Name	Linus Torvalds
Caption	Torvalds in 2002
Known for	Linux kernel, Git
Employer	Linux Foundation
Occupation	Software engineer
Spouse	Tove Torvalds née Monni
Children	3
Parents	Nils Torvalds (father)Anna Torvalds (mother)cs.helsinki.fi/u/torvalds (outdated)

Linus Benedict Torvalds (; born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish Torvalds accepted a position at the company in California, where he would work from February 1997 through June 2003. He then moved to the Open Source Development Labs, which has since merged with the Free Standards Group to become the Linux Foundation, under whose auspices he continues to work. In June 2004, Torvalds and his family moved to Portland, Oregon, to be closer to the OSDL's Beaverton, Oregon–based headquarters.

From 1997 to 1999 he was involved in 86open helping to choose the standard binary format for Linux and Unix.

Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation. Since Linux has had thousands of contributors, such a percentage represents a significant personal contribution to the overall amount of code. Torvalds remains the ultimate authority on what new code is incorporated into the standard Linux kernel. Tove and Linus were later married and have three daughters, Patricia, Daniela, and Celeste,

Torvalds describes himself as "completely a-religious — atheist", adding that "I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature. I actually think it detracts from both. It gives people the excuse to say, 'Oh, nature was just created,' and so the act of creation is seen to be something miraculous. I appreciate the fact that, 'Wow, it's incredible that something like this could have happened in the first place.'" He later added that while in Europe religion is mostly a personal issue, in America it has become very politicized.

Recognition

;Academics In 1997, Torvalds received his Master degree (Laudatur Grade) from Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki. Two years later he received honorary doctor status at Stockholm University, and in 2000 he received the same honor from his alma mater.

In August 2005, Torvalds received the Vollum Award from Reed College.

;Industry In 1998 Torvalds received an EFF Pioneer Award. In 2000 he was awarded the Lovelace Medal from the British Computer Society. In 2001, he shared the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Well-Being with Richard Stallman and Ken Sakamura. In 2008, he was inducted into the Hall of Fellows of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. He was awarded the C&C; Prize by the NEC Corporation in 2010 for "contributions to the advancement of the information technology industry, education, research, and the improvement of our lives".

;Media Time magazine has recognized Torvalds multiple times: In 2000, he was 17th in their Poll. In 2004, he was named one of the most influential people in the world In 2006, the magazine's Europe edition named him one of the revolutionary heroes of the past 60 years.

InfoWorld presented him with the 2000 Award for Industry Achievement. In 2005 Torvalds appeared as one of "the best managers" in a survey by BusinessWeek. In 2006, Business 2.0 magazine named him one of "10 people who don't matter" because the growth of Linux has shrunk Torvalds' individual impact.

In summer 2004, viewers of YLE (the Finnish Broadcasting Company) placed Torvalds 16th in the network's 100 Greatest Finns. In 2010, as part of a series called The Britannica Guide to the World's Most Influential People, Torvalds was listed among The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time (ISBN 9781615300037).

;Other

In 1996, an asteroid (9793 Torvalds) was named after him.

The 1999 novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson features several characters who use "Finux", a Unix-like operating system developed in Finland. In the 2001 film Swordfish, the uber-hacker Axl Torvalds was a reference to Linus because of his contributions to Linux which is the primary operating system of hackers.

See also

Linus' Law

Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate

Notes

References

External links

Linus' blog

Linus Torvalds and His Five Entrepreneurial Lessons

Ten years of NODES

Category:Computer pioneers Category:Linux kernel hackers Category:Finnish bloggers Category:Finnish computer programmers Category:Free software programmers Category:People in information technology Category:Swedish-speaking Finns Category:University of Helsinki alumni Category:Finnish atheists Category:1969 births Category:Living people Category:American people of Finnish descent Category:People from Helsinki Category:People from Portland, Oregon

Name	Lil Wayne
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr.
Born	September 27, 1982New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Instrument	Vocals, Guitars

Obama also mentioned listening to Lil Wayne on his iPod:

Discography

; Studio albums

1999: Tha Block Is Hot

2000: Lights Out

2002: 500 Degreez

2004: Tha Carter

2005: Tha Carter II

2008: Tha Carter III

2010: Rebirth

2010: I Am Not a Human Being

2011: Tha Carter IV

Filmography

Awards

References

External links

Lil Wayne at MTV

Category:1982 births Category:Living people Category:1990s rappers Category:2000s rappers Category:2010s rappers Category:21st-century American criminals Category:African-American Catholics Category:African American rappers Category:American dance musicians Category:American shooting survivors Category:Cash Money Records artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Hip hop singers Category:People convicted of drug offenses Category:Rappers from New Orleans, Louisiana Category:University of Houston alumni Category:World Music Awards winners

Name	Jonathan Ross
Imagesize	175px
Caption	Jonathan Ross at Live 8 on 2 July 2005
Birth name	Jonathan Stephen Ross
Birth date	November 17, 1960
Birth place	Camden, London, England and his light-hearted banter. He is also known for his characteristic difficulty in pronouncing the sound 'r' (rhotacism).
-style	"background:#B0C4DE;"
Name	Ross, Jonathan
Date of birth	17 November 1960
Place of birth	Camden, London, England

Category:Alumni of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies Category:Alumni of Southampton Solent University Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:BBC people Category:English voice actors Category:English television actors Category:English film critics Category:English radio DJs Category:BBC Radio 2 presenters Category:English television presenters Category:English television producers Category:English television writers Category:Friday Night with Jonathan Ross Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:People from Leytonstone Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:People from Camden

Name	Joe Rogan
Imagesize	200px
Caption	Joe Rogan performing at a comedy club after UFC 70
Birth date	August 11, 1967
Birth place	Newark, New Jersey, U.S.
Medium	Stand-up, Television, Podcast
Nationality	American
Active	1995–present
Genre	Satire, Blue Comedy, Observational Comedy
Subject	Recreational drug use, self-deprecation, race relations, marriage, everyday life, parenting, evolutionary biology, current events, politics (pertaining to drug use primarily)
Influences	Bill Hicks, Sam Kinison
Style	Kickboxing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Tae Kwon Do, J10th Planes Jiu-Jitsu
Rank	black belt in Tae Kwon Do brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu brown belt in 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu
Spouse	Mrs. Rogan (2009-Present) 1 child
Notable work	Joe Garelli in NewsRadioCo-Host of The Man ShowHost of Fear Factor

Joseph "Joe" Rogan (born August 11, 1967) is an American comedian, actor, adult entertainer, blogger, and color commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Personal life

Religion and Spirituality

Rogan was raised Catholic.

According to Rogan, he is currently banned from the Comedy Store for violating the club's request that he not film his internet reality show there. According to Rogan, his agent and publicity firm (who also represents Mencia) demanded that he either apologize to Mencia or else be dropped from the agency. Rogan refused to apologize to Mencia, and was dropped from the agency.

Rogan has claimed that Dane Cook performed a bit on an episode of Premium Blend that Rogan had developed on I'm Gonna Be Dead Someday (sketch titled "Tigers Fucking"), and claimed to have performed the routine earlier in clubs with Cook present. However, this dispute seemed to be laid to rest between the two comedians when Cook appeared on Rogans's podcast entitled The Joe Rogan Experience.

Rogan has also strongly criticized Denis Leary for plagiarizing Bill Hicks.

The Joe Rogan Experience

In December 2009, Rogan began hosting a regular podcast with concurrent live Ustream availability. Frequently co-hosted by his support Brian "Redban" Reichle, the podcast features an array of guests from the pursuits of comedy, acting and Mixed Martial Arts. Now known as The Joe Rogan Experience, the show is regularly found in the Apple iTunes top 10 most downloaded comedy, and was named one of iTunes "Best of 2010" audio podcasts in its first year

Homophobic slur controversy

Posting on an online forum, in response to a piece of biased journalism, Rogan called MMA journalist Tomas Rios a faggot. Rios requested an apology for Rogan's use of the term. Rogan responed by posting an online letter stating that he was retiring using the word 'faggot' and ended the letter by letting Rios know that this wasn't an apology and that he was a 'cocksucker' instead.

Comedy recordings

I'm Gonna Be Dead Someday (CD) (August 22, 2000)

Live from the Belly of the Beast (DVD) (May 4–5, 2001)

Joe Rogan: Live (DVD) (September 1, 2006)

Shiny Happy Jihad (CD) (April 10, 2007)

Talking Monkeys In Space (CD & DVD) (2010) Comedy Central Records

References

External links

Fear Factor

Interview from August 2008

Joe Rogan on his UFC career

Category:1967 births Category:Actors from New Jersey Category:American color commentators Category:American comedians Category:American game show hosts Category:American stand-up comedians Category:American television actors Category:American television personalities Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Living people Category:Mixed martial arts broadcasters Category:People from Essex County, New Jersey Category:Psychedelic drug advocates Category:American practitioners of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Category:American taekwondo practitioners Category:Mixed martial arts people

Name	Jay-Z
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Shawn Corey Carter
Born	December 04, 1969Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Rapper, entrepreneur, partial owner of the New Jersey Nets
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	1988–present
Genre	Hip hop
Associated acts	Memphis Bleek, The Notorious B.I.G., Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kanye West, Pharrell, Young Jeezy, R. Kelly, Linkin Park, Eminem
Label	Roc Nation
Url

Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), He married American R&B; superstar Beyoncé Knowles on April 4, 2008. On December 11, 2009, Jay-Z was ranked as the 10th most successful artist of the 2000–2009 decade by Billboard Magazine and ranking as the 5th top solo male artist and as the 4th top rapper behind Eminem, Nelly, and 50 Cent.

According to his mother, Gloria Carter, a young Jay-Z used to wake his siblings up at night banging out drum patterns on the kitchen table. Eventually, she bought him a boom box for his birthday, sparking his interest in music. He began freestyling, writing lyrics, and followed the music of many artists popular at the time.

Jay-Z can briefly be heard on several of Jaz-O's early recordings in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including "The Originators" and "Hawaiian Sophie". This album would later be included in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" as #248 and would later reach platinum status.

1998–2000: Vol. 2... Criminal charges and mainstream success

In 1998, Jay-Z released Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life which spawned the biggest hit of his career at the time, "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)". He relied more on flow and wordplay, and he continued with his penchant for mining beats from the popular producers of the day such as Swizz Beatz, an upstart in-house producer for Ruff Ryders, and Timbaland. Other producers include: DJ Premier, Erick Sermon, The 45 King, and Kid Capri. Charting hits from this album included "Can I Get A...", featuring Ja Rule and Amil, and "Nigga What, Nigga Who", which featured Amil too. Vol. 2 would eventually become Jay-Z's most commercially successful album; it was certified 5× Platinum in the United States and has to date sold over five million copies. The album went on to win a Grammy Award, although Jay-Z boycotted the ceremony protesting DMX's failure to garner a Grammy nomination. Vol. 3's most successful single was "Big Pimpin'", featuring UGK. Around the same time, Jay-Z was accused of stabbing record executive Lance "Un" Rivera for what Jay-Z perceived was Rivera's bootlegging of Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter. The stabbing allegedly occurred at the record release party for Q-Tip's debut solo album Amplified at the Kit Kat Klub, a now defunct night club in Times Square, New York City, on December 9. Jay-Z's associates at the party were accused of causing a commotion within the club, which Jay-Z allegedly used as cover when he supposedly stabbed Rivera in the stomach with a five-inch (127 mm) blade.

In his book Decoded, Jay-Z addresses his assault case. While he didn't apologize for his actions, he did express regret that the incident happened and attributed it to a loss of control, saying that there was no reason for him to get into a situation that put him and people who depended on him at risk. He also vowed to never get involved in a similar situation again.

2001–02: Feud with Nas, The Blueprint and The Blueprint²

In 2001, Jay-Z spoke out against Prodigy after he took an issue with a Jay-Z line from "Money, Cash, Hoes" that he felt were subliminal shots at Mobb Deep and referenced Mobb Deep's beef with Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, and Death Row Records. He later performed a song "Takeover", at Summer Jam 2001, which initially attacked Prodigy and revealed photos of Prodigy dressed like Michael Jackson. The Blueprint was applauded for its production and the balance of "mainstream" and "hardcore" rap, receiving recognition from both audiences. The Blueprint was written in only two days. , a double-album. The album debuted on the Billboard 200 at number one, selling over 545,000 units and surpassing The Blueprint.

On November 25, 2003, Jay-Z held a concert at Madison Square Garden, which would later be the focus of his film Fade to Black. This concert was his "retirement party". All proceeds went to charity. Other performers included collaborators like The Roots (in the form of his backing band), Missy Elliott, Memphis Bleek, Beanie Siegel, Freeway, Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé, Twista, Ghostface Killah, Foxy Brown, Pharrell and R. Kelly with special appearances by Voletta Wallace and Afeni Shakur, the mothers of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur respectively. While Jay-Z had attested to a retirement from making new studio albums, various side projects and appearances soon followed. Included in these were a greatest hits record, mash-up projects and concert appearances with R. Kelly and Linkin Park.

