1.
Panel show
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A panel show or panel game is a radio or television game show in which a panel of celebrities participates. Participants may compete with other, such as on The News Quiz, facilitate play by non-celebrity contestants, such as on Match Game/Blankety Blank. The genre can be traced to 1938, when Information Please debuted on U. S. radio, the earliest known television panel show is Play the Game, a charades show in 1946. The modern trend of comedy shows can find early roots with Stop Me If Youve Heard This One in 1939. While panel shows were popular in the past in the U. S. they are still very common in the United Kingdom. Panel shows also feature comedic banter, friendly ribbing and camaraderie among the panelists, scoring is often deemphasized in panel shows. The American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway, acknowledged this with the introduction, Welcome to Whose Line Is It Anyway, the show where everythings made up and the points dont matter. Panel shows can have any number of themes, many are topical and satirical, such as Wait Wait. Have I Got News for You, The News Quiz and Mock The Week, involves wordplay, Ive Got a Secret is about secrets, To Tell The Truth and Would I Lie to You. Deal with lies, and It Pays to Be Ignorant and Im Sorry I Havent A Clue are parodies, some panel shows are variations of classic parlor games. Twenty Questions is based on the game of the same name, Give Us a Clue is modeled after Charades. Frequently, a panel show features recurring panelists or permanent team captains, most shows are recorded before a studio audience. The first known example of a show in the world is the radio program Information Please. An evolution of the show format, Information Please added the key element of a panel of celebrities, largely writers and intellectuals. Listeners would mail in questions, winning prizes for stumping the panel, U. S. panel shows transferred to television early in the mediums history, with the first known example being Play the Game, a charades show that aired on DuMont and ABC beginning in 1946. The celebrity charades concept has been replicated numerous times since then, the most popular adaptation was Pantomime Quiz, airing from 1947 to 1959, and having runs on each of the four television networks operating at the time. Other charades shows have included Stump the Stars, Movietown, RSVP, Celebrity Charades, Showoffs, TV panel shows saw their peak of popularity in the 1950s and 60s, when CBS ran the three longest-running panel shows in prime time, Whats My Line. Ive Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth, at times, they were among the top ten shows on U. S. television, and they continue to experience occasional revivals
2.
BBC Radio 4
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BBC Radio 4 is a radio station owned and operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967, the station controller is Gwyneth Williams, and the station is part of BBC Radio and the BBC Radio department. The station is broadcast from the BBCs headquarters at Broadcasting House and it is also available through Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media and on the Internet. It is notable for its news bulletins and programmes such as Today and The World at One, BBC Radio 4 is the second most popular British domestic radio station by total hours, after Radio 2 – and the most popular in London and the South of England. It recorded its highest audience, of 11 million listeners, in May 2011 and was UK Radio Station of the Year at the 2003,2004 and 2008 Sony Radio Academy Awards and it also won a Peabody Award in 2002 for File On 4, Export Controls. Costing £71.4 million, it is the BBCs most expensive national radio network and is considered by many to be its flagship. There is no comparable British commercial network, Channel 4 abandoned plans to launch its own speech-based digital radio station in October 2008 as part of a £100m cost cutting review, in 2010 Gwyneth Williams replaced Mark Damazer as Radio 4 controller. Damazer became Master of St Peters College, Oxford, music and sport are the only fields that largely fall outside the stations remit. It broadcasts occasional concerts, and documentaries related to forms of both popular and classical music, and the long-running music-based Desert Island Discs. As a result, for around 70 days a year listeners have to rely on FM broadcasts or increasingly DAB for mainstream Radio 4 broadcasts – the number relying solely on long wave is now a small minority. The cricket broadcasts take precedence over on-the-hour news bulletins, but not the Shipping Forecast, as well as news and drama, the station has a strong reputation for comedy, including experimental and alternative comedy, many successful comedians and comedy shows first appearing on the station. The BBC Home Service was the predecessor of Radio 4 and broadcast between 1939 and 1967 and it had regional variations and was broadcast on medium wave with a network of VHF FM transmitters being added from 1955. Radio 4 replaced it on 30 September 1967, when the BBC renamed many of its radio stations. For a time during the 1970s Radio 4 carried regional news bulletins Monday to Saturday and these were broadcast twice at breakfast, at lunchtime and an evening bulletin was aired at 5. 55pm. There were also programme variations for the parts of England not served by BBC Local Radio stations and these included Roundabout East Anglia, a VHF opt-out of the Today programme broadcast from BBC Easts studios in Norwich each weekday from 6.45 am to 8.45 am. Roundabout East Anglia came to an end in 1980, when local services were introduced to East Anglia with the launch of BBC Radio Norfolk. All regional news bulletins broadcast from BBC regional news bases around England ended in August 1980 apart from in the south west, in September 1991 it was decided that the main Radio 4 service would be on FM as coverage had extended to cover almost all of the UK. Opt-outs were transferred to long wave, currently Test Match Special, extra shipping forecasts, The Daily Service, long wave very occasionally opts out at other times, such as to broadcast special services, the most recent being when Pope Benedict XVI visited Britain in 2010
3.
