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1-20 of 20
- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
George Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou in Finchley, north London, in the United Kingdom, to Lesley Angold (Harrison), a dancer, and Kyriacos Panayiotou, a restaurateur. His father was a Greek Cypriot, and his mother was of English background. He first discovered fame as a musician when he and school friend, Andrew Ridgeley, formed the pop group Wham!. Success came fast and furious with their first album, 'Fantastic' (1983) hitting the UK number one spot. Wham! survived for five years and during that time the group notched up four number one singles and two number one albums. Most of their other releases made top three. George also contributed to the Band Aid Single 'Do They Know It's Christmas' (1984), and scored two further solo number one hits with 'Careless Whisper' and 'A Different Corner'.
Following the break-up of Wham!, George went on to have a hugely successful career as a solo artist, his debut album 'Faith' (1987) - and the single of the same name - both achieving instant and international success. The album has since been certified Diamond.
Over the last four decades George has notched up 8 number one albums in the and 13 number one singles in the UK (including Wham!, Band Aid, and the 'Five Live' EP). In the U.S. he has achieved 2 number one albums and 10 number one singles, with numerous other number one hits throughout the rest of the world.
He has performed duets with artists including Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Queen, and Lisa Stansfield, and actively participates in charitable causes, Live Aid and the Freddie Mercury concert for AIDS being just two of the more prominent examples. According to a BBC documentary, George donated more than five million pounds towards various charities. Whilst with Wham!, he donated all the proceeds of 'Last Christmas' (1984) to charity. The single reached number two in the UK and George also performed simultaneously on the number one charity record 'Do They Know It's Christmas?'.
George released the single 'December Song' in 2008 as a free download: his hope was that purchasers would donate money to charity.
He remained in contact with his Wham! partner and long-time friend Andrew Ridgeley until his death in 2016.- Michael Portillo was born on 26 May 1953 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He is a writer and editor, known for Great American Railroad Journeys (2016), Railways of the Great War (2014) and Great British Railway Journeys (2010). He has been married to Carolyn Claire Eadie since 12 February 1982.
- Peter Copley (20 May 1915 - 7 October 2008) was a British television, film and stage actor.
Copley was born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, son of the master printers, John Copley and Ethel Gabain.
He studied acting at the Old Vic school under Harcourt Williams and Murray Macdonald. He made his stage debut as the jailer in the Old Vic production of The Winter's Tale in 1932, and his West End debut three years later. His wartime naval service (1940-41) was sandwiched between a wide range of theatrical work, including a tour of south America with Edward Stirling (1936), a season at the Gate, Dublin (1939), wartime touring and a spell as director of the Worthing rep (1945). From 1945 to 1950, he was at the center of Olivier's Old Vic Company at the New Theatre, St Martin's Lane. He would talk about performing in Hamburg immediately after the war - seeing SS men sitting, broken, on the pavement, and finding a copy of Mein Kampf alongside the Bible in a dressing room.
Review after review singled Peter out - as a great swordsman in Cyrano de Bergerac (1945) opposite Ralph Richardson, or as the comic Ananias in the Old Vic's The Alchemist (1947), years later at the Duke of York Theatre in Tom Stoppard's Artist Descending a Staircase (1980), or for his Teiresias in Katie Mitchell's Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Phoenician Women (1995). He loved working at the RSC, in productions including The Cherry Orchard (1997) and Henry IV part II (2000).
He appeared on television hundreds of times, in everything from The Forsyte Saga (1967) to The Avengers (1961), The Bill (1984), and One Foot in the Grave (1990). His last appearance was as Greyhald Spold in Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic (2008) in 2008.
He was in many movies, including a role as the Jeweller alongside The Beatles in Help! (1965), and worked with some of the great directors. In 2005, he was in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005) and returned from Poland (where it was shot) with stories of how the director coaxed and bullied the child performers. He was impressed, a little shocked, but was, at 90, thrilled that, watching the children and director work, he still felt he was learning about acting. This, from a man who had worked with Steven Spielberg on Empire of the Sun (1987) and appeared in epoch-defining films such as Basil Dearden's Victim (1961).
It was this openness that made Peter a special actor. He was delicate, subtle and always stimulated. Not necessarily powerful or bombastic, he knew how to listen and to react, holding the audience - in any medium - by drawing them in rather than hitting them hard. He was never tedious about acting. Highly intelligent, well read and knowledgeable, he believed that his craft came first from instinct and observation, and that intellect could get in the way.
Peter had been a Communist party member in the 1940s and early 50s, and while he renounced the Soviet model, he remained a committed socialist. He trained as a lawyer and was called to the Middle Temple bar in 1963, though he never practiced. He was actively involved in the actors' union Equity and, until recently, was a venerable part of the campaign to reopen the Bristol Old Vic. Between 1980 and 1995, he appeared in 25 theater productions including a heartbreaking John of Gaunt in Richard II (1985) and the ghost and player king in Hamlet (1991).