In 2004 Jay-Z collaborated with rock group Linkin Park. The project was named Collision Course, and contained a six track EP, as well as a making of DVD. Some of the mash ups tracks were entitled "Dirt Off Your Shoulder/Lying From You", "Jigga What/Faint", and "Numb/Encore". "Numb/Encore" went on to win a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, and was performed with Linkin Park live at the Grammys, with a special appearance by Paul McCartney, who added verses from the song Yesterday. The EP sold over 1 million copies in the US alone. Jay-Z was the executive producer of Fort Minor's debut album The Rising Tied. Mike Shinoda got together with Jay-Z and Linkin Park bandmate Brad Delson to discuss what tracks should make the album.

Later in 2004, Jay-Z was named president of Def Jam Records, which led to Jay-Z, Dash and Biggs selling their remaining interests in Roc-A-Fella Records and Jay-Z taking control of both of the companies.

Jay-Z released his tenth album entitled American Gangster on November 6, 2007. After viewing the Ridley Scott film of the same name, he was heavily inspired to create a new "concept" album that depicts his experiences as a street-hustler. On December 24, 2007, Jay-Z stated that he would not remain at Def Jam as the company's President, and vacated the position effective of January 1, 2008.

On October 9, 2009, Jay-Z kicked off his tour for The Blueprint 3, during which he will support his new album in North America. In a Shave Magazine review of his performance at Rexall Place in Edmonton, Jake Tomlinson expressed that "It was the type of smooth performance you would expect from the hip-hop superstar." The review gave this performance 4 stars. His North American tour is scheduled to continue until November 22, 2009. Fela! is a story about an African pioneer and political activist who made his first moves on the scene during the 1970s.

2010-present: Watch the Throne

On January 23, 2010, Jay-Z released a track, "Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour)", with Rihanna, and U2's Bono and The Edge, as well as performing it at the Hope For Haiti Now telethon.

Rapping technique

Royce da 5'9" and Fredro Starr of Onyx both describe Jay-Z's emphasis on flow in the book How to Rap – Starr says that Jay-Z is "a master of the flow—he can flow fast, he can flow slow". Everlast, Shock G of Digital Underground describes Jay-Z's performance style, saying he "rarely breaks a sweat, and instead uses smoothness and clever wordplay to keep the audience interested and entertained".

Philanthropy

During his retirement, Jay-Z also became involved in philanthropic activity. On August 9, 2006, he met with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan at the organization's headquarters in New York City. The rapper pledged to use his upcoming world tour to raise awareness of and combat global water shortage. Already on the look-out for a way to, in his own words, "become helpful", he had been made aware of this issue during a visit to Africa. The effort took place in partnership with the UN, as well as MTV, which produced a documentary entitled Diary of Jay-Z: Water for Life, first airing in November 2006. Along with Sean "Diddy" Combs, Jay-Z pledged $1 million to the American Red Cross' relief effort after Hurricane Katrina. Jay-Z stated his support for Kanye West after the latter's outburst against President Bush during a live Katrina charity telethon. He also addressed the issue of the Katrina disaster, and the government's response, in his song "Minority Report".

Politics

Jay-Z got actively involved in politics during the 2008 presidential campaign, where he supported increased voter participation and helped send voters to polling stations. He was an early supporter for the candidacy of Illinois senator and subsequent US president Barack Obama, performing for free in voter-drive concerts financed by the Democrats' campaign. In the process, he's become personally acquainted with Obama himself, who stated "Every time I talk to Jay-Z, who is a brilliant talent and a good guy, I enjoy how he thinks. That's somebody who is going to start branching out and can help shape attitudes in a real positive way." During the 2010 mid-term elections' campaign, Jay-Z appeared, along with other artists, in an ad prepared by the HeadCount organization, urging voters, and especially younger ones, to register and vote.

Discography

Reasonable Doubt (1996)

In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 (1997)

Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life (1998)

Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter (1999)

(2000)

The Blueprint (2001)

(2002)

The Black Album (2003)

Kingdom Come (2006)

American Gangster (2007)

The Blueprint 3 (2009)

Watch the Throne (2011) [with Kanye West]

Awards and nominations

Filmography

Wild Style (1983)

Streets Is Watching (1998)

Backstage (2000)

State Property (2002)

Paper Soldiers (2003)

Fade to Black (2004)

Bibliography

Decoded by Jay-Z (2010: Spiegel & Grau, 336 pages) ISBN 978-1400068920. Part memoir and part a collection of Jay-Z lyrics with the stories behind them.

References

External links

Category:1969 births Category:Living people Category:1990s rappers Category:2000s rappers Category:2010s rappers Category:African American rappers Category:African American record producers Category:African American sports executives Category:American dance musicians Category:American hip hop record producers Category:American music industry executives Category:American people convicted of assault Category:BRIT Award winners Category:Businesspeople from New York City Category:Grammy Award winners Category:National Basketball Association executives Category:National Basketball Association owners Category:New Jersey Nets owners Category:African-American businesspeople Category:New Jersey Nets Category:People from Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Category:People from Scarsdale, New York Category:Rappers from New York City Category:Roc-A-Fella Records artists Category:Priority Records artists

Name	Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr.
Type	Astronaut
Nationality	American
Birth date	March 6, 1927
Death date	October 04, 2004
Birth place	Shawnee, Oklahoma
Death place	Ventura, California
Occupation	Test Pilot
Rank	Colonel, USAF
Selection	1959 NASA Group
Time	222h
Mission	Mercury 9 (Faith 7), Gemini 5
Insignia

Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., also known as Gordo Cooper, (March 6, 1927 – October 4, 2004) was an engineer and American astronaut. Cooper was one of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first manned space effort by the United States. He was the first American to sleep in orbit, had flown the longest spaceflight of the Mercury project, and was the last American to be launched alone into Earth orbit and conduct an entire solo orbital mission.

Early years

Cooper was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He grew up there and later moved to Murray, Kentucky where he attended public schools. He was active in the Boy Scouts of America and achieved the second highest rank of Life Scout. In 1945 Cooper turned down the possibility of a football scholarship to enlist in the Marine Corps but was too late to see combat in the Second World War.

Each of the Mercury astronauts was assigned to a different portion of the project along with other special assignments. Cooper specialized in the Redstone rocket (and developed a personal survival knife for astronauts to carry). He also chaired the Emergency Egress Committee, responsible for working out emergency launch pad procedures for escape. Cooper served as capsule communicator (CAPCOM) for Alan Shepard's first sub-orbital spaceflight in Mercury-Redstone 3 (Freedom 7) and Scott Carpenter's flight on Mercury-Atlas 7 (Aurora 7). He was backup pilot for Wally Schirra in Mercury-Atlas 8 (Sigma 7).

Cooper was launched into space on May 15, 1963 aboard the Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7) spacecraft, the last Mercury mission. He orbited the Earth 22 times and logged more time in space than all five previous Mercury astronauts combined – 34 hours, 19 minutes and 49 seconds, traveling 546,167 miles (878,971 km) at 17,547 mph (28,239 km/h), pulling a maximum of 7.6 g (74.48 m/s²). Cooper achieved an altitude of 165.9 statute miles (267 km) at apogee. He was the first American astronaut to sleep not only in orbit but on the launch pad during a countdown.

Spam in a can

broadcast from Faith 7]] Like all Mercury flights Faith 7 was designed for fully automatic control, a controversial engineering decision which in many ways reduced the role of an astronaut to that of a passenger and prompted Chuck Yeager to describe Mercury astronauts as spam in a can. Throughout his later life Cooper expressed repeatedly in interviews he had seen extra-terrestrial crafts and described his recollections for the documentary Out of the Blue.

Death

Cooper developed Parkinson's disease late in life and at age 77 died from heart failure at his home in Ventura, California on October 4, 2004, which was also the 47th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch and the same day SpaceShipOne made its second official qualifying flight and won the Ansari X-Prize.

Memorial spaceflights

On April 29, 2007 Cooper's ashes (along with those of Star Trek actor James Doohan and 206 others) were launched from New Mexico on a sub-orbital memorial flight by a privately owned UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL sounding rocket. Although the capsule carrying the ashes fell back toward Earth as planned, it was lost in mountainous landscape. The search was thwarted by bad weather but after a few weeks the capsule was found and the ashes it carried were returned to the families. The ashes were then launched on the Explorers orbital mission (August 3, 2008) but were lost when the Falcon 1 rocket failed two minutes into the flight.

Awards and decorations

Cooper received many awards including the Air Force Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf clusters, the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, the Collier Trophy, the Harmon Trophy, the DeMolay Legion of Honor, the John F. Kennedy Trophy, the Iven C. Kincheloe Award, the University of Hawaii Regents Medal and the Columbus Medal. He was a Master Mason (member of Carbondale Lodge 82 in Carbondale, Colorado) and was given the honorary 33rd Degree by the Scottish Rite Masonic body.

Cooper was a member of several groups and societies including the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, the American Astronautical Society, Scottish Rite, York Rite, Shriners, Rotary Club, Order of Daedalians, Confederate Air Force and Boy Scouts of America.

Gordon Cooper Technology Center in Shawnee, Oklahoma is named after Cooper.

Cultural influence

Cooper's accomplishments (along with his widely noted and appealing personality) were depicted in the 1983 film The Right Stuff in which he was portrayed by actor Dennis Quaid. Cooper worked closely with the production company on this project and reportedly, every line uttered by Quaid is attributable to Cooper's recollection. Quaid met with Cooper before the casting call and rapidly learned his mannerisms. Quaid also had his hair cut and dyed to match how the former astronaut's hair looked during the 1950s and 1960s. Cooper was later depicted in the 1998 HBO series From the Earth to the Moon, in which his character was played by Robert C. Treveiler. Cooper appeared as himself in an episode of the television series CHiPs and during the early 1980s made regular call in appearances on Late Night with David Letterman. The Thunderbirds character Gordon Tracy was named after him.

In 2010, Cooper's name and likeness appeared in a mock newspaper advertisement for a fictional ice pop-type product called "Rocket Poppeteers." The ad is part of a viral marketing campaign for the upcoming J.J. Abrams film Super 8, and was originally accessible only by inputting certain information via one of the film's affiliated websites. The extent of Cooper's relevance to the project is currently unclear.

Quotes

:::(This expression about the high level of funding needed for spaceflight was popular among test pilots and astronauts in the United States during the late 1950s and early 1960s)

References and notes

External links

Cooper Comments

NASA biography for 40th Anniversary of Mercury 7

Johnson Space Center biography

Spacefacts biography

Remembering 'Gordo' – NASA memories of Gordon Cooper

Interview with Cooper about UFOs and aliens (with much added speculation)

Space.com article, Pioneering Astronaut Sees UFO Cover-up

Gordon Cooper Technology Center

Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Cooper, Leroy Gordon

The Supreme Council: About the Scottish Rite

Category:1927 births Category:2004 deaths Category:1963 in space exploration Category:1965 in space exploration Category:Air Force Institute of Technology alumni Category:American astronauts Category:American aviators Category:American test pilots Category:Deaths from Parkinson's disease Category:People from Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma Category:People from Murray, Kentucky Category:Recipients of the Legion of Merit Category:Recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (United States) Category:Space burials Category:United States Air Force officers Category:United States Astronaut Hall of Fame inductees Category:United States Marines Category:University of Hawaii alumni Category:USAF Test Pilot School alumni

Name	George Carlin
Imagesize	240px
Caption	Carlin in Trenton, New Jersey on April 4, 2008
Birth name	George Denis Patrick Carlin
Birth date	May 12, 1937
Birth place	Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Death date	June 22, 2008
Death place	Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Medium	Stand-up, television, film, books, radio
Nationality	American
Active	1956–2008
Genre	Character comedy, observational comedy, Insult comedy, wit/word play, satire/political satire, black comedy, surreal humor, sarcasm, blue comedy
Subject	American culture, American English, everyday life, recreational drug use, death, philosophy, human behavior, American politics, parenting, children, religion, profanity, psychology, Anarchism, race relations, old age, pop culture, self-deprecation, childhood, family
Influences	Danny Kaye, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, Jerry Lewis, Marx Brothers, Mort Sahl, Spike Jones, Ernie Kovacs, Ritz Brothers Monty Python
Influenced	Chris Rock, Kevin Smith(August 5, 1961 — May 11, 1997) (her death) 1 childSally Wade (June 24, 1998 — June 22, 2008) (his death)
Notable work	Class Clown"Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television"Mr. Conductorin Shining Time StationNarratorin Thomas and Friends HBO television specialsGeorge O'Gradyin The George Carlin ShowRufus' in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey''
Signature	George Carlin Signature.svg| | website = www.georgecarlin.com | | footnotes =

}}

George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, actor, and author, who won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums.

