1969, in 1979 the department became BBC Enterprises Ltd. a subsidiary company wholly owned by the BBC. By 1982, the division were expanding with divisions responsible for video, recorded audio, film. At this point the company had a turnover of £23 million, on 1 April 1986, all commercial activities of the corporation, including BBC Publications, was merged into BBC Enterprises Ltd. In 1991 BBC World Service Television became the first commercially funded BBC broadcasting operation after the Foreign Office refused to pay for it, BBC Enterprises Ltd was subsequently reorganised in 1995 as BBC Worldwide Ltd. A review of the BBCs commercial activities took place in 2004 and concluded that the sell off of BBC Worldwides assets would not be as advantageous as keeping the business and driving it harder. Instead, some changes to its remit, focus, structure and governance were made, in 2007 BBC Worldwide purchased a 75% stake in the travel guide publisher Lonely Planet, acquiring the final 25% of the company in 2011. The acquisition was part of the BBCs strategy to grow its online portfolio and to increase its operations in Australia, in January 2009 it was announced that Ofcom had put forward the recommendation that Channel 4 merge with either the commercial network Five or BBC Worldwide. In the same year, the company was awarded the Queens Award for Enterprise in recognition of the companies growth, in 2012, the company began to reorganise their divisions from a product based system to a location-based system, resulting in Jana Bennett leaving the company
5.
Network Distributing
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Network Distributing is a video publishing company that specialises in classic British television programmes. The company holds the rights to a number of archive British programmes, predominantly from ITV, though it holds rights for some programmes shown by the BBC. The company is developing a catalogue of world cinema titles through its film arm Network Releasing. Network was founded in 1997 as a video sell-through label specialising in television programmes. Its first releases were Charley Says, Robin of Sherwood and Catweazle and it has gone on to become one of the most successful independent DVD distributors in the UK, with a library of 3,000 unique film and TV properties. The company has built up a reputation for including extensive special features on many of its DVD box sets and it has also moved into releasing new feature films in cinemas. Network won two HEW Awards in 2008 for Best TV DVD release for The Prisoner 40th Anniversary Special Edition, the latter award was shared with The Mighty Boosh Series 3. In 2004 Network signed a deal with Granada Ventures, giving the company the rights to release all non-core ITV brands on DVD in the UK. At the same time Network sourced its sales function to Fremantle Media, in return Network acquired the DVD rights to the Fremantle library, which includes the Thames Television library. This means that the majority of ITV shows are released via Network DVD rather than ITVs commercial division, the American-made series Baywatch is also part of the Fremantle library and Network DVD holds UK DVD rights to the series. Notable films include Sign o’ the Times, Oliver Stones Talk Radio, Black Narcissus, The Last Seduction, in 2007 the company moved into new releases following a re-release of The Ipcress File at UK cinemas nationwide in 2006. The company acquired Hou Hsiao Hsien’s Flight of the Red Balloon starring Juliette Binoche, in 2008 it acquired four new films from the Cannes Film Festival, Afterschool, Rumba, Soi Cowboy and Tony Manero, which were all released in the UK in 2009. It established its world cinema website networkreleasing. com the same year, in July 2010 it released Lymelife, a coming-of-age feature executive-produced by Martin Scorsese and starring Alec Baldwin, Rory and Kieran Culkin, Cynthia Nixon and Emma Roberts. In 2011, it released the Asian slasher movie Dream Home, networks release schedule and catalogue availability were temporarily affected by the Sony warehouse fire in Enfield, North London, during the riots in England in 2011
6.
