Marking 112 years since his birth, biographer Graham McCann explores the truth behind the private life and pleasures of actor and beloved sitcom star, John Le Mesurier.
Val Parnell was one of Britain's most significant and influential impresarios of the twentieth century. A major manager of the live variety circuit, a powerful promoter of talent and one of the pioneers of commercial television, he helped shape, maintain and move on what passed as popular entertainment in this country for the best part of fifty years.
On the 120th anniversary of her birth, Comedy Chronicles looks back at the life and career of Rita Webb, the comic actor who often played working class characters.
It might have been somewhat surprising at the time, but now, looking back at it, it seems quite an apt connection: a diarist drawn to a diary. The diarist in question was Kenneth Williams, and the diary was Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Madman.
This festive edition of Comedy Chronicles looks back at a strange tale of some strange tapes. It is about the television festivities from the latter part of the last century that were never meant to be televised, and were only meant to be seen by those behind the scenes.
Insalubrious boarding houses and idiosyncratic landladies were particularly popular topics for comic tale-telling throughout most of the twentieth century. Comedy Chronicles looks back at some of the well-known theatrical lodgings, including what became of poor Arthur the parrot.