In the 1960s, Carlin began appearing on television variety shows, notably The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show. His most famous routines were:

The Indian Sergeant ("You wit' the beads... get outta line")

Stupid disc jockeys ("Wonderful WINO...")—"The Beatles' latest record, when played backwards at slow speed, says 'Dummy! You're playing it backwards at slow speed!'"

Al Sleet, the "hippie-dippie weatherman"—"Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely scattered light towards morning."

Jon Carson—the "world never known, and never to be known"

Variations on the first three of these routines appear on Carlin's 1967 debut album, Take Offs and Put Ons, recorded live in 1966 at The Roostertail in Detroit, Michigan.

During this period, Carlin became more popular as a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show, initially with Jack Paar as host, then with Johnny Carson. Carlin became one of Carson's most frequent substitutes during the host's three-decade reign. Carlin was also cast in Away We Go, a 1967 comedy show. His material during his early career and his appearance, which consisted of suits and short-cropped hair, had been seen as "conventional", particularly when contrasted with his later anti-establishment material.

Carlin was present at Lenny Bruce's arrest for obscenity. As the police began attempting to detain members of the audience for questioning, they asked Carlin for his identification. Telling the police he did not believe in government-issued IDs, he was arrested and taken to jail with Bruce in the same vehicle.

1970s

Eventually, Carlin changed both his routines and his appearance. He lost some TV bookings by dressing strangely for a comedian of the time, wearing faded jeans and sporting long hair, a beard, and earrings at a time when clean-cut, well-dressed comedians were the norm. Using his own persona as a springboard for his new comedy, he was presented by Ed Sullivan in a performance of "The Hair Piece" and quickly regained his popularity as the public caught on to his sense of style. In this period he also perfected what is perhaps his best-known routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television", recorded on Class Clown. Carlin was arrested on July 21, 1972, at Milwaukee's Summerfest and charged with violating obscenity laws after performing this routine. The case, which prompted Carlin to refer to the words for a time as "the Milwaukee Seven," was dismissed in December of that year; the judge declared that the language was indecent but Carlin had the freedom to say it as long as he caused no disturbance. In 1973, a man complained to the Federal Communications Commission after listening with his son to a similar routine, "Filthy Words", from , broadcast one afternoon over WBAI, a Pacifica Foundation FM radio station in New York City. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC that sought to fine the company for violating FCC regulations that prohibited broadcasting "obscene" material. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the FCC action by a vote of 5 to 4, ruling that the routine was "indecent but not obscene" and that the FCC had authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when children were likely to be among the audience. (F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978). The court documents contain a complete transcript of the routine.)

The controversy only increased Carlin's fame. Carlin eventually expanded the dirty-words theme with a seemingly interminable end to a performance (ending with his voice fading out in one HBO version and accompanying the credits in the Carlin at Carnegie special for the 1982-83 season) and a set of 49 web pages organized by subject and embracing his "Incomplete List Of Impolite Words."

It was on-stage during a rendition of his Dirty Words routine that Carlin learned that his previous comedy album "FM & AM" had won the Grammy. Midway through the performance on the album "Occupation: Foole", he can be heard thanking someone for handing him a piece of paper. He then exclaims "Shit!" and proudly announces his win to the audience.

Carlin was the first-ever host of NBC's Saturday Night Live, on October 11, 1975. He also hosted SNL on November 10, 1984, and also appeared in sketches, whereas the first time he hosted he only performed stand-up and introduced the guest acts. The following season, 1976–77, Carlin also appeared regularly on CBS Television's Tony Orlando & Dawn variety series.

Carlin unexpectedly stopped performing regularly in 1976, when his career appeared to be at its height. For the next five years, he rarely appeared to perform stand-up, although it was at this time he began doing specials for HBO as part of its On Location series. His first two HBO specials aired in 1977 and 1978. It was later revealed that Carlin had suffered the first of three nonfatal heart attacks during this layoff period.

1980s and 1990s

In 1981, Carlin returned to the stage, releasing A Place For My Stuff and returning to HBO and New York City with the Carlin at Carnegie TV special, videotaped at Carnegie Hall and airing during the 1982-83 season. Carlin continued doing HBO specials every year or every other year over the following decade and a half. All of Carlin's albums from this time forward are from the HBO specials. , PA]] Carlin's acting career was primed with a major supporting role in the 1987 comedy hit Outrageous Fortune, starring Bette Midler and Shelley Long; it was his first notable screen role after a handful of previous guest roles on television series. Playing drifter Frank Madras, the role poked fun at the lingering effect of the 1960s counterculture. In 1989, he gained popularity with a new generation of teens when he was cast as Rufus, the time-traveling mentor of the titular characters in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and reprised his role in the film sequel Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey as well as the first season of the cartoon series. In 1991, he provided the narrative voice for the American version of the children's show Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, a role he continued until 1998. He played "Mr. Conductor" on the PBS children's show Shining Time Station, which featured Thomas the Tank Engine from 1991 to 1993, as well as the Shining Time Station TV specials in 1995 and Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales in 1996. Also in 1991, Carlin had a major supporting role in the movie The Prince of Tides, which starred Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand.

Carlin began a weekly Fox sitcom, The George Carlin Show, in 1993, playing New York City taxicab driver George O'Grady. He quickly included a variation of the "seven words" in the plot. The show, created and written by The Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon, ran 27 episodes through December 1995.

In his final book, the posthumously published Last Words, Carlin said about The George Carlin Show: "I had a great time. I never laughed so much, so often, so hard as I did with cast members Alex Rocco, Chris Rich, Tony Starke. There was a very strange, very good sense of humor on that stage. The biggest problem, though, was that Sam Simon was a fucking horrible person to be around. Very, very funny, extremely bright and brilliant, but an unhappy person who treated other people poorly. I was incredibly happy when the show was canceled. I was frustrated that it had taken me away from my true work."

In 1997, his first hardcover book, Brain Droppings, was published and sold over 750,000 copies as of 2001. Carlin was honored at the 1997 Aspen Comedy Festival with a retrospective, , hosted by Jon Stewart.

In 1999, Carlin played a supporting role as a satirical Roman Catholic cardinal in filmmaker Kevin Smith's movie Dogma. He worked with Smith again with a cameo appearance in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and later played an atypically serious role in Jersey Girl as the blue-collar father of Ben Affleck's character.

2000s

In 2001, Carlin was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th Annual American Comedy Awards.

In December 2003, California U.S. Representative Doug Ose (Republican), introduced a bill (H.R. 3687) to outlaw the broadcast of Carlin's "seven dirty words," including "compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms)." (The bill omits "tits," but includes "asshole", which was not part of Carlin's original routine.) This bill was never voted on. The last action on this bill was its referral to the House Judiciary Committee on the Constitution on January 15, 2004.

For years, Carlin had performed regularly as a headliner in Las Vegas, but in 2005 he was fired from his headlining position at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, after an altercation with his audience. After a poorly received set filled with dark references to suicide bombings and beheadings, Carlin stated that he could not wait to get out of "this fucking hotel" and Las Vegas, claiming he wanted to go back east, "where the real people are." He continued to insult his audience, stating:

An audience member shouted back that Carlin should "stop degrading us," at which point Carlin responded, "Thank you very much, whatever that was. I hope it was positive; if not, well, blow me." He was immediately fired by MGM Grand and soon after announced he would enter rehab for alcohol and prescription painkiller addiction.

He began a tour through the first half of 2006 following the airing of his thirteenth HBO Special on November 5, 2005, entitled Life is Worth Losing, which was shown live from the Beacon Theatre in New York City and in which he stated early on: "I've got 341 days of sobriety," referring to the rehab he entered after being fired from MGM. Topics covered included suicide, natural disasters (and the impulse to see them escalate in severity), cannibalism, genocide, human sacrifice, threats to civil liberties in America, and how an argument can be made that humans are inferior to other animals.

On February 1, 2006, during his Life is Worth Losing set at the Tachi Palace Casino in Lemoore, California, Carlin mentioned to the crowd that he had been discharged from the hospital only six weeks previously for "heart failure" and "pneumonia", citing the appearance as his "first show back."

Carlin provided the voice of Fillmore, a character in the Disney/Pixar animated feature Cars, which opened in theaters on June 9, 2006. The character Fillmore, who is presented as an anti-establishment hippie, is a VW Microbus with a psychedelic paint job whose front license plate reads "51237," Carlin's birthday. In 2007, Carlin provided the voice of the wizard in Happily N'Ever After, along with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr, Andy Dick, and Wallace Shawn, his last film.

Carlin's last HBO stand-up special, It's Bad for Ya, aired live on March 1, 2008, from the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, California. The themes that appeared in this HBO special included "American Bullshit," "Rights," "Death," "Old Age," and "Child Rearing." Carlin had been working on the new material for this HBO special for several months prior in concerts all over the country.

On June 18, 2008, four days before his death, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., announced that Carlin would be the 2008 honoree of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which was awarded on November 10, 2008. Carlin thus became the award's first posthumous recipient, a decision the Kennedy Center made after consulting with both Carlin's family and PBS (which aired the ceremony). The comedians who honored him at the ceremony included Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Lily Tomlin (a former Twain Humor Prize winner herself), Lewis Black, Denis Leary, Joan Rivers, and Margaret Cho.

Personal life

In 1961, Carlin married Brenda Hosbrook (August 5, 1936 - May 11, 1997), whom he had met while touring the previous year. The couple's only child, a daughter named Kelly, was born in 1963. In 1971, George and Brenda renewed their wedding vows in Las Vegas. Brenda died of liver cancer a day before Carlin's sixtieth birthday, in 1997.

Carlin later married Sally Wade on June 24, 1998, and the marriage lasted until his death, two days before their tenth anniversary.

In December 2004, Carlin announced that he would be voluntarily entering a drug rehabilitation facility to receive treatment for his addiction to alcohol and Vicodin.

Carlin did not vote and often criticized elections as an illusion of choice. He said he last voted for George McGovern, who ran for President in 1972 against Richard Nixon.

Religion

Although raised in the Roman Catholic faith (which he describes anecdotally on the albums FM & AM and Class Clown), Carlin often denounced the idea of a god and pointed out the flaws in any organized religion in interviews and performances, notably with his "Religion" and "There Is No God" routines as heard in You Are All Diseased. His views on religion are also mentioned in his last HBO stand up show "It's Bad for Ya" where he mocks the traditional swearing on the Bible as being "bullshit", "make believe", and "kids stuff". In "It's Bad for Ya", Carlin has a skit about the ironic differences in the types of hats religions ban or require as part of their practices. He mentions that he would never want to be a part of a group which requires or bans the wearing of hats.

Carlin also joked in his first book, Brain Droppings, that he worshiped the sun, one reason being that he could see it. This was later mentioned in You Are All Diseased along with the statement that he prayed to Joe Pesci (a good friend of his) because "he's a good actor," and "looks like a guy who can get things done!"

In his HBO special Complaints and Grievances, Carlin introduced the "Two Commandments":

First: THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE HONEST AND FAITHFUL, ESPECIALLY TO THE PROVIDER OF THY NOOKIE.

And second: THOU SHALT TRY REAL HARD NOT TO KILL ANYONE, UNLESS, OF COURSE, THEY PRAY TO A DIFFERENT INVISIBLE AVENGER THAN THE ONE YOU PRAY TO, a revised "pocket-sized" list of the Ten Commandments ending with the additional commandment "Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself."

Themes

Carlin's material falls under one of three self-described categories: "the little world" (observational humor), "the big world" (social commentary), and the peculiarities of the English language (euphemisms, doublespeak, business jargon), all sharing the overall theme of (in his words) "humanity's bullshit," which might include murder, genocide, war, rape, corruption, religion and other aspects of human civilization. He was known for mixing observational humour with larger social commentary. His delivery frequently treated these subjects in a misanthropic and nihilistic fashion, such as in his statement during the Life is Worth Losing show:

Language was a frequent focus of Carlin's work. Euphemisms that in his view seek to distort and lie and the use of language he felt was pompous, presumptuous, or silly were often the target of Carlin's routines. When asked on Inside the Actors Studio what turned him on, he responded, "Reading about language." When asked what made him most proud about his career, he said the number of his books that have been sold, close to a million copies.

Carlin also gave special attention to prominent topics in American and Western Culture, such as obsession with fame and celebrity, consumerism, Christianity, political alienation, corporate control, hypocrisy, child raising, fast food diet, news stations, self-help publications, patriotism, sexual taboos, certain uses of technology and surveillance, and the pro-life position, among many others.

April 4, 2008]] Carlin openly communicated in his shows and in his interviews that his purpose for existence was entertainment, that he was "here for the show." He professed a hearty schadenfreude in watching the rich spectrum of humanity slowly self-destruct, in his estimation, of its own design, saying, "When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front-row seat." He acknowledged that this is a very selfish thing, especially since he included large human catastrophes as entertainment. In his You Are All Diseased concert, he elaborated somewhat on this, telling the audience, "I have always been willing to put myself at great personal risk for the sake of entertainment. And I've always been willing to put you at great personal risk, for the same reason!"

