The Late Late Late Show
The only dramas the BBC seem to do nowadays are about dead TV stars. There was the Hughie Green one, the one where David Walliams did an impression of Frankie Howerd and last night there was even one about Mary Whitehouse, who became a TV star without meaning to be. This means that there must now be loads of commissioning editors running their pencil down a list of big TV stars that they don't employ anymore and smacking their lips at the prospect of being able to make a post-humous biopic about them, using all the old real life footage and free to delve into areas that they wouldn't dare while the subject is alive.
Obviously at the top of that list must be Jimmy Saville. If Rob Fitzpatrick is not available, who's going to play him, I wonder? And who are the other TV legends on the leader board?
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Mother-in-law
Bernard Manning would make for an interesting subject. But who'd play him? Peter Kay, perhaps?
The accent's wrong
How about Jack Duckworth from Coronation Street? You'd need a bit of padding, but the voice would be spot on. If not, play it safe: Steve Coogan.
But I fear his life was a bit too light on dirt to be a suitable candidate for this genre. He delivered greengroceries as a lad, sang a bit, told some gags, opened a club, was generally liked by the punters and respected by the acts he booked, got old, died, and er that's it, really.
Pants
Coogan's sometime associate John Thompson would be even closer. He's already played him, sort of, as Bernard Righton.
There's also the chapter of his life "wore white pants and vest around the house".
Not exactly. . .
compelling television, though, is it?
Gods, no...
But how about Les Dawson?
Also, in keeping with the humourists, go for Morcombe and Wise, Ronnie Barker, Bill Hicks and Joyce Grenfell.
And yes, I am aware of the show "The Play What I Wrote" - It's brilliant, but no more than a tribute act.
Jimmy Saville
Would be interesting. Met him once at a charity thing when I was a very small kid and he went off to get a pen for an autograph I had asked for (my pen had packed up). Always thought he was a gent and he seems genuinely committed to the charity thing.
BUT the Louis Theroux thing was a very strange watching experience and surely it would be a show of two halves with the fame and then the oddness.
Would like to see a well done Peter Cook and Dudley Moore one. Morecombe and Wise would good as well. And Benny Hill.
Did you see the Rhys Ifans one?
About Pete 'n' Dud, I mean, with Aidan McArdle as Dud.
Your lack of a reference to it leads me to think you didn't like it, while I thought it was superb. If you didn't see it, I recommend it, if you did, I'd love to know why you didn't like it.
Didn't See It
But will search it out. Don't do enough TV anymore - combination of work & children running the TV in our house. Have huge backlog of The Wire on sky+ thats going to need a medium sized illness to get through.
The ingredients of the genre
1. Seedy, salacious or otherwise extravagant sexual practices (extra points for cottaging scenes involving furtive trouser rustling as we hear the echoing footsteps of an approaching plod).
2. An unctuous on-screen personality but a right nasty bit of goods off camera. Lots of incongruous swearing helps here.
3. Secret love children a-go-go.
4. A close-up insert of half a bottle of Bell's being slipped into an astrakhan coat pocket.
5. Model railways.
6. Terrible toupes.
7. Throwing down The Stage in disgust onto the bed and screaming "They just don't understand!"
8. Theatrical landlady meekly asking "Should I expect you back for supper, then, Mr Dead Celebrity?"
9. News of the World hack with a nicotine-stained stick-on tash leans forward and whispers "Who's been a naughty boy, then?"
10. Slammed doors to mark five-year jumps forward in time.
Too much TV
You've seen to many of these, or you're a frustarted scriptwriter.
Not Only But Also..
There is a decent film about Pete n'Dud from a couple of years back - 'Not Only But Always'- with Rhys Ifans excellent as Peter Cook.
And for the Benny Hill story, what about Ricky Gervais in the lead role?
Ah
Yes. See above.
Ha ha charade you are...
I watched the docudrama on Mary Whitehouse last night... I thought it was great, even though I could never stand the woman.
Other prime contenders for a similar TV treatment could include...
Kenny Everett
Rod Hull (the man behind the Emu)
Enoch Powell
Don't forget Harry "No H here" Corbett
Where there's soot, there's smut, surely.
and he's dead so he can't
and he's dead so he can't soo
(sorry)
Anyone who spends
decades with their arm up some poor bear's arse has got it coming, I reckon. Spill the beans, Sweep!
bares arse
Hey steady on I have a picture of me with the renowned Mr Corbett. I'll let you see it for a tenner!
Talk about
a sliding scale of taste and desirability. Although I'm not sure if Rod Hull ranks below Powell or not...
Dee Time?