Miles Jupp
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Miles Hugh Barrett Jupp is an English comedian and actor. Beginning his career as a comedian, he first became known on British television as the inventor Archie. His profile rose in Britain, after a spate of appearances on panel shows. In September 2015, Jupp replaced Sandi Toksvig as the host of The News Quiz on BBC Radio 4, Jupp was born in London, the son of a minister in the United Reformed Church. During his time at university, he performed with improvised comedy troupe the Improverts, Jupp won So You Think Youre Funny. Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year in 2001, and was a Perrier Award Best Newcomer nominee in 2003, Jupp is best known for playing Archie the Inventor in CBeebies Balamory. He also had a role in the BBC Scotland comedy programme Live Floor Show, in 2007, Jupp appeared fleetingly in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as a television weatherman, who complained about an incredibly hot drought. Following this role he appeared in BBC Scotlands comedy Gary, Tank Commander as Captain Fanshaw, in 2009, he appeared briefly in the film Sherlock Holmes as a waiter. In the same year, he appeared in Stewart Lees Comedy Vehicle. In 2010, Jupp appeared on Mock the Week, Michael McIntyres Comedy Roadshow, and as Nigel and he also appeared as an under secretary in the film Made in Dagenham. In January 2011, Jupp was a member with Goldie. In May and November 2011, and in April 2012, he appeared as a panellist on both Have I Got News for You and Would I Lie To You. On 22 August 2011, he appeared as the lunchtime guest on Test Match Special, where he revealed a love of cricket and that he had worked with the Test Match Special team and this became the basis of the book Fibber in the Heat. In October 2011, he appeared in Mock the Week. Jupp had a role in Johnny English Reborn in 2011. He appeared in Series 4, Episode 4 of the panel game Argumental. In 2012, he appeared again on Mock the Week, in January 2012, he won an episode of Celebrity Mastermind. In February 2012, he appeared on BBC Lets Dance for Sport Relief and he featured in the 2014 World War II film, The Monuments Men, as British officer Major Fielding
4.
John Lloyd (producer)
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He is currently the presenter of BBC Radio 4s The Museum of Curiosity, a spin-off of QI. Lloyd was born in Dover, England and his father, H. L. Harpy Lloyd, was an Anglo-Irish captain with the Royal Navy. As a child Lloyd lived in different places, owing to his fathers job. This led him to attend school only at the age of 9½. He was educated at West Hill Park School in Titchfield, Hampshire, a place where he claims bullying was endemic and he read Law at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a member of the Footlights. There he befriended Douglas Adams, with whom he shared a flat. Lloyd is the nephew of John Hardress Lloyd. Lloyd worked as a producer at the BBC between 1974 and 1978 and created The News Quiz, The News Huddlines, To The Manor Born. He also produced The Burkiss Way, Lloyd then worked as a TV producer at both the BBC and ITV 1979–1989, where he created Not the Nine OClock News and Spitting Image. He also produced all four Blackadder series, Lloyd was originally to have been the host of BBC topical news quiz Have I Got News For You, with the programme initially intended to be called John Lloyds Newsround. A pilot episode of the show was recorded under this name in mid-1990, with Lloyd hosting alongside team captains Ian Hislop, Lloyd subsequently decided to pull out of hosting the programme full-time and the pilot episode was never broadcast. Lloyd was replaced by Angus Deayton as host and the show was renamed Have I Got News for You in time for its debut on BBC2 later that year, Lloyd is married to Sarah Lloyd and has three children. He has worked as a TV commercials director on and off since 1987 and his first new TV series for 14 years, QI, starring Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, began on 11 September 2003 at 10pm on BBC Two for a run of 12 episodes. In its eighth series, which started on BBC One in September 2010, all episodes of QI have been directed by Ian Lorimer. Lloyd currently presents the radio series The Museum of Curiosity, which he co-created with producers Richard Turner, in December 2011, Lloyd appeared as part of the winning Trinity College, Cambridge, team on the Christmas University Challenge. Lloyd was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting, Lloyd was also awarded an honorary degree from Southampton Solent University. In August 2014, Lloyd was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to Septembers referendum on that issue. His most recent work,1,411 Quite Interesting Facts to Knock You Sideways, a collaboration with John Mitchinson and James Harkin, was published in 2014 by Faber and Faber
5.