In the same interview, he recounted his experience of a California earthquake in the early 1970s, as "[a]n amusement park ride. Really, I mean it's such a wonderful thing to realize that you have absolutely no control, and to see the dresser move across the bedroom floor unassisted is just exciting."

A routine in Carlin's 1999 HBO special You Are All Diseased focusing on airport security leads up to the statement: "Take a fucking chance! Put a little fun in your life! Most Americans are soft and frightened and unimaginative and they don't realize there's such a thing as dangerous fun, and they certainly don't recognize a good show when they see one."

Along with wordplay and sex jokes, Carlin had always included politics as part of his material, but by the mid 1980s he had become a strident social critic in both his HBO specials and the book compilations of his material, bashing both conservatives and liberals alike. His HBO viewers got an especially sharp taste of this in his take on the Ronald Reagan administration during the 1988 special What Am I Doing In New Jersey?, broadcast live from the Park Theatre in Union City, New Jersey.

Death and tribute

On June 22, 2008, Carlin was admitted to Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, after experiencing chest pains. He died later that day at 5:57 p.m. of heart failure. Carlin was 71 years old. His death occurred one week after his last performance at The Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, and he had further shows on his itinerary. In accordance with his wishes, Carlin was cremated, with his ashes scattered, and no public or religious services of any kind were held. Two of the networks he performed on changed their schedule in tribute to Carlin. HBO devoted several hours to broadcast eleven of Carlin's fourteen HBO specials from June 25–28, 2008, including a twelve-hour marathon block on their HBO Comedy channel. Meanwhile, NBC scheduled a rerun of the premiere episode of Saturday Night Live which Carlin hosted.

Both Sirius Satellite Radio's "Raw Dog Comedy" and XM Satellite Radio's "XM Comedy" channels ran a memorial marathon of George Carlin recordings the day following his death. Another tribute was the "Doonesbury" comic strip on Sunday, July 27, 2008.

Louis C. K. dedicated his stand-up special Chewed Up to Carlin.

Lewis Black dedicated his entire second season of Root of All Evil to Carlin.

An episode of Larry King Live paid tribute to Carlin, featuring comics Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Maher, Roseanne Barr and Lewis Black. Carlin's daughter and his brother were also interviewed by King. The next day, The New York Times published a tribute to Carlin written by Jerry Seinfeld.

An oral history, edited by Carlin's daughter, Kelly, was scheduled to be published in 2009. The book will contain stories from Carlin's friends and family and cover the considered high points of his career as well as the considered low, including his drug and alcohol addiction.

For a number of years prior to his death Carlin had been compiling and writing his autobiography, planning to release it in conjunction with a second, long-worked-on project, a one-man Broadway show tentatively titled New York City Boy, covering essentially the same topics. After his death his collaborator on the projects, Tony Hendra, edited the autobiography for release as Last Words (ISBN 1-4391-7295-1). The book covers Carlin's life up to around Life is Worth Losing, with the final chapter detailing future plans, including the planned one-man show. The book was released one year and four months after Carlin's death. The audio version of the book was read by George's brother Patrick and featured an interview with Tony Hendra and George's daughter, Kelly.

Another book of his writings to his widow, Sally Wade, as well as the story of their courtship is due to be released in 2011. It will be called "The George Carlin Letters: The Permanent Courtship of Sally Wade." The phrase in the title "The Permanent Courtship of Sally Wade" was the note she found next to her computer after coming home from the hospital when he died. The book is the story of their love and their life together, as told by both of them. Many of the writings in this book have not been published before as they were private moments shared between Sally and George, but they enrich the telling of this story of the later years of his life. The book will be published by Simon and Schuster.

Collection of works

Discography

;Main

1963: Burns and Carlin at the Playboy Club Tonight

1967: Take-Offs and Put-Ons

1972: FM & AM

1972: Class Clown

1973:

1974: Toledo Window Box

1975: An Evening with Wally Londo Featuring Bill Slaszo

1977: On the Road

1981: A Place for My Stuff

1984: Carlin on Campus

1986: Playin' with Your Head

1988: What Am I Doing In New Jersey?

1990:

1992: Jammin' in New York

1996: Back in Town

1999: You Are All Diseased

2001: Complaints and Grievances

2006: Life Is Worth Losing

2008: It's Bad for Ya

;Compilations

1978: Indecent Exposure: Some of the Best of George Carlin

1984: The George Carlin Collection

1992: Classic Gold

1999: The Little David Years (1971-1977)

2002: George Carlin on Comedy

Filmography

Television

The Kraft Summer Music Hall (1966)

That Girl (Guest appearance) (1966)

The Ed Sullivan Show (multiple appearances)

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (season 3 guest appearance) (1968)

The Flip Wilson Show (writer, performer) (1971–1973)

The Mike Douglas Show (Guest) (February 18, 1972)

Saturday Night Live (Host, episodes 1 and 183) (1975 & 1984)

Justin Case (as Justin Case) (1988) TV movie directed Blake Edwards

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends (as American Narrator) (1991–1998)

Shining Time Station (as Mr. Conductor) (1991–1993)

The George Carlin Show (as George O'Grady) (1994) Fox

Streets of Laredo (as Billy Williams) (1995)

The Simpsons (as Munchie, episode 209) (1998)

The Daily Show (guest on February 1, 1999; December 16, 1999; and March 10, 2004)

MADtv (Guest appearance in episodes 518 & 524) (2000)

Inside the Actors Studio (2004)

In 1998, Carlin had a cameo playing one of the funeral-attending comedians in Jerry Seinfeld's HBO special I'm Telling You For The Last Time. In the funeral intro (the only thing being buried is Jerry Seinfeld's material) Carlin learns that neither friend Robert Klein nor Ed McMahon ever saw Jerry's act. Carlin did, and enjoyed it, but admits "I was full of drugs."

HBO specials

Bibliography

For several years before his death, Carlin had been working on a memoir, Last Words, in collaboration with writer Tony Hendra. Hendra secured permission from Carlin's family to go ahead with the book. It was published by Simon & Schuster's Free Press imprint on November 17, 2009.

Carlin also spent several years before his death writing a one-man show he planned to do on Broadway before his death, called Watch My Language or New York City Boy. It has been published in 2009 by Disney's Hyperion Books, who also published Carlin's Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops, and the compilation Three Times Carlin: An Orgy of George. It was published in paperback as New York Boy on September 1, 2010, but has not been officially released.

Audiobooks

Brain Droppings

Napalm and Silly Putty

More Napalm & Silly Putty

George Carlin Reads to You

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

Internet hoaxes

Since the birth of spam email on the internet, many chain-forwards, usually rantlike and with blunt statements of belief on political and social issues and attributed to being written (or stated) by George Carlin himself, have made continuous rounds on the junk email circuit. The website Snopes, an online resource that debunks historic and present urban legends and myths, has extensively covered these forgeries. Many of the falsely attributed email attachments have contained material that runs directly opposite to Carlin's viewpoints, with some being especially volatile toward racial groups, gays, women, the homeless, etc. Carlin himself, when he was made aware of each of these bogus emails, would debunk them on his own website, writing: "Nothing you see on the Internet is mine unless it comes from one of my albums, books, HBO specials, or appeared on my website," and that "it bothers me that some people might believe that I would be capable of writing some of this stuff."

References

External links

Rotten Library - George Carlin

George Carlin Archive of American Television Interview

Category:1937 births Category:2008 deaths Category:Actors from New York Category:Writers from New York Category:American atheists Category:American film actors Category:American humorists Category:American political writers Category:American social commentators Category:American stand-up comedians Category:American voice actors Category:American television actors Category:Atheism activists Category:Deaths from heart failure Category:Disease-related deaths in California Category:Former Roman Catholics Category:Free speech activists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:American comedians of Irish descent Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:Mark Twain Prize recipients Category:Obscenity controversies Category:People from Manhattan Category:People self-identifying as alcoholics Category:Actors from California Category:Writers from California Category:United States Air Force airmen Category:Comedians

Caption	Emma Watson at the premiere of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2005
Birth name	Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson
Birth date	April 15, 1990
Birth place	Paris, France
Occupation	Actress, model
Years active	2001 – present
Website	http://www.emmawatson.com/

Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson (born 15 April 1990) is an English actress and model who rose to prominence playing Hermione Granger, one of three starring roles in the Harry Potter film series. Watson was cast as Hermione at the age of nine, having previously acted only in school plays. From the age of six, Watson wanted to become an actress,

Career

Harry Potter

In 1999, casting began for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (released as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States), the film adaptation of British author J. K. Rowling's bestselling novel. Casting agents found Watson through her Oxford theatre teacher, and producers were impressed by her confidence. After eight auditions, producer David Heyman told Watson and fellow applicants Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint that they had been cast for the roles of the schoolfriends Hermione Granger, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley respectively. Rowling supported Watson from her first screen test.

The release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 2001 was Watson's debut screen performance. The film broke records for opening-day sales and opening-weekend takings and was the highest-grossing film of 2001.

In 2004, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was released. Watson was appreciative of the more assertive role Hermione played, calling her character "charismatic" and "a fantastic role to play".

With Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), both Watson and the Harry Potter film series reached new milestones. The film set records for a Harry Potter opening weekend, a non-May opening weekend in the US, and an opening weekend in the UK. Critics praised the increasing maturity of Watson and her teenage co-stars; the New York Times called her performance "touchingly earnest". Later that year, Watson became the youngest person to appear on the cover of Teen Vogue, As the fame of the actress and the series continued, Watson and fellow Harry Potter co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint left imprints of their hands, feet and wands in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood on 9 July 2007. but Watson was considerably more hesitant. Principal photography for the sixth film began in late 2007, with Watson's part being filmed from 18 December to 17 May 2008.

In April 2008, Watson was widely rumoured to have been cast as "Betsy" Bonaparte in an upcoming film titled Napoleon and Betsy, but her official website denied that any commitment had been made and the film failed to materialize.

In May 2010, Watson was reported to be in talks to star in a film adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

In September 2009, Watson announced her involvement with People Tree, a Fair Trade fashion brand. but argued that "Fashion is a great way to empower people and give them skills; rather than give cash to charity you can help people by buying the clothes they make and supporting things they take pride in"; Watson continued her involvement with People Tree, resulting in a release of a 2010 Autumn/Winter collection.

After moving to Oxford with her mother and brother, Watson attended The Dragon School, an independent preparatory school, until June 2003 and then moved to Headington School, an independent school for girls, also in Oxford. While on film sets, Watson and her peers were tutored for up to five hours a day; She received A grades in her 2008 A level examinations in English Literature, Geography and Art,

After leaving school, Watson took a gap year to film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows beginning in February 2009, but said she "definitely want[ed] to go to university". In July 2009, after a second storm of rumour,

As of July 2007, Watson's work in the Harry Potter series had earned her more than £10 million, and she acknowledged she would never have to work for money again. In March 2009 she was ranked 6th on the Forbes list of "Most Valuable Young Stars", and she supports the Wild Trout Trust. and admires fellow actors Johnny Depp and Julia Roberts.Nominated for Best Performance by a Young Actor Saturn AwardNominated for Best Debut at Empire AwardsNominated for Best Youth Performance PFCS AwardWon Best Performance in a Feature Film – Leading Young Actress Young Artist Award |- | 2002 | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | Nominated for Best Youth Performance PFCS Award |- | 2004 | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | Nominated for Best Young Actress Critics Choice Award |- | 2005 | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | Nominated for Best Young Actress Critics Choice AwardNominated for Best On-screen Actress MTV Movie Award |- | rowspan="2" | 2007 | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | Nominated for Best Actress at Empire AwardsWon Best Performance by a Female National Movie Award |- | Ballet Shoes | Pauline Fossil | Television film shown on BBC One |- | 2008 | The Tale of Despereaux | Princess Pea | Voice part |- | 2009 | Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | rowspan="2"|Hermione Granger | Nominated for Best Actress Scream Award |- | 2010/2011 | | Release Dates: Part 1: 19 November 2010 Part 2: 15 July 2011 (USA and UK) |- | 2011 | My Week with Marilyn | Lucy | |}

