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- Music Artist
- Actress
- Composer
Amy Jade Winehouse was born on September 14, 1983 in Enfield, London, England and raised in Southgate, London, England to Janis Holly Collins (née Seaton), a pharmacist & Mitchell "Mitch" Winehouse, a window panel installer and taxi driver. Her family shared her love of theater and music. Amy was brought up on jazz music; She received her first guitar at age 13 and taught herself how to play. Young Amy Winehouse was a rebellious girl. At age 14, she was expelled from Sylvia Young Theatre School in Marylebone, London. At that time she pierced her nose and tattooed her body. She briefly attended the BRIT School in Croydon, and began her professional career at 16, performing occasional club gigs and recording low cost demos. At 19 years old, she recorded her debut album: Frank (2003), a jazz-tinged album that became a hit and earned her several award nominations. During the next several years, she survived a period of personal upheaval, a painful relationship, and struggles with substance abuse. Her final album, Back on Black (2006) was an international hit, and 'Rehab' made No. 9 on the US pop charts.
Her big break came in 2008. Amy Winehouse became the first British female to win 5 Grammy Awards on the same night, February 10th, 2008, including Best New Artist and Record of the Year for 'Rehab'. Her Grammy performance was broadcast from London via satellite, because she was unable to appear in person in Los Angeles due to temporary problems with her traveling visa. Following her success at the Grammy Awards, Winehouse gave a string of highly successful performances during the year 2008. In June, she was suddenly hospitalized with a serious lung condition. However, she left hospital for one evening to perform for Nelson Mandela on his 90th birthday celebration in London's Hyde Park. She sang her hits: Rehab & Valerie, drawing cheers and applause form the crowds and a smile from Mandela. Winehouse also performed for Roman Abramovich's party in Moscow; there she earned $2 million for her one-hour gig.
Amy Winehouse developed a distinctive style of her own. Her signature beehive hairstyle has become the model for fashion designers, while her vulnerability, her fragile personality and self-destructive behavior was regular tabloid news, and subject of criticism and controversy. In April 2008 she was named the second greatest "ultimate heroine" by the British population at large, and a month later was voted the second most hated personality in the UK. George Michael called her the "best female vocalist he has heard in his entire career," while Keith Richards warned that she "won't be around long" if her behavior doesn't change.
Musically, Amy Winehouse created a cross-cultural and cross-genre style. She experimented with an eclectic mix of jazz, soul, pop, reggae, world beat and R&B. She had a special ability to channel hurt and despair into her performances. Her voice, phrasing and delivery sometimes sounded like a mix between Billy Holliday, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan, and coupled with similarities in personal problems, she at times resembled another incarnation of legendary "Lady Blues".
Amy died at 27 years old on July 23, 2011 in her London home following a long-running battle with alcohol addiction. She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and her ashes were laid to rest in Edgwarebury Jewish Cemetery in London, United Kingdom. Her death caused considerable mourning worldwide.- Sheila Gish was born on 23 April 1942 in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Highlander (1986), Mansfield Park (1999) and Highlander: Endgame (2000). She was married to Denis Lawson and Roland Curram. She died on 9 March 2005 in Camden, London, England, UK.
- A superbly versatile character actor of lugubrious countenance and strong physical presence, Roger was the son of Charles Lloyd Pack, a frequent supporting actor in British films of the '50s and '60s. Roger was educated at Bedales, a prestigious co-educational school in Hampshire, noted for a laid-back approach and a pronounced emphasis towards arts, crafts and drama. With inspiration provided by his drama teacher and rather liking the attention and applause that came with being on stage, Lloyd Pack managed to attain A-levels in languages. After leaving school, aged nineteen, he successfully auditioned for RADA, where one of his teachers was the actor Peter Barkworth. Soon after, he made his stage debut in the Elizabethan play "The Shoemaker's Holiday" at Northampton Repertory Theatre. From the beginning, Lloyd Pack always thought of becoming a Shakespearean actor. However, his career took him on quite a different path.