Leroy Anderson
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Leroy Anderson, was an American composer of short, light concert pieces, many of which were introduced by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Fiedler. John Williams described him as one of the great American masters of light orchestral music, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Swedish parents, Anderson was given his first piano lessons by his mother, who was a church organist. He continued studying piano at the New England Conservatory of Music, in 1925 Anderson entered Harvard University, where he studied musical harmony with Walter Spalding, counterpoint with Edward Ballantine, canon and fugue with William C. Hill and Walter Piston, composition with Walter Piston and double bass with Gaston Dufresne and he also studied organ with Henry Gideon. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, Magna cum laude in 1929 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, in Harvard University Graduate School, he studied composition with Walter Piston and Georges Enescu and received a Master of Arts in Music in 1930. At the time he was working as organist and choir director at the East Milton Congregational Church, leading the Harvard University Band, and conducting and arranging for dance bands around Boston. Andersons first work was the 1938 Jazz Pizzicato, but at just over ninety seconds the piece was too short for a three-minute 78-RPM single of the period, Fiedler suggested writing a companion piece and Anderson wrote Jazz Legato later that same year. The combined recording went on to one of Andersons signature compositions. In 1942 Leroy Anderson joined the U. S. Army, counter Intelligence Corps as a translator and interpreter, in 1945 he was reassigned to the Pentagon as Chief of the Scandinavian Desk of Military Intelligence. However his duties did not prevent him from composing, and in 1945 he wrote The Syncopated Clock, Anderson became a reserve officer and was recalled to active duty for the Korean War. In 1951 Anderson wrote his first hit, Blue Tango, earning a Golden Disc and his pieces and his recordings during the fifties conducting a studio orchestra were immense commercial successes. Blue Tango was the first instrumental recording ever to one million copies. His most famous pieces are probably Sleigh Ride and The Syncopated Clock, in February 1951, WCBS-TV in New York City selected Syncopated Clock as the theme song for The Late Show, the WCBS late-night movie. Anderson started the work during a wave in August 1946. The Boston Pops recording of it was the first pure orchestral piece to reach No.1 on the Billboard Pop Music chart, from 1952 to 1961, Andersons composition Plink, Plank, Plunk. was used as the theme for the CBS panel show Ive Got A Secret. Andersons musical style employs creative instrumental effects and occasionally use of sound-generating items such as typewriters. Anderson wrote his Piano Concerto in C in 1953 but withdrew it, in 1988 the Anderson family decided to publish the work. Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra released the first recording of this work, four other recordings, including one for piano, in 1958, Anderson composed the music for the Broadway show Goldilocks with orchestrations by Philip J. Lang
6.
Simon Hoggart
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Simon David Hoggart was an English journalist and broadcaster. He wrote on politics for The Guardian, and on wine for The Spectator, until 2006 he presented The News Quiz on Radio 4. His journalism sketches have been published in a series of books and he was the son of the sociologist Richard Hoggart and Mary Holt Hoggart. His brother is the Times television critic Paul Hoggart and he lived in South London with his wife, Alyson, a clinical psychologist, and their two children, Amy and Richard. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in mid-2010 and died of the disease on 5 January 2014. Hoggart joined The Guardian in 1968, later becoming the American correspondent for The Observer, having written on politics for some years in Punch magazine, Hoggart became the Parliamentary sketch writer for The Guardian in 1993. He also wrote a column for The Spectator. In the early 1980s he chaired the radio comedy show The News Quiz, in March 2006, Hoggart presented his last edition of The News Quiz commenting, Im getting a bit clapped out and jaded, and I think thats beginning to show. In 1998 he was part of BBC Radio 4s 5-part political satire programme Cartoons, Lampoons and Buffoons and he was also a contributor to the Grumpy Old Men and wrote for Punch magazine and an occasional column for New Humanist magazine. Hoggart was also a celebrity panellist on BBC2s antiques quiz show Going, Going. He coined the phrase the law of the reverse, which states that if the opposite of a statement is plainly absurd. The political sex scandal involving Quinn contributed to the resignation of David Blunkett from the Cabinet
7.