Awards

{| class="wikitable sortable" |- ! Year !! Organisation !! Award !! Film !! Result |- | 2002 | Young Artist Awards | Best Performance in a Feature Film – Leading Young Actress | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | |- | 2002 | Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films | Saturn Award | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | |- | 2002 | Empire | Empire Award | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | |- | 2002 | American Moviegoer Awards | Outstanding Supporting Actress | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | |- | 2003 | Otto Awards | Best Female Film Star (Silver) | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | |- | 2004 | Otto Awards | Best Female Film Star (Silver) | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | |- | 2004 | Total Film | Child Performance of the Year | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | |- | 2004 | Broadcast Film Critics Association | Best Young Actress | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | |- | 2005 | Otto Awards | Best Female Film Star (Gold) | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | |- | 2005 | Broadcast Film Critics Association | Best Young Actress | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | |- | 2006 | Otto Awards | Best Female Film Star (Bronze) | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | |- | 2006 | MTV Movie Awards | Best On-Screen Team | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | |- | 2007 | ITV National Film Awards | Best Female Performance | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | |- | 2007 | UK Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards | Best Movie Actress | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | |- | 2008 | UK Sony Ericsson Empire Awards | Best Actress | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | |- | 2008 | Constellation Award | Best Female Performance | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | |- | 2008 | Otto Awards | Best Female Film Star (Gold) | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | |- | 2008 | SyFy Genre Awards | Best Actress | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | |- | 2008 | Glamour Awards | Best UK TV Actress | Ballet Shoes | |- | 2009 | Scream Awards | Best Fantasy Actress | Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince | |- | 2010 | National Movie Awards | Performance of the Year | Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince | |- | 2010 |MTV Movie Awards | Best Female Performance | Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince | |- | 2010 |Teen Choice Awards | Actress Fantasy | Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince | |- | 2011 |People's Choice Awards |Favorite Movie Star Under 25 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 | |}

References

External links

Guides: Harry Potter Actors at the BBC

Category:1990 births Category:Living people Category:People from Oxford Category:People from Paris

Category:British film actors Category:English child actors Category:English film actors Category:English people of French descent Category:English television actors Category:English voice actors Category:Old Dragons Category:Old Headingtonians

Name	Douglas Adams
Birthdate	March 11, 1952
Birthplace	Cambridge, England
Height	6 ft 5''
Deathdate	May 11, 2001
Deathplace	Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Resting place	Highgate Cemetery, London, England
Religion	Atheist
Occupation	Writer
Genre	Science fiction, comedy, satire
Influences	Monty Python, Robert Sheckley, Kurt Vonnegut, P. G. Wodehouse, Richard Dawkins
Influenced	Richard Dawkins
Website	http://www.douglasadams.com/

Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.

He also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), Last Chance to See (1990), and three stories for the television series Doctor Who. A posthumous collection of his work, including an unfinished novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.

Adams became known as an advocate for animals and the environment, and a lover of fast cars, cameras, and the Apple Macintosh. He was a staunch atheist, famously imagining a sentient puddle who wakes up one morning and thinks, "This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!" The biologist Richard Dawkins dedicated his book, The God Delusion (2006), to Adams, writing on his death that, "[s]cience has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender."

Early life

Adams was born to Janet (née Donovan) and Christopher Douglas Adams in Cambridge, England. A sister, Susan, was born three years later, before the parents divorced in 1957. Douglas, Susan, and Janet moved in with Janet's parents, who lived in an RSPCA animal shelter in Brentwood, Essex, which reportedly exacerbated Douglas' hayfever and asthma.

Adams' father married Mary Judith Stewart (born Judith Robertson) in July 1960, a marriage that produced a half-sister, Heather; his mother's 1964 remarriage to veterinarian Ron Thrift provided two more half-siblings, Jane and James Thrift.

Education

Adams attended Primrose Hill Primary School in Brentwood. At six, he passed the entrance exam for Brentwood School, an independent school whose alumni include Robin Day, Jack Straw, Noel Edmonds, and David Irving. Griff Rhys Jones was a year below him, and he was in the same class as Stuckist artist Charles Thomson. He attended the prep school from 1959 to 1964, then the main school until December 1970. His form master, Frank Halford, said of him: "Hundreds of boys have passed through the school but Douglas Adams really stood out from the crowd—literally. He was unnaturally tall and in his short trousers he looked a trifle self-conscious. Yet it was his ability to write first-class stories that really made him shine." Adams was six feet tall (1.83 m) by age 12 and finally stopped growing at 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m): "[T]he form-master wouldn't say 'Meet under the clock tower,' or 'Meet under the war memorial'," he joked, "but 'Meet under Adams'." He became the only student ever to be awarded a ten out of ten by Halford for creative writing, something he remembered for the rest of his life, particularly when facing writer's block.

Some of his earliest writing was published at the school, such as a report on its photography club in The Brentwoodian in 1962, or spoof reviews in the school magazine Broadsheet, edited by Paul Neil Milne Johnstone, who later became a character in The Hitchhiker's Guide. He also designed the cover of one issue of the Broadsheet, and had a letter and short story published nationally in The Eagle, the boys' comic, in 1965. On the strength of a bravura essay on religious poetry that discussed The Beatles and William Blake, he was awarded a place at St John's College, Cambridge to read English, going up in 1971, though in fact the reason he applied to Cambridge was to join the Footlights, an invitation-only student comedy club that acted as a hothouse for some of the most notable comic talent in England. He was not elected immediately as he had hoped, and started to write and perform in revues with Will Adams (no relation) and Martin Smith, forming a group called "Adams-Smith-Adams," but through sheer doggedness managed to become a member of the Footlights by 1973. Despite doing very little work—he recalled having completed three essays in three years—he graduated in 1974 with a B.A. in English literature.

Career

Writing

Some of his early work appeared on BBC2 television in 1974, in an edited version of the Footlights Revue that year. A version of the Revue performed live in London's West End led to Adams being discovered by Monty Python's Graham Chapman. The two formed a brief writing partnership, and Adams earned a writing credit in one episode (episode 45: "Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of the Liberal Party in 1982") of Monty Python for a sketch called "Patient Abuse"; he was one of only two people, outside the original Python members to get a writing credit (the other being Neil Innes). In the sketch, a man who had been stabbed by a nurse arrives at his doctor's office bleeding from the stomach. The doctor asks him to fill out numerous senseless forms before he will administer treatment (a joke later incorporated into the Vogons' obsession with paperwork). Adams also contributed to a sketch on the album for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

appearance, in full surgeon's garb in episode 42.]]

Douglas had two brief appearances in the fourth series of Monty Python's Flying Circus. At the beginning of episode 42, "The Light Entertainment War", Adams is in a surgeon's mask (as Dr. Emile Koning, according to on-screen captions), pulling on gloves, while Michael Palin narrates a sketch that introduces one person after another but never actually gets started. At the beginning of episode 44, "Mr. Neutron", Adams is dressed in a "pepperpot" outfit and loads a missile on to a cart driven by Terry Jones, who is calling for scrap metal ("Any old iron..."). The two episodes were broadcast in November 1974. Adams and Chapman also attempted non-Python projects, including Out of the Trees.

Some of Adams's early radio work included sketches for The Burkiss Way in 1977 and The News Huddlines. He also wrote, again with Graham Chapman, the 20 February 1977 episode of Doctor on the Go, a sequel to the Doctor in the House television comedy series.

As Adams had difficulty selling jokes and stories, he took a series of odd jobs, including as a hospital porter, barn builder, and chicken shed cleaner. He was employed as a bodyguard by a Qatari family, who had made their fortune in oil. Anecdotes about the job included that the family had once ordered one of everything from a hotel's menu, tried all the dishes, and sent out for hamburgers. Another story had to do with a prostitute sent to the floor Adams was guarding one evening. They acknowledged each other as she entered, and an hour later, when she left, she is said to have remarked, "At least you can read while you're on the job."

In 1979, Adams and John Lloyd wrote scripts for two half-hour episodes of Doctor Snuggles: "The Remarkable Fidgety River" and "The Great Disappearing Mystery" (episodes seven and twelve). John Lloyd was also co-author of two episodes from the original "Hitchhiker" radio series (Fit the Fifth and Fit the Sixth, also known as Episodes Five and Six), as well as The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff. Lloyd and Adams also collaborated on an SF movie comedy project based on The Guinness Book of World Records, which would have starred John Cleese as the UN Secretary General, and had a race of aliens beating humans in athletic competitions, but the humans winning in all of the "absurd" record categories. The latter never proceeded past a treatment.

After the first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide became successful, Adams was made a BBC radio producer, working on Week Ending and a pantomime called Black Cinderella Two Goes East. He left the position after six months to become the script editor for Doctor Who.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a concept for a science-fiction comedy radio series pitched by Adams and radio producer Simon Brett to BBC Radio 4 in 1977. Adams came up with an outline for a pilot episode, as well as a few other stories (reprinted in Neil Gaiman's book ) that could potentially be used in the series. 2005 in Innsbruck, Austria, where Adams first had the idea of The Hitchhiker's Guide. Several of the novels' ideas have become iconic, including that of a towel being the most useful thing a space traveller can have. The annual Towel Day (25 May) was first celebrated in 2001, two weeks after Adams' death.]] According to Adams, the idea for the title The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy occurred to him while he lay drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria, gazing at the stars, though he joked that the BBC would instead claim it was Spain "probably because it's easier to spell". He had been wandering the countryside while carrying a book called the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe when he ran into a town where, as he humorously describes, everyone was either "deaf" and "dumb" or only spoke languages he could not understand. After wandering around and drinking for a while, he went to sleep in the middle of a field and was inspired by his inability to communicate with the townspeople. He later said that due to his constantly retelling this story of inspiration, he no longer had any memory of the moment of inspiration itself, and only remembered his retelling of that moment.

Despite the original outline, Adams was said to make up the stories as he wrote. He turned to John Lloyd for help with the final two episodes of the first series. Lloyd contributed bits from an unpublished science fiction book of his own, called GiGax. However, very little of Lloyd's material survived in later adaptations of Hitchhiker's, such as the novels and the TV series. The TV series itself was based on the first six radio episodes, but sections contributed by Lloyd were largely re-written.

BBC Radio 4 broadcast the first radio series weekly in the UK in March and April 1978. Following the success of the first series, another episode was recorded and broadcast, which was commonly known as the Christmas Episode. A second series of five episodes was broadcast one per night, during the week of 21–25 January 1980.

While working on the radio series (and with simultaneous projects such as The Pirate Planet) Adams developed problems keeping to writing deadlines that only got worse as he published novels. Adams was never a prolific writer and usually had to be forced by others to do any writing. This included being locked in a hotel suite with his editor for three weeks to ensure that So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish was completed. He was quoted as saying, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." Despite the difficulty with deadlines, Adams eventually wrote five novels in the series, published in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984, and 1992.

The books formed the basis for other adaptations, such as three-part comic book adaptations for each of the first three books, an interactive text-adventure computer game, and a photo-illustrated edition, published in 1994. This latter edition featured a 42 Puzzle designed by Adams, which was later incorporated into paperback covers of the first four Hitchhiker's novels (the paperback for the fifth re-used the artwork from the hardback edition).

In 1980, Adams also began attempts to turn the first Hitchhiker's novel into a movie, making several trips to Los Angeles, and working with a number of Hollywood studios and potential producers. The next year, 1981, the radio series became the basis for a BBC television mini-series "The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" broadcast in six parts. When he died in 2001 in California, he had been trying again to get the movie project started with Disney, which had bought the rights in 1998. The screenplay finally got a posthumous re-write by Karey Kirkpatrick, was green-lit in September 2003, and the resulting movie was released in 2005.

Radio producer Dirk Maggs had consulted with Adams, first in 1993, and later in 1997 and 2000 about creating a third radio series, based on the third novel in the Hitchhiker's series. They also vaguely discussed the possibilities of radio adaptations of the final two novels in the five-book "trilogy". As with the movie, this project was only realised after Adams's death. The third series, The Tertiary Phase, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2004 and was subsequently released on audio CD. With the aid of a recording of his reading of Life, the Universe and Everything and editing, Douglas Adams himself can be heard playing the part of Agrajag posthumously. So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish and Mostly Harmless made up the fourth and fifth radio series, respectively (on radio they were titled The Quandary Phase and The Quintessential Phase) and these were broadcast in May and June 2005, and also subsequently released on Audio CD. The last episode in the last series (with a new, "more upbeat" ending) concluded with, "The very final episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is affectionately dedicated to its author."

More recently, the film makers at Smoov Filmz adapted the anecdote that Arthur Dent relates about biscuits in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish into a short film called "Cookies". Adams also discussed the real-life incident that inspired the anecdote in a 2001 speech, reprinted in his posthumous collection The Salmon of Doubt. He also told the story on the radio programme It Makes Me Laugh on 19 July 1981.

Dirk Gently series

In between Adams's first trip to Madagascar with Mark Carwardine in 1985, and their series of travels that formed the basis for the radio series and non-fiction book Last Chance to See, Adams wrote two other novels with a new cast of characters. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was first published in 1987, and was described by its author as "a kind of ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic, mainly concerned with mud, music and quantum mechanics." It received many rave reviews from American newspapers upon its publication in the USA. Adams borrowed a few ideas from two Doctor Who stories he had worked on: City of Death and Shada.