His first television appearances were similar peripheral 'no-name parts' as cleaners, soldiers and constables. After years of toiling in relative obscurity, he finally managed to secure a recurring role as the vacuous, simple-minded road sweeper Colin 'Trigger' Ball in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses (1981). Appearing in nearly every episode of the long-running series, Lloyd Pack came to be identified with this character in the national consciousness to such an extent, that he could "not go anywhere without anyone going on about it".
His next popular casting was no less fortuitous: that of the flatulent, somewhat seedy farmer Owen Newitt in The Vicar of Dibley (1994), lusting after Dawn French's extrovert cleric (when not entertaining dubious thoughts about farm animals). On the big screen, Lloyd Pack reached a wider audience as Bartemius Crouch Sr, a ruthless Ministry of Magic functionary in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), destined to be killed by his Death Eater son, played by David Tennant. Still more dramatic was his role as evil megalomaniac John Lumic (who creates an army of cybermen in his pursuit of immortality) menacing Tennant and company in the Doctor Who (1963) two-parter Rise of the Cybermen (2006) and The Age of Steel (2006), set on a parallel Earth. Lloyd Pack thoroughly enjoyed participating in the iconic series.
Lloyd Pack's theatrical work encompassed performances at the National, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court. He was much acclaimed for roles in plays by Harold Pinter and latterly portrayed the Duke of Buckingham in "Richard III" at the Globe. On screen, he was glimpsed as Inspector Mendel in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) and as a friar, friend of Cardinal Della Rovere, in The Borgias (2011). The actor was self-effacing in private life and was much esteemed by his peers. He was an avid supporter of Tottenham Hotspurs, cricket and left-wing causes. - Margery Mason was born on 27 September 1913 in Hackney, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Princess Bride (1987), Love Actually (2003) and Les Misérables (1998). She was married to Peter Daminoff. She died on 26 January 2014 in Swiss Cottage, Camden, London, England, UK.
- Music Artist
- Actress
- Music Department
Patsy Cline was born Virginia Patterson Hensley on September 8, 1932 in Winchester, Virginia. Her brush with show business came at age four when she won a prize in an amateur tap dancing contest. By the time she entered grade school, her family was fully aware of her musical talent. On her eighth birthday, her mother presented her with a piano, on which Patsy learned more music patterns. On Sundays, she sang with the local church choir, and at age 14, was singing regularly on local radio station WINC (she got the job by walking fearlessly into the station and asking for an audition). When Patsy was 15, her parents divorced, reportedly due to her father's heavy drinking. Without her father around to pay the bills, Patsy helped her mother earn money by singing in local clubs in the evenings, and by day, was working at the local drug store, which led to her dropping out of high school a year later. In 1948, Patsy maneuvered herself backstage when 'Wally Fowler' brought his music show to her hometown. Patsy impressed Fowler with her singing, and he gave her the opportunity to audition to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. However, to her disappointment, the Opry reps said that she would not be ready for big-time country radio.
Patsy returned to Winchester and continued to sing in local clubs. She met and married Gerald Cline in 1952. That same year, she was featured in Bill Peer's Melody Playboys of Brunswick, Maryland. Peer got Patsy her first recording contract with Four Star Records in 1954. In late 1955, Patsy became a regular on the radio show "Town and Country Jamboree", a country-western program that broadcast in Washington, D.C. In 1957, Patsy finally got her big break when she appeared as a contestant on the television variety show Talent Scouts (1948), hosted by Arthur Godfrey. For her first television appearance, she selected a torch song she sang a year earlier, "Walkin' After Midnight". She won first place and became a regular on the show for the next two weeks. "Walkin' After Midnight" was released as a single and put Patsy on the top ten charts of country and pop music. However, her determined drive and ambition put a large strain her marriage and kept her away from her husband; as a result, Patsy and Gerald divorced soon after her television debut. In the late 1950s, Patsy put a hold on her career and married a second time, to Charlie Dick, and together they had two children. However, when she returned to singing, the long hours that kept her away put another strain on the marriage.
