A new book and 75-minute DVD collection examining and celebrating the all-too-short life and career of star entertainer, comedian and early TV favourite Dickie Henderson, a ratings-winning ITV star through the 1950s, 60s and 70s before his premature death in 1985 at the age of only 62.
Includes two episodes...
"Coming from Glasgow, it's weird, I don't really tell jokes, like Irish jokes and all that. I tell wee stories. And some of them don't even have punchlines. But you'll get used to it as the night goes on, and on, and on, and on and on..."
In December 2018,...
From its first episode in 1973, Open All Hours was an instant hit. Audiences around Britain loved its familiar setting, good-natured humour, and the hilarious partnership of Ronnie Barker and David Jason. Whilst it only ran for 26 episodes, it firmly cemented itself as a British comedy classic.
To celebrate...
The behind-the-scenes story of one of the most successful and admired sitcoms of the 1980s.
In 1977 the BBC commissioned a new satirical sitcom set in Whitehall. Production of its first series was stalled, however, by the death throes of Jim Callaghan's Labour government and the 'Winter of Discontent'; Auntie...
Back in the day, if you wanted to raise money you stood on street corner with a tin and a smile. That is until Mr John Cleese rounded up a few friends in 1976 for Amnesty International's first fundraising show, A Poke In The Eye (With A Sharp Stick). Since...
In September 1981, BBC1 screened the first episode of a British sitcom set in a high-rise block of council flats in Peckham, south London - 9 million people tuned in. 15 years, seven series and over 60 episodes later, 24.3 million people watched the final instalment of Only Fools And...
As Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army, John Le Mesurier was the epitome of insouciance and languor. Cuffs undone, a half smile on his lips, oozing charm for the ladies to the pompous bantam cock that was Captain Mainwaring everything about his deputy spoke lounge lizard rather than soldier.
The real...
With his sly little moustache, broad gap-toothed grin, garish waistcoats and ostentatious cigarette holder, Terry-Thomas was known as an absolute bounder, both on-screen and off. Graham McCann's hugely entertaining biography celebrates the life and career of a very English rascal.
Born in 1911 into an ordinary suburban family, Thomas Terry...
Fawlty Towers was only on our screens for 12 half-hour episodes, but it has stayed in our lives ever since. The Major; 'Don't mention the war!'; 'He's from Barcelona'; Basil the Rat - everyone has a favourite line, moment or character.
In this, the first biography of the show, Graham...
This is the story of how four people, grouped together inside a set of offices five floors above a greengrocer's shop on Shepherd's Bush Green in West London, launched a golden age of British comedy.
On any weekday morning, if you dared to clamber over the crates of fruit and...