The Many Faces Of...
- TV documentary
- BBC Two
- 2009 - 2016
- 14 episodes (3 series)
Comedy actors look back at their career, with archive footage and testimony from friends and colleagues. Features Sally Phillips.
Episode menu
Series 3, Episode 2 - The Many Faces Of Stanley Baxter
Further details
Celebrating the extraordinary career of entertainer Stanley Baxter, whose shows captivated huge audiences for twenty years before the cost of his epics priced him off our screens.
Tracing his origins to Scotland's variety and review stages, his story is told by admiring fans including Michael Grade, Barry Cryer, Bill Oddie and Gregor Fisher.
Notes
This episode was billed in some places as Stanley Baxter: The Many Faces Of.
Broadcast details
- Date
- Saturday 5th January 2013
- Time
- 8pm
- Channel
- BBC Two
- Length
- 60 minutes
Cast & crew
| Sally Phillips | Narrator |
| Stanley Baxter | Self |
| Louis Barfe | Self |
| James Gilbert | Self |
| Gregor Fisher | Self |
| Michael Grade | Self |
| Bill Oddie | Self |
| Barry Cryer | Self |
| Laurence Marcus | Self |
| Charles Stuart | Director |
| Charles Stuart | Producer |
| Stephen Stewart | Executive Producer |
| Alan Tyler | Executive Producer |
Video
Stanley Baxter remembers playing the Queen
Stanley Baxter remembers when he played the Queen for the first time on British television.
Featuring: Stanley Baxter.
Press
Stanley Baxter was a gifted mimic whose lavish shows were legends of opulence. During the 1970s and 80s Christmas wasn't complete without Baxter dressed as a woman to play anyone from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Mrs Bridges from Upstairs, Downstairs, or an entire Busby Berkeley dance troupe.
In this fond tribute Baxter himself (looking very good for 86) talks us through his career, from early days on stage in Glasgow to his heyday at LWT, where his indulgent boss Michael Grade wrote the cheques. Baxter was brilliant but his shows, apart from becoming too expensive for TV, had an in-built obsolescence and dated immediately.
Alison Graham, Radio Times, 5th January 2013A profile of the Glaswegian entertainer and talented mimic who performed most of his sketches in the guise of celebrities of the day. Famously, Baxter would use clever editing to portray all the characters in a scene and was the first person to play the current Queen on TV. We hear how he started his career in Scottish variety theatre and the Army entertainment corps, before going on to draw huge audiences during the Seventies and Eighties for his TV specials - until the cost of his epic productions priced him off our screens. Fans and friends including Michael Grade, Barry Cryer, Bill Oddie and Gregor Fisher pay tribute.
The Telegraph, 4th January 2013