Part Two of a series of articles about Liverpool
Entertainers:
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Billy Butler MBE |
William George 'Billy' Butler (born 24 January 1942). is a
radio presenter on BBC Radio Merseyside. In the course of his career, he has
presented TV shows such as 'FAX' and the magazine programme 'What the Butler
Sees'. He was born in Amlwch, North Wales. In the 1960s he was a DJ at the
Cavern Club between 1964 and 1969. Billy has been 40 years in show business and
30 years on local radio. In the early 60s, he came to national attention in the
Spin-A-Disc panel on the ITV programme, 'Thank Your Lucky Stars', and he made a
single with Polly Perkins, "I Reckon You". Billy made guest appearances
with the Merseybeats and he formed his own group, the Tuxedos. He will be
forever associated with one of the funniest programmes ever produced, 'Hold
Your Plums' was a radio quiz show which ran for over a decade on BBC Radio
Merseyside. It was hosted by Billy Butler and Wally Scott. Hold Your Plums won
a Bronze Sony award. The series spawned several tapes of The Best of... and two
successful Hold Your Plums videos. The first video in 1994 included a special
recording of the show from the BBC Radio Merseyside studios in Liverpool
intercut with stand-up footage of Billy and Wally in Widnes. The second video
released a year later featured a live stage version of the show from the
Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. In September 2010 he published his autobiography
Billy Butler MBE – Mrs Butler’s Eldest. In 2013 Billy won the Lifetime
Achievement Award at the Liverpool Music Awards.
Tom Baker the Fourth Doctor |
Tom Baker was
born in Scotland Road, on 20 January 1934. His parents were working class
Liverpudlian; his mother, Mary Jane (née Fleming), a cleaner, was a devout
Catholic and his father, John Stewart Baker, was a Jewish seaman. Baker
attended Cheswardine Boarding School until he left school at 15 to become a
Roman Catholic monk and remained in this lifestyle for six years, but left
after losing his faith. He did his national service in the Royal Army Medical
Corps, serving from 1955 until 1957. At the same time, he took up acting, first
as a hobby but he turned professional towards the end of the 1960s.
In the late
1960s and early 1970s, Baker was part of the National Theatre Company, then
headed by Laurence Olivier, and had his first big film break with the role of
Grigori Rasputin in the film Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) after Olivier had
recommended him for the part. In 1974, Baker took over the role of the Doctor
from Jon Pertwee to become the Fourth Doctor in the BBC TV series. Baker
quickly made the part his own. As the Fourth Doctor, his eccentric style of
dress and speech (particularly his trademark long scarf and fondness for jelly
babies) made him an immediately recognisable figure, and he quickly caught the
viewing public's imagination. Baker played the Doctor for seven consecutive
seasons, making him the longest-serving actor in the part. Baker himself
suggested many aspects of his Doctor's personality, but the distinctive scarf
was created by accident. James Acheson, the costume designer assigned to his first
story, had provided far more wool than was necessary to the knitter, Begonia
Pope; Pope knitted all the wool she was given. It was Baker who suggested that
he wear the ridiculously long scarf, which he did once it had been shortened a
bit to make it more manageable. The Doctor played by Tom Baker (1974–81) is
often regarded as the most popular of the Doctors.
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Alan Bleasdale |
Alan Bleasdale
(born 23 March 1946) in Liverpool, he is an only child; his father worked in a
food factory and his mother in a grocery shop. From 1951-57, he went to the St.
Aloysius Roman Catholic Infant and Junior Schools in Huyton-with-Roby (then in
Lancashire). From 1957-64, he attended the Wade Deacon Grammar School in Widnes
(now the Wade Deacon High School). In 1967, he obtained a teaching certificate
from the Padgate College of Education in Warrington. For four years he worked
as a teacher at St Columba's Secondary Modern School in Huyton, then The King
George V & Elaine Bernacchi School in Bikenibeu in South Tarawa) on the
Gilbert and Ellice Islands (now called Kiribati),and lastly at Halewood Grange
Comprehensive School (now known as Halewood College) from 1974-5. From 1975 to
1986, he worked as a playwright at the Liverpool Playhouse (becoming associate
director) and the Contact Theatre in Manchester .