That Mary Whitehouse programme was 30 minutes too long. I've never seen so much envelope-opening in one show.
The real highlight was the portrayal of Sir Hugh Greene, don't you think?
How about Simon Dee? Plenty more sixties fun for the props dept there. He's not gone yet, though.
And lets not forget Charlie Drake...
mmm...wonder who could play him though?
No, lets...
Forget Charlie Drake. Totally talentless, unfunny, and a nasty bastard to boot. Just wipe him out of history.
Dopplegangers
Leave it!!!!!!
mr drake
How about Van Morrison in curly wig, wherein Charlie is not the darlin' we thought he was and is revealed as a humourless lump. Not a big stretch for our Van then.
Whack-O!
EDWARDS, Jimmy: Decorated war hero. Closeted gay. Specialised in spanking-in-uniform flicks. Boorish and unkind to autograph hunters, according to my Auntie Flo. (Production note: Excellent opportunities for crap facial-hair prosthetics.)
CLITHEROE, Jimmy: Middle-aged man trapped in naughty schoolboy's body. Lived with mother and committed suicide on day of her funeral. (Production note: Ask the J. Edwards wardrobe dept. about possibilities of re-using uniforms.)
HAWTREY, Charles: Nicely ticks two of the key boxes: lots of then-illicit sex with guardsmen and huge whisky intake.
re: Jimmy Clitheroe, middle aged man trapped...
Never occurred to me before but this also describes whatsisname out of AC/DC. Ooh flippin' eck.
The appeal is lost on me
I watched a couple of these things (it's fast becoming a genre) and other than the whole curtain twitching OK magazine for broadsheet type people who pretend not to like thsi sort of thing I don't know what what they are for. Their underlaying thesis that creative people aren't the same off stage as on is hardly news.
I Just think we all harbour secret wish to see June whitfield shagging ?
It's tied in with the continued obsession with biographies.
As to candidates the dads army crew had fascinating lives wasn't godfrey and a best selling playwrite in 30's.
I think your analysis is exactly right except...
...that *is* their appeal.
They always leave you equipped with a little nugget of gossip and feeling slightly unsatisfied.
For the actors there's always the chance to get a little pathos by proxy.
And in the case of Our Jim I think the truth may be that he's exactly the same off stage as he is on because the truth is that like lots of these people he has no concept of "off stage".
June Whi....splutter
Er, well. Yes. Or Valerie Singleton saying "bastard". The appeal is much the same as those outtakes of celebs ranting while they were recording radio commercials, I suppose. Behind the mask and all that.
Still, I thought the Hughie Green one was cracking television, 98% of it down to Trevor Eve. He managed to become his character rather than taking the easy route and doing an impersonation of Mike Yarwood's impersonation of him (which is where the Frankie Howerd one fell down for me).
A couple of days after seeing it I happened upon this clip, which is so chilling in what it implies was going on inside that peculiar mind that I was even more impressed with Eve's performance. He absolutely nailed the petty, pathetic nastiness of the man.
That's an amazing recording
well found Archie. Now can you locate the June Whitfield clip?
That's brilliant
I've just realised that all TV careers, apart from Johnny Carson's, end in cancellation which is what makes them such rich ground for tragedy.
Can someone explain the appeal of Carson?
Carson is like your stern dad being pressed into entertaining you. He looks like he'd rather be an accountant instead having to deal with all these awkward creative people. Seriously, who thought he was the perfect man for light entertainment?
By all accounts. . .
as much of a petty, petulant martinet off camera as our own dear Hughie, too.
and bruce forsyth
he's just gone on and on.
jerry seinfeld ? just stopped. and practically retired. because he could.
I just read all of these in a rush......
...thinking it was Frank Carson being commented upon, who was as nice a fella as you could meet, thought Mrs Path, when sharing a plane with him, and, I suspect a few others. Did go on a bit, tho'................
Did he do Brown Eyed Girl?
It's the way I tell 'em.
The greatest show business profile ever written...
...is the one of Johnny Carson by Kenneth Tynan. Unbelievably, it's here. What Tynan realises is that Carson "is a grand master of the one show-business art that leads nowhere."
Imprinted forever on my mind...
...is the last ever Opportunity Knocks, where our Hughie was allowed to indulge in a mini-Nuremburg rally, supported by our brave fighting men, in a speech/rant entitled, if memory serves me right, 'Stand Up And Be Counted' which would not have looked out of place in a staging of 'The Producers'. It made 'Springtime for Hitler' look like biting social realism.
I must have been all of 12 years old but, to my own personal credit, that clip alone went some way to shaping my own political viewpoint in a way that, happily, seems to have little in common with what, I suspect, our Hughie stood for.