A sequel novel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul was published a year later. This was an entirely original work, Adams's first since So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. Reviewers, however, were not as generous with praise for the second volume as they had been for the first. After the obligatory book tours, Douglas Adams was off on his round-the-world excursion which supplied him with the material for Last Chance to See.

Doctor Who

Adams sent the script for the HHGG pilot radio programme to the Doctor Who production office in 1978, and was commissioned to write The Pirate Planet (see below). He had also previously attempted to submit a potential movie script, called "Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen," which later became his novel Life, the Universe and Everything (which in turn became the third Hitchhiker's Guide radio series). Adams then went on to serve as script editor on the show for its seventeenth season in 1979. Altogether, he wrote three Doctor Who serials starring Tom Baker as the Doctor:

The Pirate Planet (the second serial in the "Key To Time" arc, in Season 16)

City of Death (with producer Graham Williams, from an original storyline by writer David Fisher. It was transmitted under the pseudonym "David Agnew")

Shada (only partially filmed and not broadcast due to industrial disputes)

The episodes authored by Adams are some of the few that have not been novelised as Adams would not allow anyone else to write them, and asked for a higher price than the publishers were willing to pay.

Adams was also known to allow in-jokes from The Hitchhiker's Guide to appear in the Doctor Who stories he wrote and other stories on which he served as Script Editor. Subsequent writers have also inserted Hitchhiker's references, even as recently as 2007. Conversely, at least one reference to Doctor Who was worked into a Hitchhiker's novel. In Life, the Universe and Everything, two characters travel in time and land on the pitch at Lord's Cricket Ground. The reaction of the radio commentators to their sudden appearance is very similar to the reactions of commentators in a scene in the eighth episode of the 1965–66 story The Daleks' Master Plan, which has the Doctor's TARDIS materialise on the pitch at Lord's.

Elements of Shada and City of Death were reused in Adams's later novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in particular the character of Professor Chronotis, and Dirk Gently himself clearly fills much the same plot role as the Doctor (though the character is very different). Big Finish Productions eventually remade Shada as an audio play starring Paul McGann as the Doctor. Accompanied by partially animated illustrations, it was webcast on the BBC website in 2003, and subsequently released as a two-CD set later that year. An omnibus edition of this version was broadcast on the digital radio station BBC7 on 10 December 2005.

Adams is credited with introducing a fan and later friend of his, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, to Dawkins' future wife, Lalla Ward, who had played the part of Romana in Doctor Who. Dawkins confirmed this in his published eulogy of Adams.

When he was at school, he wrote and performed a play called Doctor Which.

Music

Adams played the guitar left-handed and had a collection of twenty-four left-handed guitars when he died in 2001 (having received his first guitar in 1964). He also studied piano in the 1960s with the same teacher as Paul Wickens, the pianist who plays in Paul McCartney's band (and composed the music for the 2004–2005 editions of the Hitchhiker's Guide radio series). The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Procol Harum all had important influence on Adams's work.

Pink Floyd

Adams included a direct reference to Pink Floyd in the original radio version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which he describes the main characters surveying the landscape of an alien planet while Marvin, their android companion, hums Pink Floyd's "Shine on You Crazy Diamond". This was cut out of the CD version. Adams also compared the various noises that the kakapo makes to "Pink Floyd studio out-takes" in his nonfiction book on endangered species, Last Chance to See.

Adams's official biography shares its name with the song "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd. Adams was friends with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and, on the occasion of Adams's 42nd birthday (the number 42 having special significance, being the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything and also Adams's age when his daughter Polly was born), he was invited to make a guest appearance at Pink Floyd's 28 October 1994 concert at Earls Court in London, playing guitar on the songs "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse". Video is not available of this event, but a link to audio is present below. Adams chose the name for Pink Floyd's 1994 album, The Division Bell, by picking the words from the lyrics to one of its tracks, namely "High Hopes". He appears in the liner notes as well. Gilmour also performed at Adams's memorial service following his death in 2001.

Pink Floyd and their lavish stage shows were also the inspiration for the Adams-created fictional rock band "Disaster Area", described in the Hitchhiker's Guide as "not only the loudest rock band in the galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind". One element of Disaster Area's stage show was to send a space ship hurtling into a sun, probably inspired by the plane that would crash into the stage during some of Pink Floyd's live shows, usually at the end of "On the Run". The 1968 Pink Floyd song "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" may also have influenced the ideas behind Disaster Area.

Procol Harum

Douglas Adams was a friend of Gary Brooker, the lead singer, pianist and songwriter of the progressive rock band Procol Harum. Adams is known to have invited Brooker to one of the many parties that Adams held at his house. On one such occasion Gary Brooker performed the full (4 verse) version of his hit song "A Whiter Shade of Pale". Brooker also performed at Adams's memorial service.

Adams also appeared on stage with Brooker to perform "In Held Twas in I" at Redhill when the band's lyricist Keith Reid was not available. On several other occasions he had been known to introduce Procol Harum at their gigs.

Adams also let it be known that while writing he would listen to music, and this would occasionally influence his work. On one occasion the title track from the Procol Harum album Grand Hotel was playing when... }}

Other musical links

Adams made a number of references to music and musicians who had influenced his work through his books. In the Hitchhiker's Guide series, examples include one of the two mice, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, suggesting that as they have not found the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, they should instead make it up, proposing to use the question "How many roads must a man walk down?" This is a line from Bob Dylan's song, "Blowin' in the Wind". Prior to this scene, in the same novel, the ship's computer aboard the Heart of Gold, unable to assist or prevent the ship's impending destruction with two nuclear missiles closing in on it, sings "You'll Never Walk Alone" in the background. This Rodgers and Hammerstein hit from the musical Carousel had been an early 1960s rock hit in the UK. It was adopted as a crowd chant by many football fans, in particular Liverpool supporters, a recording of which ended up on Pink Floyd's album Meddle, interspersed throughout the track "Fearless". Heart of Gold itself is also the name of a song by Neil Young.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the second novel in the series, is dedicated to the 1980 Paul Simon soundtrack album, One-Trick Pony. Adams says he played it "incessantly" while writing the book. In one scene in the fourth novel, So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish, Arthur Dent listens to a Dire Straits LP and Adams goes on to pay tribute to their lead guitarist, Mark Knopfler. Adams later revealed that the particular song to which he refers in the book – although never by name – is "Tunnel of Love", from the Making Movies album. And in , Elvis is discovered playing in a diner attended by Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent.

Besides modern rock music, Douglas Adams admired the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, which provides a minor plot element in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Adams was also good friends with The Monkees' Michael Nesmith. In the early 1990s, one of the aborted attempts to have The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy adapted into a movie would have had Nesmith as its producer.

Adams was also a fan of The Beatles. He makes a reference to Paul McCartney in Life, the Universe and Everything and quotes lyrics and titles from songs by The Beatles in Mostly Harmless and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency this exchange takes place: :"Yes, it is", said the Professor. "Wait – let it be. It won't be long." :Richard stared in disbelief. "You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?" :"Well, the bathroom window's open. I expect she came in through that." :"You're doing it deliberately, aren't you?"

Adams also does this several times in The Salmon of Doubt. In Chapter 3 there is a conversation between Kate and Dirk, which includes the following exchange:

:"So?" :"I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair."

Taken together, these two lines form a quotation from "Norwegian Wood" on the Rubber Soul album.

Computer games and projects

Douglas Adams created an interactive fiction version of HHGG together with Steve Meretzky from Infocom in 1984. In 1986 he participated in a week-long brainstorming session with the Lucasfilm Games team for the game . Later he was also involved in creating Bureaucracy (also by Infocom, but not based on any book; Adams wrote it as a parody of events in his own life). Adams was also responsible for the computer game Starship Titanic, which was published in 1998 by Simon and Schuster. Terry Jones wrote the accompanying book, entitled Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic, since Adams was too busy with the computer game to do both. In April 1999, Adams initiated the h2g2 collaborative writing project, an experimental attempt at making The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a reality, and at harnessing the collective brainpower of the internet community.

In 1990, Adams wrote and presented a television documentary programme Hyperland which featured Tom Baker as a "software agent" (similar to the "Assistants" used in several versions of Microsoft Office, derived from their failed "Bob" program), and interviews with Ted Nelson, which was essentially about the use of hypertext. Although Adams did not invent hypertext, he was an early adopter and advocate of it. This was the same year that Tim Berners-Lee used the idea of hypertext in his HTML.

Personal beliefs and activism

Atheism and views on religion

Adams described himself as a "radical atheist", adding radical for emphasis so he would not be asked if he meant agnostic. He told American Atheists that this made things easier, but most importantly it conveyed the fact that he really meant it. "I am convinced that there is not a god," he said. Despite this, he remained fascinated by religion because of its effect on human affairs. "I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I’ve thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing."

The evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion uses Adams' influence throughout to exemplify arguments for non-belief; Dawkins jokingly states that Adams is "possibly [my] only convert" to atheism. The book is dedicated to Adams, quoting him, "Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

Environmental activism

Adams was also an environmental activist who campaigned on behalf of a number of endangered species. This activism included the production of the non-fiction radio series Last Chance to See, in which he and naturalist Mark Carwardine visited rare species such as the Kakapo and Baiji, and the publication of a tie-in book of the same name. In 1992, this was made into a CD-ROM combination of audio book, e-book and picture slide show.

Adams and Mark Carwardine contributed the 'Meeting a Gorilla' passage from Last Chance to See to the book The Great Ape Project. This book, edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer launched a wider-scale project in 1993, which calls for the extension of moral equality to include all great apes, human and non-human.

In 1994 he participated in a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro while wearing a rhino suit for the British charity organisation Save the Rhino. Many different people participated in the same climb and took turns wearing the rhino suit; Adams wore the suit while travelling to the mountain before the climb proper began. About £100,000 were raised through that event, benefiting schools in Kenya and a Black Rhinoceros preservation programme in Tanzania. Adams was also an active supporter of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Since 2003, Save the Rhino has held an annual Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture around the time of his birthday to raise money for environmental campaigns. The lectures in the series are:

2003 Richard Dawkins – Queerer than we can suppose: the strangeness of science

2004 Robert Swan – Mission Antarctica

2005 Mark Carwardine – Last Chance to See... Just a bit more

2006 Robert Winston – Is the Human an Endangered Species?

2007 Richard Leakey – Wildlife Management in East Africa – Is there a future?

2008 Steven Pinker – The Stuff of Thought, Language as a Window into Human Nature

2009 Benedict Allen – Unbreakable

2010 Marcus du Sautoy – 42: the answer to life, the universe and prime numbers

2011 Brian Cox

Technology

Adams was a serious fan of technology. Though he did not buy his first word processor until 1982, he had considered one as early as 1979. He was quoted as saying that until 1982, he had difficulties with "the impenetrable barrier of jargon. Words were flying backwards and forwards without concepts riding on their backs." In 1982, his first purchase was a 'Nexus'. In 1983, when he and Jane Belson went out to Los Angeles, he bought a DEC Rainbow. Upon their return to England, Adams bought an Apricot, then a BBC Micro and a Tandy 1000. In Last Chance to See Adams mentions his Cambridge Z88, which he had taken to Zaire on a quest to find the Northern White Rhinoceros.

Adams's posthumously published work, The Salmon of Doubt, features multiple articles written by Douglas on the subject of technology, including reprints of articles that originally ran in MacUser magazine, and in The Independent on Sunday newspaper. In these, Adams claims that one of the first computers he ever saw was a Commodore PET, and that his love affair with the Apple Macintosh first began after seeing one at Infocom's headquarters in Massachusetts in 1983 (though that was very likely an Apple Lisa).

Adams was a Macintosh user from the time they first came out in 1984 until his death in 2001. He was the first person to buy a Mac in the UK (the second being Stephen Fry – though some accounts differ on this, saying Fry bought his Mac first). Adams was also an "Apple Master", one of several celebrities whom Apple made into spokespeople for its products (other Apple Masters included John Cleese and Gregory Hines). Adams' contributions included a rock video that he created using the first version of iMovie with footage featuring his daughter Polly. The video can still be seen on Adams' .Mac homepage. Adams even installed and started using the first release of Mac OS X in the weeks leading up to his death. His very last post to his own forum was in praise of Mac OS X and the possibilities of its Cocoa programming framework. Adams can also be seen in the Omnibus tribute included with the Region One/NTSC DVD release of the TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide using Mac OS X on his PowerBook G3.

Adams used e-mail extensively from the technology's infancy, adopting a very early version of e-mail to correspond with Steve Meretzky during the pair's collaboration on Infocom's version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. While living in New Mexico in 1993 he set up another e-mail address and began posting to his own USENET newsgroup, alt.fan.douglas-adams, and occasionally, when his computer was acting up, to the comp.sys.mac hierarchy. Many of his posts are now archived through Google. Challenges to the authenticity of his messages later led Adams to set up a message forum on his own website to avoid the issue. Adams was also a keynote speaker for the April 2001 Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco, one of the major technical conferences on embedded system engineering. In his keynote speech, he shared his vision of technology and how it should contribute in everyday – and every man's – life.