In 1960, Patsy was finally invited to join the Grand Old Opry and the following year she scored with her second single, "I Fall to Pieces". Producer Owen Bradley took advantage of Patsy's rich voice and backed her with lush string arrangements rather than the twangy sound of steel guitar, which was typical for country-western singers at the time. Anxious to be true to her roots, Patsy often expressed a desire to yodel and growl on her records, but she understood that this smoother sound was giving her career a major boost and used it during the next two years of album recordings. In March 1963, Patsy traveled from Nashville to Kansas City, where on March 5, 1963, she appeared at a benefit concert for the family of disc jockey Jack McCall, who had been killed in a traffic accident earlier that year. Immediately after her performance, she boarded a small plane back to Nashville along with country-western performers Cowboy Copas, Harold Hawkshaw Hawkins and pilot Randy Hughes. Approximately 85 miles west of Nashville, the plane ran into turbulence and crashed. There were no survivors. Shortly before her death, Patsy recorded the single "Sweet Dreams", which became #5 on the country charts after her untimely death at age 30 (her best-known song, "Crazy", was written by future country-western legend Willie Nelson). Ten years after her death, Patsy Cline was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the first female soloist chosen for the honor.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Eric Thompson was born on 9 November 1929 in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Dougal and the Blue Cat (1970), Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (1965) and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1970). He was married to Phyllida Law. He died on 30 November 1982 in Camden, London, England, UK.- Actress
- Writer
Jenny Laird was born on 13 February 1912 in Chorlton, Manchester, England, UK. She was an actress and writer, known for Black Narcissus (1947), Just William (1940) and The Forsyte Saga (1967). She was married to John Fernald. She died on 31 October 2001 in Camden, London, England, UK.- Actor
- Additional Crew
A gaunt, intense character actor of striking presence, Richard Gibbon Hurndall was educated at Scarborough College and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He acted professionally from 1930, initially in repertory theatre and later with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, his roles including Orlando in "As You Like It", Bassanio in "The Merchant of Venice" and Laertes in "Hamlet". Richard's powerful voice and precise diction were also perfectly suited to working in radio. Between 1949 and 1952, he was a member of the BBC radio drama repertory company. In October 1958, he took over as host of Radio Luxemburg's half-hour British version of Edward R. Murrow's "This I Believe". A year later, he was well cast as Sherlock Holmes in a BBC radio adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Sign of Four", transmitted over five weekly episodes.
From 1946, Hurndall made sporadic television appearances, but did not fully take to the medium until the mid 1960's. His incisive personality, combined with a natural ability to adopt diverse accents and dialects, led to him being cast as doctors, magistrates, aristocrats, and other authority figures of various ethnic backgrounds. By contrast, he was equally effective as a debonair underworld figure, Henry Mackleson, in Spindoe (1968). On the humorous side, he essayed a campy, effete antiques dealer in an episode of Steptoe and Son (1962) ("Any Old Iron?"); and alternated being sinister and droll, as Carne, a German general masterminding a rather unusual invasion of a Cornish fishing village at the onset of World War I, in the hilariously funny Ripping Yarns (1976) adventure, "Whinfrey's Last Case" .
