Priscilla Maria Veronica White is best known by her stage name Cilla Black. She rose to fame in the 1960s as a pop singer and her singles "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and "You're My World" both reached number one in the UK in 1964. She hosted her own variety show titled "Cilla" in the 60s and 70s and was an occasional comedy actress. Her career had a massive resurgence in the mid-80s and 1990s were she presented "Blind Date" were many tuned in for her acerbic comments, "Surprise Surprise" showed her softer side and "The Moment of Truth" was her successful peaktime game show. In the 2000s she put in memorable appearances on chat shows such as "The Paul O'Grady Show", "Loose Women" and "So Graham Norton". She died on 1st August 2015 after a fall in her villa in Estepona, Spain. The day after her funeral, the compilation album The Very Best of Cilla Black went to number one on the UK Albums Chart and the New Zealand Albums Chart; it was her first number one album.
William Alexander "Bud" Abbott was an American actor, producer and comedian. He is best remembered as the straight man of the comedy team Abbott and Costello, with Lou Costello.
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Louis Francis Costello (March 6, 1906 – March 3, 1959) was an American actor and comedian best known as half of the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, with Bud Abbott. Costello was famous for his bumbling, chubby, clean-cut image that has appealed to many Americans over the decades, and for his shouted line of "HEEEEYYY ABBOTT!!."
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Michael Ian Grade, Baron Grade of Yarmouth, CBE is an English television executive and businessman. He was chairman of the BBC from 2004 to 2006 and executive chairman of ITV plc from 2007 to 2009. Since 2011, he has been a Conservative Party life peer in the House of Lords.
Dame Penelope Anne Constance Keith, DBE, DL is an English actress and presenter, active in all genres, including radio, stage, television and film and primarily known for her roles in the British sitcoms The Good Life and To the Manor Born.
Ingrid Oliver is a British actress and comedian, and one half of the comic double act Watson & Oliver, alongside Lorna Watson, the pair having their own BBC2 sketch show for two series in 2012 and 2013. She is known for playing Petronella Osgood, a supporting character in the BBC television series Doctor Who. In 2022 she married broadcaster and author Richard Osman. Her mother is Conservative MP Jo Gideon.
Jim Moir, better known by his stage name of Vic Reeves, is a British comedian, actor, TV presenter, singer writer and artist. He is one half of the surreal and successful comedy duo Reeves and Mortimer, alongside Bob Mortimer.
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Reeson Wayne "Reece" Shearsmith (born 27 August 1969 in Hull) is an English actor and writer. He is most famous for his work as part of The League of Gentlemen along with fellow performers Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and co-writer Jeremy Dyson.
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Shirley Bassey is a Welsh singer known for both her powerful operatic voice and for recording the theme songs to the James Bond films 'Goldfinger' (1964); 'Diamonds Are Forever' (1971) and 'Moonraker' (1979).
Born on Bute Street in Butetown (also known as 'Tiger Bay') in the docklands area of Cardiff, she was was the sixth and youngest child of Henry Bassey, from Nigeria, and Eliza Jane Start, from the north-east of England, but grew up in the adjacent community of Splott.
After leaving Splott Secondary Modern School at the age of 14, Bassey found work at the local Curran Steels factory, while singing in public houses and clubs in the evenings and on weekends. In 1953, she signed her first professional contract and went on to work for the impresario Jack Hylton. She recorded her first single in 1956.
Roy Castle OBE was an English dancer, singer, comedian, actor, television presenter and musician. In addition to being an accomplished jazz trumpet player, he could play many other instruments.
Glenda May Jackson CBE (9 May 1936, Birkenhead, Cheshire – 15 June 2023) was an English actress and politician. She was one of the few artists to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, having won two Academy Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Tony Award. She was made a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 1978.
She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice: for her roles in Women in Love (1970) and A Touch of Class (1973). She won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). Her other notable roles include Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), Hedda (1975), The Incredible Sarah (1976) and Hopscotch (1980). She won two Primetime Emmy Awards for her role as Elizabeth I in the BBC series Elizabeth R (1971). She received the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for her role in Elizabeth Is Missing (2019).
Jackson studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). She made her Broadway debut in Marat/Sade (1966). She received five Laurence Olivier Award nominations for her West End roles in Stevie (1977), Antony and Cleopatra (1979), Rose (1980), Strange Interlude (1984) and King Lear (2016), the later being her first role after a 25 year absence from acting, which she reprised on Broadway in 2019. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role in the revival of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women (2018).
Jackson took a hiatus from acting to take on a career in politics from 1992 to 2015, and was elected as the Labour Party MP for Hampstead and Highgate in the 1992 general election. She served as a junior transport minister from 1997 to 1999 during the government of Tony Blair, later becoming critical of Blair. After constituency boundary changes, she represented Hampstead and Kilburn from 2010. At the 2010 general election, her majority of 42 votes, confirmed after a recount, was the narrowest of that parliament. Jackson stood down at the 2015 general election and returned to acting.
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Tom Jones (born Thomas John Woodward, in Trefforest, Pontypridd in Glamorgan, Wales) is a Welsh singer and actor.
Sir Thomas John Woodward OBE, known professionally as Tom Jones, began his career began with a string of top-ten hits in the mid-1960s. He has toured regularly, with appearances in Las Vegas. Jones's voice has been described by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic as a "full-throated, robust baritone".
His performing range has included pop, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, soul and gospel. In 2008, the New York Times called Jones a musical "shape shifter", who could "slide from soulful rasp to pop croon, with a voice as husky as it was pretty". Jones has sold over 100 million records, with 36 Top 40 hits in the UK and 19 in the US, including "It's Not Unusual", "What's New Pussycat", the theme song for the 1965 James Bond film Thunderball, "Green, Green Grass of Home", "Delilah", "She's a Lady", "Kiss" and "Sex Bomb".
Jones made his acting debut playing the lead role in the 1979 television film Pleasure Cove. He played himself in Tim Burton's 1996 film Mars Attacks!. In 1970, he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy nomination for hosting the television series This Is Tom Jones. In 2012, he played a role in an episode of Playhouse Presents. Jones received a Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1966, an MTV Video Music Award in 1989, as well as two Brit Awards: Best British Male in 2000 and the Outstanding Contribution to Music award in 2003. Jones was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to music in 2005. Jones experienced a resurgence in notability in the 2010s due to his coaching role on the television talent show The Voice UK from 2012 (with the exception of 2016).
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André George Previn, KBE (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929 – February 28, 2019) was a German-born American pianist, conductor, and composer.
Starting by arranging and composing Hollywood film scores for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Previn was involved in the music for over 50 films over his entire career. He won four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings (and one more for his Lifetime Achievement).
He had been the music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Oslo Philharmonic, as well as the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Angela May Rippon CBE is an English television journalist, newsreader, writer and presenter. Rippon presented radio and television news programmes in South West England before moving to BBC One's Nine O'Clock News, becoming a regular presenter in 1975.