Copley's TV credits included Thorndyke (1964), A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia (1992), The Saint (1962), The Avengers (1961) and The New Avengers (1976), The Forsyte Saga (1967), Mogul (1965) (originally, The Troubleshooters), The Champions (1968), Department S (1969), Doomwatch (1970), Z Cars (1962), Fall of Eagles (1974), Survivors (1975), Father Brown (1974), Doctor Who (1963), Sutherland's Law (1973), Tales of the Unexpected (1979), Miss Marple: Nemesis (1987), Lovejoy (1986), The Bill (1984), Mystery!: Cadfael (1994), and One Foot in the Grave (1990).
Margaret Tabor was Peter's third wife, and they had a remarkable partnership. They had moved to Bristol in 1981. Copley died in 2008 at the age of 93. He was survived by his third wife, his daughter Fanny by his second wife, and by stepchildren Gid and Emma. - Peter Murray-Hill was born on 20 April 1908 in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Rhythm Serenade (1943), House of Mystery (1940) and The House of the Arrow (1940). He was married to Phyllis Calvert. He died on 25 November 1957 in England, UK.
- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
Simon Le Bon was born on 27 October 1958 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He is an actor and composer, known for The Saint (1997), Donnie Darko (2001) and Layer Cake (2004). He has been married to Yasmin Le Bon since 27 December 1985. They have three children.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Gilbert Taylor was born on 21 April 1914 in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), Flash Gordon (1980) and The Omen (1976). He was married to Dee Vaughan and Eileen Donnelly. He died on 23 August 2013 in Newport, Isle of Wight, England, UK.- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Geoffrey Perkins, died aged just 55, was a comedy writer, producer and performer and, as head of comedy at BBC Television from 1995 until 2001, presided over such popular series as The Royle Family and Jonathan Creek; in a broadcasting career spanning more than 30 years he worked with stars including Harry Enfield, Angus Deayton and Catherine Tate.
He first made his mark as a radio producer with the cult classic The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and, also on Radio 4, the mystifyingly daft Mornington Crescent segment on I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue, the show billed as "the antidote to panel games". A relaxed, calm figure with a wry sense of humour, Perkins not only delivered a string of modern hit series during his six years in charge of the BBC television comedy output - including The Royle Family and The Fast Show - but also persuaded David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst to star in a fresh series of the 1980s classic Only Fools and Horses, the first of which was screened at Christmas 2001. Perkins often confessed himself frustrated by the corporation's "maddening" bureaucracy, and internal hostility towards situation comedy, which he often heard dismissed as "lowbrow fodder". After six years in the job, he returned to making programmes in the independent production sector.
Geoffrey Howard Perkins was born on February 22 1953 and educated at Harrow County Grammar School where his friends included Nigel Sheinwald (now, as Sir Nigel, British ambassador to Washington), Michael Portillo and Clive Anderson, with whom he ran the debating society. From an early age he took an active part in school drama and by the time he was a teenager was known as one of the school's comedians. In 1970 he and Clive Anderson wrote a revue, Happy Poison, which was produced as a Christmas entertainment to raise money for charity.
After Lincoln College, Oxford, where he read English as an exhibitioner, Perkins asked about joining the BBC but was advised to take a job in commercial shipping. Joining the Ocean Transport and Trading Company (in the same intake as his confrère Portillo), Perkins was put to work studying waste timber in Liverpool. Neither recruit lasted long. In 1977, having written and directed the Oxford University revues of 1974 and 1975, Perkins joined a vintage intake of talent to BBC Radio's light entertainment department that included Cambridge graduates such as John Lloyd and Griff Rhys-Jones. Encouraged by the new department head David Hatch, one of Perkins's first tasks was to rejuvenate I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue, launched in 1972, by introducing the deliberately incomprehensible Mornington Crescent round. It became one of the show's enduring highlights. Early in 1978 Perkins, at 25, took over from Simon Brett as producer of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the science-fiction based comedy being devised by Douglas Adams, a famously slow writer with a history of missed deadlines. Perkins had to chivvy Adams along, and while Adams's old Cambridge friend John Lloyd was drafted in to write large sections of the later episodes, it was Perkins who helped Adams finish the scripts. Drawing on the resources of the Radiophonic Workshop, Perkins also marshalled his sound sources into weird new forms, and devised a range of voice treatments for the actors playing aliens that broke new ground. The result was one of the funniest and most original comedies of postwar radio, winning critical and popular acclaim and - by appealing to both high- and low-brow tastes - managing to alter entrenched public perceptions of Radio 4. "The intellectuals compared it to Swift," noted Perkins, "and the 14-year-olds enjoyed hearing depressed robots clanking around."