Personal life

In the early 1980s, Adams had an affair with novelist Sally Emerson, who was separated from her husband at that time. Adams later dedicated his book Life, the Universe and Everything to Emerson. In 1981 Emerson returned to her husband, Peter Stothard, a contemporary of Adams' at Brentwood School, and later editor of The Times. Adams was soon introduced by friends to Jane Belson, with whom he later became romantically involved. Belson was the "lady barrister" mentioned in the jacket-flap biography printed in his books during the mid-1980s ("He [Adams] lives in Islington with a lady barrister and an Apple Macintosh"). The two lived in Los Angeles together during 1983 while Adams worked on an early screenplay adaptation of Hitchhiker's. When the deal fell through, they moved to London, and after several separations ("He is currently not certain where he lives, or with whom") and an aborted engagement, they married on 25 November 1991. Adams and Belson had one daughter together, Polly Jane Rocket Adams, born on 22 June 1994, shortly after Adams turned 42. In 1999, the family moved from London to Santa Barbara, California, where they lived until his death. Following the funeral, Jane Belson and Polly Adams returned to London.

Death

, North London]] Adams died of a heart attack at the age of 49 on 11 May 2001, during the rest period of his regular workout at a private gym in Montecito, California. He had unknowingly suffered a gradual narrowing of the coronary arteries, which led at that moment to a myocardial infarction and a fatal cardiac arrhythmia. Adams had been due to deliver the commencement address at Harvey Mudd College on 13 May. His funeral was held on 16 May in Santa Barbara, California. Several friends and people he had worked with were in attendance. His remains were subsequently cremated and the ashes placed in Highgate Cemetery in north London in June 2002.

A memorial service was held on 17 September 2001 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, Trafalgar Square, London. This became the first church service of any kind broadcast live on the web by the BBC. Video clips of the service are still available on the BBC's website for download.

One of his last public appearances was a talk given at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Parrots, the universe and everything, recorded days before his death. A full transcript of the talk is also available.

In May 2002, The Salmon of Doubt was published, containing many short stories, essays, and letters, as well as eulogies from Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry (in the UK edition), Christopher Cerf (in the U.S. edition), and Terry Jones (in the U.S. paperback edition). It also includes eleven chapters of his long-awaited but unfinished novel, The Salmon of Doubt, which was originally intended to become a new Dirk Gently novel, but might have later become the sixth Hitchhiker novel.

Other events after Adams's death included a webcast production of Shada, allowing the complete story to be told, radio dramatisations of the final three books in the Hitchhiker's series, and the completion of the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The film, released in 2005, posthumously credits Adams as a producer, and several art design elements – most notably a head-shaped planet seen near the end of the film – incorporated Adams's features.

A 12-part radio series based on the Dirk Gently novels was announced in 2007, with annual transmissions starting in October of that year.

BBC Radio 4 also commissioned a third Dirk Gently radio series based on the incomplete chapters of The Salmon of Doubt, and written by 'Spice World' writer Kim Fuller; however, this has now been dropped in favour of a potential BBC TV series based on the two completed novels. A sixth Hitchhiker novel, And Another Thing..., by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer, was released on 12 October 2009 (the 30th anniversary of the first book), published with the full support of Adams' estate. A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime adaptation and an audio book soon followed.

Works

Monty Python's Flying Circus Episode 45, Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of the Liberal Party (1972)

The Private Life of Genghis Khan (1975)

The Pirate Planet, a Doctor Who serial first broadcast in 1978

City of Death, a Doctor Who serial, cowritten with Graham Williams, based on a story by David Fisher, first broadcast October 1979

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

Shada (1979–1980), a Doctor Who serial

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980)

Life, the Universe and Everything (1982)

The Meaning of Liff (1983, with John Lloyd)

So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish (1984)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (computer game) (1984, with Steve Meretzky)

(1985, with Geoffrey Perkins)

Young Zaphod Plays It Safe (short story) (1986)

A Christmas Fairly Story (1986, with Terry Jones), and

Supplement to The Meaning of Liff (1986, with John Lloyd and Stephen Fry), both part of

* The Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book (1986, edited with Peter Fincham)

Bureaucracy (computer game) (1987)

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988)

Hyperland (TV documentary) (1990)

The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990, with John Lloyd)

Last Chance to See (1990, with Mark Carwardine)

Mostly Harmless (1992)

The Illustrated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1994)

Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic (1997), written by Terry Jones (who insists he wrote the whole thing while in the nude), based on an idea by Adams

Starship Titanic (computer game) (1998)

h2g2 (internet project) (1999)

The Internet: The Last Battleground of the 20th century (radio series) (2000)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future (radio series) (2001) final project for BBC Radio 4 before his death

Parrots, the universe and everything (2001)

The Salmon of Doubt (2002), unfinished novel manuscript (11 chapters), short stories, essays, and interviews (also available as an audiobook, read by Simon Jones)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film) (2005)

Notes

References

Adams, Douglas (1998). Is there an Artificial God?, speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge, England, September 1998.

Adams, Douglas (2002). The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time, Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-76657-1

Dawkins, Richard (2001). Lament for Douglas Adams, The Guardian, 14 May 2001.

Dawkins, Richard (2003). "Eulogy for Douglas Adams," in A devil's chaplain: reflections on hope, lies, science, and love. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Felch, Laura (2004). Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Neil Gaiman, May 2004

Ray, Mohit K (2007). Atlantic Companion to Literature in English, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors. ISBN 81-269-0832-7

Simpson, M. J. (2003). , Justin, Charles and Co. ISBN 1-932112-17-0

Webb, Nick (2005a). Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-47650-6

Webb, Nick (2005b). "Adams, Douglas Noël (1952–2001)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, January 2005, accessed 25 October 2005.

Further reading

Adams's official web site, established by him, and still operated by The Digital Village

Adams's .mac homepage

Douglas Adams Quotes

Douglas Adams speech at Digital Biota 2 (1998) (The audio of the speech)

Douglas Adams on Triple J Radio, Australia (1990)

Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.

Douglas Adams & his Computer article about his Mac IIfx

Douglas Adams with Pink Floyd

BBC2 "Omnibus" tribute to Adams, presented by Kirsty Wark, 4 August 2001

Mueller, Rick and Greengrass, Joel (2002).Life, The Universe and Douglas Adams, documentary.

Simpson, M.J. (2001). The Pocket Essential Hitchhiker's Guide. ISBN 1-903047-40-4. Updated April 2005 ISBN 1-904048-46-3

Parrots, the Universe and Everything, 90 min talk at University of California Santa Barbara, 2001

Category:Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Category:Atheism activists Category:Audio book narrators Category:BBC radio producers Category:British child writers Category:Burials at Highgate Cemetery Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:English atheists Category:English comedy writers Category:English humanists Category:English humorists Category:English novelists Category:English radio writers Category:English science fiction writers Category:English television writers Category:Infocom Category:Interactive fiction writers Category:Old Brentwoods Category:People from Cambridge Category:Usenet people Category:1952 births Category:2001 deaths

Name	Billy Connolly
Imagesize	150px
Caption	Connolly in 2005
Birth name	William Connolly, Jr.
Birth date	November 24, 1942
Birth place	Anderston, Glasgow, Scotland
Medium	Stand-up, television, film, music
Nationality	Scottish
Active	1965–present
Genre	Observational comedy, Musical comedy
Subject	Everyday life, sex, religion, old age
Influences	Chic Murray
Influenced	Eddie Izzard
Spouse	Iris Pressagh (1969–1985) 2 childrenPamela Stephenson (1989–present) 3 children
Website	BillyConnolly.com

}} William "Billy" Connolly, Jr., CBE (born 24 November 1942) is a Scottish comedian, musician, presenter and actor. He is sometimes known, especially in his native Scotland, by the nickname The Big Yin (The Big One). in Anderston, Glasgow, to William Connolly and his wife Mary (McLean) Connolly, a hospital cafeteria worker. Connolly's grandfather was an Irish immigrant. When he was seven, the Connolly family went to Rothesay on holiday. He was sent to get some milk and bread rolls. On his way back with his hands full, a bird landed on his head. Connolly immediately thought God had called him and "nearly had a coronary". "It was a jackdaw, and I didn't know you could teach jackdaws to speak. But I was walking along, and this thing landed on my head and said hello. I nearly passed away. I learned subsequently that it was a tame bird, and we became friends and I got used to the idea: the bird would land on me and I was quite happy. My life had changed forever." Connolly said the second "bird" was Brett Whiteley, an Australian artist he met through Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits in the 1980s.

Between the ages of fourteen and twenty, Connolly was brought up in a tenement in the Anderston district of Glasgow. He later lived in Partick. He attended St. Peter's Primary School in Glasgow and St. Gerard's Secondary School in Govan. At age 12, he decided he wanted to become a comedian but he did not think fit the mould, feeling he needed to become more "windswept and interesting". At 15, he left school with two engineering qualifications, one collected by mistake which belonged to a boy named Connell. Instead, he worked as a boilermaker at Alexander Stephen and Sons Shipyard in Linthouse.

Connolly also joined the Territorial Army Reserve 15th (Scottish) Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (15 PARA), which was part of the 4th Battalion, The Parachute Regiment. He later commemorated his experiences in the song "Weekend Soldier").

Origin of "The Big Yin"

Connolly's The Big Yin nickname was first used during his adolescent years to differentiate between himself and his father. "My father was a very strong man. Broad and strong. He had an 18½-inch neck collar. Huge, like a bull. He was "Big Billy" and I was "Wee Billy". And then I got bigger than him, and the whole thing got out of control. And then I became The Big Yin in Scotland. So, we'd go into the pub and someone would say, 'Billy Connolly was in.' 'Oh, Big Billy or Wee Billy?' 'The Big Yin.' 'Oh, Wee Billy.' If you were a stranger, you'd think, 'What are these people talking about?'" Connolly's UK success spread to other English-speaking countries: Australia, New Zealand and Canada. However, his broad Scottish accent and British cultural references made success in the U.S. improbable.

His increased profile led to contact with other individuals, including musicians such as Elton John. John at that time was trying to assist British performers whom he personally liked to achieve success in the U.S. (He had released records in the US by veteran British pop singer Cliff Richard on his own Rocket Records label.) John tried to give Connolly a boost in America by using him as the opening act on his 1976 US tour. But the well-intentioned gesture was a failure. Elton John's American fans had no interest in being warmed-up by an unknown comedic performer — especially a Scotsman whose accent was incomprehensible to most Americans. "In Washington, some guy threw a pipe and it hit me right between my eyes", he told Michael Parkinson two years later. "It wasn't my audience. They made me feel about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit."

Connolly continued to grow in popularity in the UK. In 1975 he signed with Polydor Records. Connolly continued to release live albums and he also recorded several comedic songs that enjoyed commercial success as novelty singles including parodies of Tammy Wynette's song "D.I.V.O.R.C.E." (which he performed on Top of the Pops in December 1975) and the Village People's "In the Navy" (titled "In the Brownies").

In 1979, Connolly was invited by producer Martin Lewis to join the cast of The Secret Policeman's Ball, the third in the series of the Secret Policeman's Ball fundraising shows for Amnesty International. Connolly was the first comedic performer in the series who was not an alumnus of the Oxbridge school of middle-class university-educated entertainers and he made the most of his appearance. His performance was considered to be one of the highlights of the show's comedy album (released by Island Records in December 1979) and feature film (released by ITC Films in 1980). Appearing in the company of long-established talents such as John Cleese and Peter Cook helped elevate the perception of Connolly as one of Britain's leading comedic talents. Lewis also teamed Connolly with Cleese and Cook to appear in the television commercial for the album.

1980s

In 1981, John Cleese and Martin Lewis invited Connolly to appear in that year's Amnesty show, The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. Connolly's performance was again reported as one of the highlights of the show and he was prominently featured in the subsequent comedy album (Springtime!/Island Records 1981) and UK film (UIP 1982). The commercial success of the special U.S. version of The Secret Policeman's Other Ball film (Miramax Films 1982) introduced Connolly to a wider American audience, who were attracted to the film because of the presence of Monty Python members. His on-screen presence alongside these performers — who were already familiar to Anglophile comedy buffs — helped lay down a marker for Connolly's eventual return to the U.S. in his own right eight years later.

In 1985, he divorced his wife of sixteen years (they had separated four years earlier). He was awarded custody of their two children. That same year, he performed An Audience with..., which was videotaped at the South Bank Television Centre in front of a celebrity audience for ITV. The uncut, uncensored version was subsequently released on video. In July 1985 he performed at the Wembley leg of Live Aid, immediately preceding Elton John.