BBC Two
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BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. It covers a range of subject matter, but tending towards more highbrow programmes than the more mainstream. Like the BBCs other domestic TV and radio channels, it is funded by the television licence and it is a comparatively well-funded public service network, regularly attaining a much higher audience share than most public service networks worldwide. Originally styled BBC2, it was the third British television station to be launched, a high-definition version of the channel launched on 26 March 2013, replacing BBC HD. British television at the time of BBC2s launch consisted of two channels, the BBC Television Service and the ITV network made up of regional companies. Both channels had existed in a state of competition since ITVs launch in 1955, the 1962 Pilkington Report on the future of broadcasting noticed this, and that ITV lacked any serious programming. It therefore decided that Britains third television station should be awarded to the BBC, prior to its launch, the new BBC2 was promoted on the BBC Television Service, the soon to be renamed BBC1. The animated adverts featured the campaign mascots Hullabaloo, a mother kangaroo, however, at around 18,45 a huge power failure, originating from a fire at Battersea Power Station, caused Television Centre, and indeed much of west London, to lose all power. BBC1 was able to continue broadcasting via its facilities at Alexandra Palace, associated-Rediffusion, the London weekday ITV franchise-holder, offered to transmit on the BBCs behalf, but their gesture was rejected. At 22,00 programming was officially postponed until the following morning, there was believed to be no recording made of this bulletin, but a videotape was discovered in early 2003. By 11,00 on 21 April, power had restored to the studios and programming began. The launch schedule, postponed from the night before, was successfully shown that evening. In reference to the cut, the transmission opened with a shot of a lit candle which was then sarcastically blown out by presenter Denis Tuohy. To establish the new identity and draw viewers to it. The production chosen was The Forsyte Saga, a adaptation of the novels by John Galsworthy, featuring well-established actors Kenneth More. Unlike BBC1 and ITV, BBC2 was broadcast only on the 625 line UHF system and this created a market for dual standard receivers which could switch between the two systems. On 1 July 1967, during the Wimbledon Championships, BBC2 became the first channel in Europe to begin broadcasts in colour. The thirteen part series Civilisation was created as a celebration of two millennia of western art and culture to showpiece the new colour technology, BBC1 and ITV later joined BBC2 on 625-line UHF band, but continued to simulcast on 405-line VHF until 1985
7.
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
8.
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
9.
Monty Python
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Monty Python were a British surreal comedy group who created their sketch comedy show Monty Pythons Flying Circus, which first aired on the BBC in 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series, the Python phenomenon developed from the television series into something larger in scope and impact, including touring stage shows, films, numerous albums, several books, and a stage musical. The Pythons influence on comedy has been compared to the Beatles influence on music, the Orlando Sentinel referred to their sketch show as not only one of the more enduring icons of 1970s British popular culture, but also an important moment in the evolution of television comedy. Broadcast by the BBC between 1969 and 1974, Flying Circus was conceived, written, and performed by its members Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Loosely structured as a show, but with an innovative stream-of-consciousness approach, it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in style. Following their television work, they began making films, which include Holy Grail, Life of Brian, pythonesque has entered the English lexicon as a result. Jones and Palin met at Oxford University, where they performed together with the Oxford Revue, Chapman and Cleese met at Cambridge University. Idle was also at Cambridge, but started a year after Chapman, Cleese met Gilliam in New York City while on tour with the Cambridge University Footlights revue Cambridge Circus. Chapman, Cleese, and Idle were members of the Footlights, which at that also included the future Goodies. During Idles presidency of the club, feminist writer Germaine Greer and broadcaster Clive James were members, following the success of Do Not Adjust Your Set, a tea-time childrens programme, ITV offered Gilliam, Idle, Jones, and Palin their own late-night adult comedy series together. At the same time, Chapman and Cleese were offered a show by the BBC, Cleese was reluctant to do a two-man show for various reasons, including Chapmans supposedly difficult and erratic personality. Cleese had fond memories of working with Palin on How To Irritate People, much has been made of the fact that the Monty Python troupe is the result of Cleeses desire to work with Palin and the chance circumstances that brought the other four members into the fold. The Pythons had a idea about what they wanted to do with the series. They were admirers of the work of Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore on Beyond the Fringe, and had worked on Frost and they enjoyed Cook and Moores sketch show Not Only. They decided that they would not bother to cap their sketches in the traditional manner. However, as they began assembling material for the show, the Pythons watched one of their heroes, Spike Milligan. Not only was the programme more irreverent and anarchic than any previous television comedy and it was clear that their new series would now seem less original, and Jones in particular became determined the Pythons should innovate. After much debate, Jones remembered an animation Gilliam had created for Do Not Adjust Your Set called Beware of the Elephants, Jones felt it would be a good concept to apply to the series, allowing sketches to blend into one another