His first
successes came as the writer of radio dramas for the BBC; several of these
plays followed the character of Scully and were broadcast on BBC Radio
Merseyside in 1971. In 1978 he wrote another single play for the BBC1 anthology
series, entitled 'The Black Stuff' about a group of Liverpudlian tarmac layers.
The play was not transmitted for two years as it awaited an available slot, but
its eventual broadcast in 1980 won so much praise, that producer Michael
Wearing of BBC English Regions Drama managed to commission the sequel serial,
'Boys from the Blackstuff', this was
transmitted on BBC Two in 1982, with a cast including Bernard Hill in the role
of Yosser Hughes, whose catch-phrase "Gizza job" became synonymous
with the mass unemployment of the Thatcher years. The series established
Bleasdale as one of Britain's leading television writers and social
commentators.
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Kenneth Cope as Marty Hopkirk from Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) |
Kenneth Cope was
born in 1931 in Liverpool, He was most famous for his leading role in Randall
and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969–1970) as the late private eye Marty Hopkirk
opposite Mike Pratt's very much alive Jeff Randall. He had previously starred
in Coronation Street as the shady Jed Stone (between 1961 and 1966, and in
2008), and had a regular role in the influential satirical series That Was The
Week That Was (1962–1963). He also appeared in three episodes of Minder playing
different characters. In 1971 he played Jack Victor in "The Wogle
Stone", the sixth episode in the second season of Catweazle. In 1975–76 he
wrote three series of the BBC children's television series Striker, starring
the young Kevin Moreton and inspired by the local youth football team in the
village of Islip, Oxfordshire, where the Cope family was then living. In 1997
Cope played dodgy ex-copper Charlie Fairclough alongside David Jason in an
episode of A Touch Of Frost entitled "True Confessions." From 1999 to
2002 he starred as Ray Hilton in the Channel Four soap opera Brookside. In 2008
Cope's Coronation Street character Jed Stone returned to the ITV soap after 42
years' absence, appearing as part of a storyline involving property developer
Tony Gordon. Cope now resides in Southport, and writes a weekly column for the
weekly Visiter newspaper.
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Kenny Everett ©BBC |
Kenny Everett
(born Maurice James Christopher Cole, 25 December 1944 – 4 April 1995). He was
born in Seaforth, Lancashire on Christmas Day 1944 into a Catholic family.
Everett attended the local secondary modern school, St Bede's Secondary Modern,
now part of Sacred Heart Catholic College. He attended a junior seminary at
Stillington near York with an Italian missionary order, the Verona Fathers,
where he was a choirboy. After he left school he worked in a bakery and in the
advertising department of The Journal of Commerce and Shipping Telegraph. While
working at a pirate radio station Radio London he was advised to change his
name to avoid legal problems. He adopted the name "Everett" from
American film comic Edward Everett Horton, a childhood hero. Kenny Everett was
heard in May 1967 on the BBC's soon to be discontinued Light Programme
previewing The Beatles' forthcoming album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band, and was one of the DJs on the new pop music station Radio 1 from its
launch at the end of September 1967. Everett had struck up a friendship with
the Beatles and accompanied them on their August 1966 tour of the United
States, sending back daily reports for Radio London. He also produced their
1968 and 1969 Christmas records. In 1978, London's Thames Television offered
him a new venture, which became the Kenny Everett Video Show. This was a
vehicle for Everett's characters, such as aging rock-and-roller Sid Snot,
unsuccessfully flipping cigarettes into his mouth. The program was also a
vehicle for his comedy sketches (his fellow writers were Ray Cameron, Barry
Cryer and Dick Vosburgh), interspersed with the latest pop hits, either
performed by the artists themselves, or as backing tracks to dance routines by
Arlene Phillips' dance troupe Hot Gossip. Everett married the singer Lee 'Lady
Lee' Middleton in 1969. By 1979 they had separated, and in the mid-1980s, he
publicly acknowledged his homosexuality. He was diagnosed as HIV positive in
1989, and he made his condition known to the public in 1993. He died from an
AIDS-related illness, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London,
on 4 April 1995, aged 50. After a Roman Catholic requiem mass, Everett was
cremated at Mortlake Crematorium.
Links
Sources
BBC
Wikipedia
Screenonline
Southport
Visiter
Robert F Edwards