His best known role was also destined to be one of his last. On the strength of his appearance in an episode of Blake's 7 (1978), Hurndall was cast as the First Doctor (formerly played by the late William Hartnell) in the 1983 feature length Doctor Who (1963) reunion special The Five Doctors (1983). The series' continuity adviser, Ian Levine, had spotted a resemblance between the two actors, an opinion with which Hartnell's widow apparently concurred. By his own admission, Hurndall entered the project with a measure of ambiguity, having had limited exposure to science fiction, or Doctor Who (1963), for that matter. Ultimately, he conformed perfectly to Hartnell's precise idiosyncratic mannerisms and intonation - a performance which proved more than adequate to the original. Sadly, Hurndall died within a few months of The Five Doctors (1983) going to air.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jack Haig was born on 5 January 1913 in Streatham, Lambeth, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for 'Allo 'Allo! (1982), Hugh and I (1962) and The Gnomes of Dulwich (1969). He was married to Sybil E Dunn. He died on 4 July 1989 in Hampstead, Camden, London, England, UK.- Jenny Tomasin shot to fame in the UK in the early 1970s when she joined the cast of Upstairs, Downstairs (1971) playing the scullery maid Ruby. She stayed with the series right until the end, appearing in forty one episodes. When the series ended in 1975, plans were drawn up for a spin-off series following the further adventures of Ruby with Hudson and Mrs Bridges. Sadly the series was never made following the sad death of Angela Baddeley who played Mrs Bridges.
After that, Tomasin joined Emmerdale Farm (1972) for a stint as Naomi Tolly from 1981-82 and made guest appearances in such shows as That's My Boy (1981) and Doctor Who (1963).
Tomasin worked mainly in the theatre after that. Shows including a tour of Lettice and Lovage and a West End run in 2004 in The Marquise by Noël Coward playing yet another maid, this time called Alice.
In later years Tomasin's TV appearances had been confined to talking about her time in Upstairs, Downstairs (1971) but in 2005 all this changed when she returned to Emmerdale Farm (1972) - this time as a new character Noreen Bell, a cantankerous villager who seems certain to cause strife for those who get in her way. - Susan Field was born on 18 October 1932 in Norfolk, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998), Frankenstein (1994) and The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975). She died on 19 March 2005 in Camden, London, England, UK.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Rosemary Martin was born on 17 December 1936 in Birmingham, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Tess (1979), Fox (1980) and Middlemarch (1994). She was married to Norman Boyack and Ron Eagleton. She died on 14 August 1998 in Camden, London, England, UK.- British character actor of Ukrainian-Jewish ancestry. Prolific on stage and screen, he was especially adept at impersonating people from diverse ethnicities, including Indians, Arabs, Japanese, Mexicans and Boers. He was a graduate of RADA and winner of the Forbes-Robertson and Kendal prizes. Morris frequently appeared with the Royal Exchange, the Bristol Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company. His many successes on stage included Professor Godbole in "A Passage to India" (1960) and Pozzo in "Waiting for Godot" (1980.) On screen, he specialised -- true to form -- in exotic oriental characters. His gallery of personae included Padmasambhava in "The Abominable Snowman" chapter of Doctor Who (1963), Detective Bose in Nine Hours to Rama (1963), Beirut police chief Takla in Department S (1969) ("A Fish Out of Water"), assorted shady Eastern Europeans in The Avengers (1961), The Rat Catchers (1966), and so on. Morris is best remembered as the insidious Thomas Cromwell in the BBC's The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), a role he was said to have researched by visiting Tudor castles and studying contemporary portraits.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lynn Dearth was born on 12 November 1946 in Essex, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Masterpiece Theatre: Sons and Lovers (1981), Churchill's People (1974) and Sweeney 2 (1978). She was married to David Gwillim. She died on 30 June 1994 in Camden, London, England, UK.- Jersey Joe Walcott was born on 31 January 1914 in Merchantville, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for The Harder They Fall (1956), Cain's Hundred (1961) and World's Heavyweight Championship: Joe Louis vs. Jersey Joe Walcott (1947). He died on 25 February 1994 in Camden, New Jersey, USA.
- Director
- Actor
- Producer
Philip Saville was born on 28 October 1930 in London, England, UK. He was a director and actor, known for Boys from the Blackstuff (1982), The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986) and The Buccaneers (1995). He was married to Nina Zuckerman and Jane Arden. He died on 22 December 2016 in Hampstead, Camden, London, England, UK.- Barbara Keogh was born on 21 April 1929 in Bucklow, Cheshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), EastEnders (1985) and Mysteries and Miracles (1965). She died on 25 October 2005 in Camden, London, England, UK.