Enjoy
Oh my word
It was 1977 - I was 18, not 12. But still as cringeworthy as I remember.
Don't remember the above montage though - my recollection has Hughie doing it live to camera at the end of the final episode of OpKnocks, finishing with the curtains raising to a shot of a selection of armed forces behind Our Hughie, who finished with a grand salute to camera. It looked for all the world as if he was planning a military coup against the (Labour) government of the day.
And I bet he would've, if he could've.
Yes, the montage and music were added. . .
quite well, I thought, by some YouTuber.
The scene was recreated in Most Sincerely, as watched live on his monitor by the then-Thames Controller, Jeremy Isaacs, whose only reaction was to splutter "Get that man off my channel!"
Sir
your inappropriate imaginings regarding Miss Whitfield's behaviour are shocking. Miss Whitfield may have, from time to time, entertained gentlemen in private. At no time has she ever engaged in any "shagging".
You leave me no alternative.
Hampstead Hill at noon tomorrow, my man will supply a choice of pistols or rapiers.
very well sir
rapiers it is! i shall be wearing terry scotts tight leisure slacks and polo shirt combo circa '78. you will no doubt win as trip over ahose and impel myslef on my pummel....
The obvious follow-up to Hughie Green
is the tragic tale of Paula Yates. It has all the elements. Hopefully - given that her children are still pretty young and probably wouldn't welcome it - it won't be made. But there's always Fanny Craddock, Patrick Moore, The McWhirters etc. plenty of oddballs with interesting stories.
I agree with Archie about how well Trevor Eve played Hughie Green. And the Mary Whitehouse show was surprisingly sympathetic.
Steve Coogan would make a great Jimmy Saville.
Fear of Fanny
The BBC did a fantastic docu-drama on Fanny Craddock a couple of years back. Worth tracking down if you can - it's terrifying.
Didn't they do Fannie Craddock recently?
It had Julia Davis in the title role. Can I add my voice to the swell of approval for Trevor Eve's performance as Hughie Greene? he was great.
That's the one
It came out in 2006.
Please
rephrase that....
And next on BBC Four. . .
Yep
I'd watch that for sure. And Trevor Eve could do the lead justice. Am off to Sheppards Bush to pitch......
Hugh Bonneville...
...was brilliant...shades of Herbert Lom as Chief Inspector Dreyfus...I'm thinking that the BBC2/BBC4 cupboard is starting to get a bit bare.
I think Simon Dee will be onto the third revival "for one night only" of his chatshow when the C4 commissioning editors decide to do it again. They dig him up once every fifteen years, he gamely plays along and then they tell him to sod off.
As soon as David Frost kicks the bucket-Michael Sheen would be a shoo-in
Seriously...
...I don't think anyone's got the nerve to commission a serious piece of imaginative work that doesn't either pertain to "an issue" or deal with a famous person with whom the audience are already familiar. It's the dramatic equivalent of the boil-in-the-bag meal.
Only this....
...like a stream of bat's piss he shines out when all around is dark...
Radio One
I've always thought a good one could be based around the Matthew Bannister inspired cull at Radio One in the mid nineties. There was a great documentary about it a few years ago which painted Lee Travis, Bates, Brookes etc as stunningly arrogant fools. John Peel and John Walters could be the heroes! As for casting I'm still working on it...
Matthew Bannister & R1
Yes, there's something 'of the night' about Matthew Bannister, something I think would be well worth investigating. Here he was, the saviour of Radio 1 who p'ed off the old guard, dug his heels in with Chris Evans, went off to a big big job in TV only to return as a stand-in Five Live presenter, a sub-standard Victoria Derbyshire.
I saw that excellent documentary and its agenda was against the DLT/Brookes/Bates brigade, when not enough praise was given to DLT for saying 'F*** YOU, I'M OFF' on air to his arrogant boss. Bannister said he couldn't get round to sacking DLT in time, but I'm not so sure. Ratings fell dramatically cos of Bannister's actions and I don't think ever recovered.
Of course DLT
could be played by Damon Gough...
Radio One: Voices from the Dark Side (episode 1)
I'm a sucker for anything like this
It's long been mooted BBC4 are doing Dusty Springfield, with Kate Winslett a name in the frame, though I'm sure it's unlikely.
I loved the ones so far, except for the Walliams one, as I don't like him, But the others were great - Trevor Eve was superb.
I'd like to see:
Ronnie Barker
Graham Chapman
Alma Cogan
Paula Yates
Marti Caine
Bob Monkhouse
Arthur Lowe
Charlie Williams
Yootha Joyce
just for starters
we went to see this
we went to see this thinking it was documentary about the late great Johnny morris......