Barry Took
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Barry Took was an English writer, television presenter and comedian. His decade and a writing partnership with Marty Feldman led to the television series Bootsie and Snudge. He is also remembered in the UK for presenting Points of View, a BBC Television programme featuring viewers letters on the BBCs output, and he attended Stationers School but quit school at age 15. His older brother Philip would eventually work for the US Space Program before dying as a young man, with his limited education, Took found work as an office boy for a publisher and a cinema projectionist. In terms of his writing, Tooks best work was written in collaboration with Marty Feldman. The two men wrote for television shows in the 1950s and 1960s, including The Army Game and its spin-off Bootsie. He co-wrote Beyond Our Ken for two series with Eric Merriman for BBC Radio before leaving after a disagreement with his fellow writer, with Marty Feldman he wrote most episodes of Round the Horne, the intermittent partnership between them continued until 1974. He resigned from this position when Stella Richman, his superior, on the Move, a programme linked to a national campaign against adult illiteracy, was written by Took and featured Bob Hoskins and Donald Gee. He was involved in two television series on the issue, Your Move and Write Away. In 1977 Took hosted his own sketch show, Took. Also featuring Robin Bailey, Chris Emmett, Andrew Sachs and Gwen Taylor, in 1979 he became chairman of The News Quiz on BBC Radio 4, a role he filled for the next 17 years. In the same year he became a presenter of Points of View and he had seven books published, including his autobiography and several histories of comedy. He also wrote Kenneth Williamss life story for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in 1996, during his time with the Royal Air Force he met his first wife, Dorothy Dot Bird, who was serving in the Womens Royal Air Force. They married in 1950 and had three children, but were later divorced, in 1964 he married Lynden Lyn Leonard, this second marriage resulting in a daughter named Elinor. The couple separated in 1999 and eventually divorced, Took was a self-confessed alcoholic, and later acknowledged its detrimental effects on his personal life and career. He also spoke publicly about his experiences with depression and undergoing extensive psychotherapy for several years, after suffering from bladder cancer for a period during the 1970s, in 1999 he was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, and suffered a stroke four weeks after undergoing major surgery. He died at age 73 on Easter Sunday,2002 in a home in Enfield. A Point of View Barry Took at the Internet Movie Database Barry Took – Comedy Zone BBC News article reporting his death
8.
Sandi Toksvig
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Sandra Birgitte Sandi Toksvig OBE is a Danish-British comedian, writer, actor, presenter and producer on British radio and television, and political activist. On 21 October 2016, Toksvig took over from Stephen Fry as host of the BBC television quiz show QI and she was the host of The News Quiz on BBC Radio 4 from 2006 until June 2015. She also presented the quiz show 1001 Things You Should Know on Channel 4 television in 2012–13, and began hosting a revived series of the same channels game show Fifteen to One on 5 April 2014. She is joint founder of the Womens Equality Party, was installed as Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth in October 2012, on 16 March 2017, Toksvig was announced as the new co-presenter of The Great British Bake Off, alongside comedian Noel Fielding. Her father, Claus Toksvig, was a Danish journalist and broadcaster and foreign correspondent, so Toksvig spent most of her youth outside Denmark and her mother, Julie Anne Toksvig is British. She attended Tormead School, an independent girls school near Guildford and her first job was a position as a follow spot operator for the musical Jesus Christ Superstar at the age of 18. She read law, archaeology and anthropology at Girton College, Cambridge, graduating with a first-class degree, One of her law tutors was Lord Denning. Toksvig began her career at Girton College, Cambridge University. She was there at the time as fellow members Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery and Emma Thompson. She was also a member of the universitys Light Entertainment Society and she started her television career on childrens series, presenting No. 73, the Sandwich Quiz, The Saturday Starship, Motormouth, Gilberts Fridge and on programmes such as Island Race and The Talking Show. Toksvig said the allegations of inappropriate behaviour at the BBC did not surprise me at all, in the comedy circuit, Toksvig performed at the first night of the Comedy Store in London and was once part of their Players, an improvisational comedy team. In television, she appeared as a panellist in comedy shows such as Call My Bluff, mock the Week, QI and Have I Got News for You, where she appeared on the very first episode in 1990. She was also the host of What the Dickens, a Sky Arts quiz show and her final show was first broadcast on 26 June. She presented Radio 4s travel programme Excess Baggage until it was axed in 2012, in 1993 Toksvig wrote a musical, Big Night Out at the Little Sands Picture Palace, for Nottingham Playhouse, co-starring with Anita Dobson and Una Stubbs. In 2002, it was re-written, with Dilly Keane, for the Watford Palace Theatre, Toksvig and Elly Brewer wrote a Shakespeare deconstruction, The Pocket Dream, which Toksvig performed at the Nottingham Playhouse and which transferred to the West End for a short run. The pair also wrote the 1992 TV series The Big One and she has appeared in a number of stage plays, including Androcles and the Lion, Much Ado About Nothing and The Comedy of Errors. In 1996, she narrated the Dragons, interactive CD-ROM published by Oxford University Press and developed by Inner Workings, along with Harry Enfield