- Jessica James was born on 7 March 1917 in Hartlepool, County Durham, England, UK. She was an actress, known for EastEnders (1985), The 10th Kingdom (2000) and The Great Kandinsky (1995). She died on 28 October 2010 in Camden, London, England, UK.
- David Willis Sr. was born on 13 November 1929 in Carneys Point, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Die Hard 2 (1990), Mortal Thoughts (1991) and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993). He was married to Alma Cecilia Raleigh and Marlene Willis. He died on 3 September 2009 in Camden, New Jersey, USA.
- Arthur Hewlett was born on 12 March 1907 in Southampton, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Avengers (1961), BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (1950) and Top Secret (1961). He was married to Margaret Denyer and Beryl Johnstone. He died on 16 February 1997 in Camden, London, England, UK.
- Anthony Newlands was born on 31 January 1925 in Edmonton, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Walk a Crooked Mile (1961), Driveway (1967) and Psycho-Circus (1966). He died on 6 October 1995 in Camden, London, England, UK.
- Neville Jason was born on 29 May 1934 in Marylebone, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for From Russia with Love (1963), The Message (1976) and Hamlet (1961). He died on 16 October 2015 in Camden, London, England, UK.
- Alan Coren, the writer and broadcaster who died aged 69, was one of Britain's most prolific humorists, producing newspaper columns and books in astonishing abundance; he was a former editor of Punch, a regular panellist on Radio 4's satirical show The News Quiz, and also appeared as a team captain on television's Call My Bluff.
Known to his newspaper readers as the Sage of Cricklewood, Coren turned out millions of words in columns of humour and barbed television criticism, as well as collections of comic essays ranging from Golfing for Cats (1975) to The Cricklewood Diet (1982) and, following the birth of his children, the Arthur series of children's books which he wrote between 1976 and 1983. Even 20 years ago Coren was estimating that he had published six million words, or 10 copies of War And Peace.
Fluent and industrious, Coren was a master of drollery: in an early piece about Beethoven spending an evening drinking, a concerned onlooker points out: "That was your Ninth."
Coren, who had made his name while still an undergraduate at Oxford, was also possessed of a dazzling intellect which he deployed with equal effect in his writing and in company: he was a brilliant conversationalist, whose machine-gun delivery dominated - and often silenced - the Punch lunches at which he presided as editor.
When The Daily Telegraph's Court Circular reported in 1980 that "the Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, was entertained at luncheon today by Mr Alan Coren", readers knew that the paper spoke no less than the truth.
Words rattled from him without cease, whether a column for a newspaper, a scorching piece of television criticism, a witty observation on the passing show, or the plot for the novel that he invariably never got round to writing. While colleagues reeled from his spectacular creativeness, Coren suffered from the journalist's gnat-like attention-span and preferred to sprint rather than knuckle down to the long haul.
At Punch, Coren - then an ambitious 28-year-old - became the youngest man to carve his name on the magazine's dining table, a long-standing tradition. When he came to preside over the magazine's lunches, they were often riotous affairs; colleagues remembered particularly a stunning double-act with the comedian and director Mel Brooks, with each sparking the other to more and more absurd jokes.
Coren's finest hour in editorial terms was as a rookie in charge of production on the night that President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963; his decision to stop the issue and lose it (the magazine contained a cartoon ridiculing Kennedy) was applauded by the management. His worst moment came in 1987 when he ran a cartoon of an upturned glass-bottomed boat with people staring out, above the caption: "And if you look up now you will see the rescue helicopter." To Coren's mortification, the magazine appeared a couple of days after the Zeebrugge ferry disaster.
As only the 11th editor in 147 years, Coren, who took up the post aged 39, was nevertheless rated Punch's last successful one, having joined it from university after sending in an unsolicited piece, and inched up the ladder to literary editor in 1966, then deputy editor in 1969 and editor in 1978, a position he held until his acrimonious departure in 1987.