What are the chances. . .
of having two children's programmes about zoos on rival channels, each presented by a man called Morris?
I think that must be what the great James Burke would have called "a connection".
How about
people from behind the musical scenes?
John Peel
Brian Epstein
Peter Grant
Ahmet Ertegun (Atlantic Records founder)
etc
You got there before me
I just went through this posting with very similar thoughts. There's been a few about Epstein but Peter Grant always struck me as a story waiting to be filmed.
Don Arden
would make a great story too.
I notice in the new Joe Meek biopic, Ralf Little is Chas Hodges, with Nigel Harman as Jess Contrad and Justin Hawkins as Screaming Lord Sutch. This I must see.
Backroom boys
Peter Grant would be great - if they could make it broadcastable.
I know he has been done in a couple of films recently, but surely there is more life left in the Anthony H Wilson story. I mean there is genuinely sex and drugs and rock n'roll. And hangliding. And he was a tv star - of sorts.
There is a good book about Matthew Bannistor and Radio 1 called the Nation's favourite. Peel, Walters and Kershaw can barely contain their glee. Hangabout, a Andy Kershaw bio show is probably in preparation too.
Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick and Clough
This was a fantastic play from the mid 90s and a fairly decent ITV play. Effectively the love affair between barbara windsor and sid james. (also features charles hawtrey and kenneth williams again).
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,,1407821,00.html
Brian Clough (surely a 70s tv star) is being filmed in The Damned Utd; the fantastic David Peace book with Michael Sheen playing Cloughie. Which i really can't wait for.
And frost/nixon is finished and due for release v.soon. (sheen again).
the best film about a tv star is good night and good luck.
What about ex-Whistle Test presenters?
The Bob Harris story - starring David Thewlis + complete with classic Sid Vicious episode
Annie Nightingale - starring Sharon Stone
Andy Kershaw - played by Nicholas Lyndhurst?
Can't think of who could play Messrs Hepworth and Ellen!
Ellen & Hepworth
played by Tim Robbins and Goldie Hawn
Dungeons and Roll-ons
My feeling is that there might be one or two saucy Frank Bough scripts out there already.
Another each-way punt would be on Stuart Hall, but is he another one with no 'Off' switch, like Our Jim?
Why no Spike ???
Unless I've missed it, where is Spike Milligan on this list ? Genius, manic depressive, out of this world creativity, prone to being a totally miserable nasty bastard, but somehow utterly great....one of the best comic writers ever. AND you could double the opportunity by adding a big slice of Peter Sellers to it - what more could you want??
Maybe another one for Rhys Ifans, with someone like David Walliams as Sellers. If you majored on the Goon show, who would play Harry Secombe ???.......
Essential Spike scene
EXT. SPIKE'S HOUSE - GARDEN - DAY
As SPIKE hoes and hums, a spirited PAUL DU NOYER bounds onto the lawn with a spring in his step, followed sheepishly behind by a slouching, shoe-scuffling BOZO THE CLOWN.
SPIKE: Hello der!
BOZO hoots with UNCONTROLLABLE LAUGHTER at his host's jolly japes.
Will they still...
...be making these biopics of the TV greats when it's the turn of Coogan, Walliams, Rhys Ifans, Ricky Gervais, and the rest? The answer has to be yes, doesn't it?
Tommy Cooper?
Have we done him yet? He would seem to fit all the dramatic boxes. Long career. Knew everyone. Admired by all his peers. Played around in his private life. Died spectacularly.
Casting would be a problem I admit. Who could convincingly play a 6 foot 5 splay footed giant with a face like a bag of apanners? Nobody is allowed to say Peter Crouch.
Errr...
Mark Ellen's tall, isn't he?! However he doesn't have a face 'like a bag of spanners' (which is what I think you intended to write), but this could be corrected with prosthetic make up.
Apanners
Spot on, that man. Finger trouble. Though I'm sure 'apanners' means something in one language or another. Does anyone... No. Life's too short.
Not for me, sad to say...
Apanner into google, apart from asking whether I mean spanner, produces a veritable orgy of apanners, which, bless my simple head, seems to be a southern hemisphere form of spanner.
Funny old world.
Good God
you're right.
But wait! Could this simply be the same typo being made by an ex-colonial? Seeing as they're trying to write about tools that do the same job as spanners. I'm now hugely intrigued.
Note to self: Get a f*cking job.
Cliff Richard.....
Whilst I mean the old curmudgeon no harm, there's a fecking juicy story in that particular bio-pic once Harry has gone off to sing Misteltoe and Wine to his maker...
Mike Read anyone?