With Angus Deayton, Perkins co-wrote and starred (as Mike Flex) in the sketch show Radio Active, which poked fun at the amateurishness of some local radio broadcasting, and which transferred to television as KYTV. In 1988 Perkins left the BBC to become a director of Hat Trick Productions, one of the leading independendent companies, whose comedy hits included Have I Got News For You, Spitting Image, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Drop The Dead Donkey, The Harry Enfield Television Programme and the Bafta award-winning Father Ted. He returned in 1995 to become head of comedy for BBC Television. Unusually, he insisted that his continued role as a programme producer was written into his contract. But Perkins came to despair of official BBC snootiness about comedy (one annual report dismissed it with the phrase "all the way from high-value costume drama right the way down to sitcom"). With some 30 new scripts crossing his desk every week (he was a meticulous script editor, carefully ticking every line he thought would raise a laugh), he not only found himself culturally marginalised at the BBC - "Unfortunately, the term sitcom implies a great disdain. People say it with a curl of their lips" - but also hamstrung by the inevitable bureaucracy which, he complained, hindered programme making. As the constraints of the John Birt era multiplied, Perkins spent more time on budgets rather than on creativity. What he called "seismic changes" in the way Birt ran the BBC had "set the people that produce programmes in direct opposition to the people responsible for actually paying for and broadcasting them. "There have been occasions when you say, 'Let's just make a deal', knowing everyone is unhappy; where no one gets the budget they want to make their programme. There are people who are inspired by that, but I'm not one of them." From 2001, after leaving his BBC management post, Perkins returned to the creative side of programme-making with Tiger Aspect, the independent production company behind such shows as Mr Bean and The Vicar of Dibley. He produced The Catherine Tate Show, The Fast Show and Father Ted for Channel 4, and Benidorm for ITV. His latest BBC production for Tiger Aspect, Harry and Paul, starring Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, starts next week.
Perkins received many awards in the course of his career, including a Sony award for Radio Active in the 1980s, and a grand prix and silver rose of Montreux in 1992 for its television spin-off KYTV. Geoffrey Perkins married, in 1986, Lisa Braun, a BBC studio manager on The Hitch-Hiker's Guide. She survived him with a daughter and a son. Their first child suffered a cot death in the 1980s.- Writer
- Actor
Dave Cash was born on 18 July 1942 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He was a writer and actor, known for Mogul (1965), The Dave Cash Radio Show (1972) and The American Way (1986). He was married to Sara Davies, Monica Evans and Dawn Lane. He died on 21 October 2016 in the UK.- Jayne Peach was born in 1950 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. She is an actress, known for To Sir, with Love (1967), Z Cars (1962) and The Dickie Henderson Show (1960). She has been married to Malolcm Knight since 1980. She was previously married to Graham Payne.
- Phillada Sewell was born on 20 May 1910 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for A Room with a View (1985), Maurice (1987) and Fredric March Presents Tales from Dickens (1959). She died on 24 November 1998 in Buckinghamshire, England, UK.
- Music Department
- Sound Department
- Additional Crew
Steve Price was born on 17 February 1967 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He is known for GoldenEye (1995), Fool's Gold (2008) and Limitless (2011). He died on 8 September 2017.- Actor
- Location Management
- Producer
Michael C. Burgess was trained in physical theater at Fooltime Centre for Circus Skills & Performing Arts in Bristol, England, by Guy Dartnell and Frankie Anderson. Since then, he has specialized in broad comedy and high drama.
His stage résumé includes plays by John Mortimer, Edgar Allan Poe and Tom Stoppard, performed, respectively at The Curtain Theatre (London, England), Danger House and Cygnet Theatre (both in San Diego, California). For his performance in the British farce Birthday Suite, in 2005, he was nominated for the prestigious Aubrey Award (Actor/Major Support/Comedy).
Despite being a native of the United Kingdom, in 1998, he settled in Southern California in where, for several years, he edited local newspapers. He regards his more recent forays into film acting as a natural development from his background in improvisation and the Grand Guignol.- Graham Tonbridge was born on 13 May 1906 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Sleeper (1964), The Forsyte Saga (1967) and Reluctant Bandit (1965). He died on 30 November 1986 in Chelsea, London, England, UK.
- Mark Ramprakash was born on 5 September 1969 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He was previously married to Puja Vedi and Vandana Bhatt.
- Art Department
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Mark Hedges was born on 29 October 1963 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He is an actor, known for Lost in Space (1998), Top Secret! (1984) and Creep (2004).- Davina Galica was born on 13 August 1944 in Bushey Heath, Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom.
- Gillian Dean was born on 20 July 1909 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Temporary Widow (1930), Emerald of the East (1929) and Honeymoon Abroad (1928). She was married to Hindle Edgar. She died on 10 August 1983 in Battle, East Sussex, England, UK.
- Bobby Howfield was born on 3 December 1936 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK.
- Mary O'Malley was born on 19 March 1941 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. She was a writer, known for Second City Firsts (1973), Play for Today (1970) and On the Shelf (1984). She was married to David Kleinman. She died in September 2020 in England, UK.
- Kathleen Mack was born in 1885 in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Prehistoric Hayseeds (1923). She died on 30 January 1968 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.