As well as his work at Punch, Coren also developed a parallel career as a columnist, contributing television reviews to The Times for much of the 1970s, as well as a humorous column to the Daily Mail. On leaving Punch, he took over as editor of The Listener, the BBC's now-defunct weekly culture magazine, and continued to write for The Times and for The Mail On Sunday, for which he had worked as a television critic since 1984.
His arrival at The Listener prompted a sour spat with one of the magazine's star contributors, the cartoonist Barry Fantoni, who declared Coren's appointment to be "one of the greatest follies of all time" and accused Coren of "looking and sounding like a cabbie"; in riposte, Coren labelled Fantoni (who also drew for Private Eye) "Richard Ingrams's lickspittle".
Although he traded in words, listing his own favourite humorists as HL Mencken, Evelyn Waugh, Perelman, Wodehouse, Thurber, Richmal Crompton and Michael Frayn, Coren was also genuinely engaged and fascinated by television, and counted himself an enthusiastic viewer.
In 1992 Coren joined the Sunday Express as a humorous columnist, complaining that he had become jaded as a reviewer, having watched television for too long.
It was as a humorous writer that Coren flourished, constructing a netherworld of the satirical, the lunatic and the surreal, all vaguely anchored in Coren's own domestic purlieus of Cricklewood (in reality his own stamping ground was the frontier between NW2 and NW3, and - in recent years - Regent's Park).
Alan Coren was born in north London, the son of a builder-cum-plumber, and educated at East Barnet Grammar School. After taking a First in English at Wadham College, Oxford, he took a Master's degree and later studied in the United States on a Commonwealth Fellowship at Yale and at the University of California at Berkeley, for a doctorate in modern American literature.
He was writing on the side about America for the New Yorker and Punch when the then editor of Punch, Bernard Hollowood, suggested Coren could make a living from writing.
In between stints for The Observer, Tatler and the Times Literary Supplement, Coren also pursued a career in broadcasting, joining The News Quiz on Radio 4 at its inception in 1977 and becoming one of its most competitive participants. The following year he wrote The Loser, an unsuccessful television sitcom about a boxing promoter, which featured Leonard Rossiter.
Coren had been a team captain on the popular BBC2 word game Call My Bluff since 1996. He commanded a loyal following, but once confessed that he regarded broadcasting as a hobby rather than his first area of expertise. Indeed, he listed it among his recreations in Who's Who.
He generated nearly 20 of them, mainly collections of his newspaper columns with whimsical titles such as The Sanity Inspector (1974), The Lady From Stalingrad Mansions (1978), A Bit On The Side (1995) and The Cricklewood Dome (1998). In the mid-1970s, when he asked his publisher for ideas, he was told that books about golf always sold well, as did books about cats. Without missing a beat Coren announced that his next book would be called Golfing for Cats.
One of his most successful books was The Collected Bulletins of Idi Amin (1974), a miscellany of his Punch articles guying the former Ugandan dictator; this was despite its being rejected for publication in America on grounds of racial sensitivity. Coren's last book, 69 For One (2007), is due to be published later this year.
Although he spent much of his professional life as a freelance, he never suffered from the neuroses or paranoia that afflicts the breed, and only took on work that he wanted to do.
Coren succeeded John Cleese as rector of St Andrews University from 1973 until 1976 and was awarded an honorary DLitt from Nottingham University in 1993.
In May 2006 Coren was bitten by an insect that gave him septicaemia, which led to necrotising fasciitis.
Alan Coren married, in 1963, Anne Kasriel, a consultant anaesthetist, who survives him with their two children, Giles and Victoria, both journalists. - Barbara Yu Ling was born on 4 November 1933 in Singapore. She was an actress, known for Hardware (1990), The Avengers (1961) and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973). She was married to Ian Albery. She died on 6 April 1997 in Camden, London, England, UK.
- Actor
- Writer
Milo Sperber was born on 20 March 1911 in Poland. He was an actor and writer, known for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Operation Crossbow (1965) and The Woman in White (1982). He died on 22 December 1992 in Camden, London, England, UK.