In 1986 he visited Mozambique to appear in a documentary for Comic Relief. He also featured in the charity's inaugural live stage show, both as a stand-up and portraying a willing 'victim' in his partner Pamela Stephenson's act of sawing a man in half to create two dwarves.

Connolly completed his first world tour in 1987, including six nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London, which was documented in the Billy and Albert video.

When the Fox Network aired Freedomfest: Nelson Mandela's 70th Birthday Celebration in 1988, Connolly was still virtually unknown in the States, but his performance drew attention, particularly from producers, and interest in him grew.

In 1988, Connolly's father died after a stroke, the eighth of his life. His mother died four years later of motor neurone disease. She was living in Dunoon at that point.

On 20 December 1989, in Fiji, Connolly married Pamela Stephenson, the New Zealand-born comedy actress he had met when making a cameo appearance on the BBC sketch show Not the Nine O'Clock News, in which she was one of four regular performers. He had been living with her since 1981. "Marriage to Pam didn't change me, it saved me," he later said. "I was going to die. I was on a downwards spiral and enjoying every second of it. Not only was I dying, but I was looking forward to it."

In October 1989 Connolly shaved off his trademark shaggy beard for a film role and he remained clean-shaven for several years.

1990s

Although Connolly had performed in North America as early as the 1970s, and had appeared in several movies that played in American theatres, he nonetheless remained relatively unknown until 1990 when he was featured in the HBO special Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Connolly in Performance, produced by New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music. Goldberg introduced Connolly, and his performance has been cited as the moment that officially launched his career in the States. Soon after, Connolly succeeded Howard Hesseman as the star of the sitcom Head of the Class for the 1990–1991 season, but the series was cancelled during his tenure.

Connolly joined Frank Bruno and Ozzy Osbourne when singing 'The War Song of the Urpneys' in The Dreamstone.

The following year, Connolly and Stephenson moved to Los Angeles, and the family won green cards in the Morrison Visa Lottery. In 1991, Connolly received his first (and, to date, only) leading television role as the star of Billy, another sitcom and a spin-off of Head of the Class. It lasted only a half-season.

On 4 June 1992, Connolly performed his 25th-anniversary concert in Glasgow. Parts of the show, and its build-up, were documented in The South Bank Show, which aired later in the year.

Connolly was dealt a blow in 1993 when his close friend and fishing partner, Jimmy Kent, died.

In early January 1994, Connolly began a 40-date World Tour of Scotland, which would be broadcast by the BBC later in the year as a six-part series. It was so well received that the BBC signed him up to do a similar tour two years later, this time in Australia. The eight-part series followed Connolly on his custom-made Harley Davidson trike.

Also in 1995, Connolly recorded a BBC special, entitled A Scot in the Arctic, in which he spends a week by himself in the Arctic Circle. A notable feature of these shows is that he strips naked in one scene in each of them, usually in some remote wilderness area where no one is likely to complain, although for Comic Relief he once danced naked around Piccadilly Circus.

In 1997, Connolly starred with Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown, in which he played John Brown, the favoured Scottish servant of Queen Victoria. He was nominated for a BAFTA Award and a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Actor, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.

In 1998, Connolly's best friend, Danny Kyle, died. "He was me dearest, dearest, oldest friend," Connolly explained to an Australian audience on his Greatest Hits compilation, released in 2001.

In November 1998, Connolly was the subject of a two-hour retrospective entitled Billy Connolly: Erect for 30 Years, which included tributes from Judi Dench, Sean Connery, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, and Eddie Izzard. The special was released on DVD in North America in 2004.

The following year, Connolly undertook a four-month, 59-date sellout tour of Australia and New Zealand. Later in the year, he completed a five-week, 25-date sellout run at London's Hammersmith Apollo. In 2000 he travelled to Canada for two weeks on a 13-date tour.

2000s

In 2000 Connolly starred in Beautiful Joe alongside Sharon Stone. The following year he completed the third in his "World Tour" BBC series, this time of England, Ireland and Wales, which began in Dublin and ended in Plymouth. It was broadcast the following year.

Also in 2001, Pamela Stephenson's first biography of her husband, Billy, was published. It outlines his career and life, including the sexual abuse by his father that lasted from his tenth to his fourteenth years. Much of the book is about Connolly the celebrity but the account of his early years provides a context for his humour and point of view. A follow-up, Bravemouth, was published in 2003.

Connolly has also written several books, including Billy Connolly (late 1970s) and Gullible's Travels (early 1980s), both based upon his stage act, as well as books based upon some of his "World Tour" television series. He has stated that his comedy does not work on the printed page.

A fourth BBC series, World Tour of New Zealand, was filmed in 2004 and aired that winter. Also in his 63rd year, Connolly performed two sold-out benefit concerts at the Oxford New Theatre in memory of Malcolm Kingsnorth, who for twenty-five years was Connolly's tour manager and sound engineer.

He has continued to be a much in demand character actor, appearing in several films such as White Oleander (2002), The Last Samurai (2003) and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004). He has also played an eclectic collection of leading roles in recent years, including a lawyer who undertakes a legal case of Biblical proportions in The Man Who Sued God (2001), and a young boy's pet zombie in Fido (2006).

In January 2005, Connolly came 8th in The Comedian's Comedian, a poll voted for by fellow comedians and comedy insider and embarked on a major UK tour with 15 sold-out nights in Glasgow.

Also in 2005, Connolly and Stephenson announced, after fourteen years of living in Hollywood, they were returning to live in the former's native land. They purchased a yacht with the profits from their house-sale, and split the year between Malta and Candacraig House in Aberdeenshire.

Later in the year, Connolly topped an unscientific poll of "Britain's Favourite Comedian" conducted by TV network Five, placing him ahead of performers such as John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, Dawn French, and Peter Cook.

In 2006, Connolly revealed that he also has a house on the island of Gozo. He and his wife also have an apartment in New York City, near Union Square.

On 30 December 2007, Connolly escaped uninjured from a single-car accident on the A939 near the Scottish town of Ballater, Aberdeenshire.

In late February it was announced that Connolly would play ten shows in early April at the Post Street Theatre in San Francisco, California.

On 10 March 2008, tickets went on sale for Connolly's Irish tour, set to take place in May, June and July. He performed three shows in University Concert Hall, Limerick, ten shows at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, five shows at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast and three shows at the Cork Opera House. They all sold out in a matter of hours. The tour also travelled to Kerry (two shows) and Mayo (two shows).

In October 2009 he played a tour of his homeland, and sold out everywhere, despite adding extra dates. He stated he was proud to have broken the computer system for Glasgow and Edinburgh, as they could not handle the rush for tickets. In Glasgow he was playing at SECC. The SECC was built near the site where his family had lived when he was a child.

Controversy

In October 2004, during an 18-night stint at London's Hammersmith Apollo, Connolly was criticised for making jokes about the hostage Kenneth Bigley. Shortly after Connolly joked about the future killing of the hostage and touched on the subject of Bigley’s young Thai wife, Bigley was beheaded in Iraq. Connolly claims he was misquoted. He has declined to clarify what he actually said, claiming that the context was as important as the precise words used.

Personal life

Connolly is married to comedian and psychologist Pamela Stephenson. The couple wed in 1989. In the book Billy, and in a December 2008 online interview, Connolly states he was sexually abused by his father between the ages of 10 and 15. He believes this was a result of the Catholic Church not allowing his father to divorce after his mother left the family. Due to this, Connolly has a "deep distrust and dislike of the Catholic church and any other organization that brainwashes people". In a 1999 interview with "The Sunday Herald" Connolly condemned the SNP as "racist".

Billy Connolly has two siblings, an older sister, Florence, who is a retired school-teacher, and a younger brother Michael; he has referred to both in his stand-up routines.

He is a Celtic F.C. supporter.

Career

Folk music

In 1965, together with Tam Harvey, Connolly started a group called the Humblebums. At their first gig, Connolly reportedly introduced them both to the audience by saying, "My name's Billy Connolly, and I'm humble. This is Tam Harvey, he's a bum." The band would later include Gerry Rafferty. After Harvey left the group, Connolly and Rafferty continued as a duo and the latter two of their three albums featured just that duo. Connolly sang, played five-string banjo, guitar and autoharp, and at live shows entertained the audience with his humorous introductions to the songs.

Frank Bruno and Billy Connolly provided lead vocals on The War Song of the Urpneys from The Dreamstone, although the version heard in the series was largely sung by composer Mike Batt.

In his World Tour of Scotland, Connolly reveals that at a trailer show during the Edinburgh Festival, the Humblebums took to the stage just before the late Yehudi Menuhin.

The Humblebums broke up in 1971 and both Connolly and Rafferty went solo. Connolly's first solo album in 1972, Billy Connolly Live! on Transatlantic Records, featured him as a singer/songwriter.

His early albums were a mixture of comedy performances with comedic and serious musical interludes. Among his best known musical performances were "The Welly Boot Song", a parody of the Scottish folk song "The Wark O' The Weavers," which became his theme song for several years; "In the Brownies", a parody of the hit Village People song "In the Navy" (for which Connolly filmed a music video); "Two Little Boys in Blue", a tongue-in-cheek indictment of police brutality done to the tune of Rolf Harris' "Two Little Boys"; and the ballad "I Wish I Was in Glasgow," which Connolly would later perform in duet with Malcolm McDowell on a guest appearance on the 1990s American sitcom Pearl (which starred Rhea Perlman). He also performed the occasional Humblebums-era song such as "Oh, No!" as well as straightforward covers such as a version of Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors," which was included on his Get Right Intae Him! album.

In November 1975, his spoof of the Tammy Wynette song "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" was a UK No. 1 single for one week. Wynette's original was about parents spelling out words of an impending marital split to avoid traumatizing their young child. Connolly's spoof of the song, played on the fact that many dog owners use the same tactic when they do not wish their pet to become upset about an impending trip to the vet. His song is about a couple whose marriage is ruined by a bad vet visit (spelling out "W-O-R-M" or "Q-U-A-R-A-N-T-I-N-E", for example.)

His song "No Chance" was a parody of J.J. Barrie's "No Charge".

In 1985 he sang the theme song to Supergran, which was released as a single and in 1996 he performed a cover of Ralph McTell's "'In the Dreamtime" as the theme to his World Tour of Australia. By the late 1980s, Connolly had all but dropped the music from his act, though he still records the occasional musical performance, such as a 1980s recording of his composition "Sergeant, Where's Mine?" with The Dubliners. In 1998 he covered The Beatles' "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" on the George Martin tribute album, In My Life. Most recently, he sang a song during the film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. And in 1995 and 2005, he released two albums of instrumental performances Musical Tour of Scotland and Billy Connolly's Musical Tour of New Zealand, respectively.

Connolly is among the artists featured on Banjoman, a tribute to American folk musician Derroll Adams, released in 2002. He plays one song, "The Rock".

Stand-up comedy

It is as a stand-up comedian that Connolly is best known. His observational comedy is idiosyncratic and often off-the-cuff. He has outraged certain sectors of audiences, critics and the media with his free use of the word "fuck". He has made jokes relating to masturbation, blasphemy, defecation, flatulence, haemorrhoids, sex, his father's illness, his aunts' cruelty and, in the latter stages of his career, old age (specifically his experiences of growing old). In 2007 and again in 2010, he was voted the greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups.

Discography

A partial list of musical and comedic recordings:

1972 - Billy Connolly Live

1974 - Cop Yer Whack for This

1974 - Solo Concert

1975 - ''Get Right Intae Him!

1975 - Words and Music

1975 - The Big Yin

1976 - Atlantic Bridge

1977 - Billy Connolly

1977 - Raw Meat for the Balcony!

1978 - Anthology

1979 - Riotous Assembly

1981 - The Pick of Billy Connolly (compilation)

1983 - A Change is Good as Arrest

1983 - In Concert

1984 - Big Yin Double Helping (compilation)

1985 - An Audience With Billy Connolly

1985 - Wreck on Tour

1987 - Billy & Albert

1991 - Live at the Odeon Hammersmith London

1995 - Musical Tour of Scotland

1999 - Comedy and Songs (compilation)

1999 - One Night Stand Down Under

2002 - The Big Yin - Billy Connolly in Concert (compilation)

2003 - Transatlantic Years (compilation of material recorded between 1969 and 1974)

2005 - Billy Connolly's Musical Tour of New Zealand

2007 - Live in Concert

2010 - The Man Live in London, recorded January 2010

The above list does not include at least two albums recorded with the Humblebums prior to 1972, and only includes a sampling of the many reissues and compilations released over the years.

Playwright

Connolly has written three plays:

An' Me Wi' A Bad Leg Tae (1975)

When Hair Was Long And Time Was Short (1977)

Red Runner (1979)

Film actor

Connolly has often joked about the regularity of the deaths of the characters he portrays in movies. "If you want to see me in a movie, you have to hurry to the theatre, because I usually die in the first fifteen minutes. I'm never in the sequel." Connolly also claims to be the only man to ever die in a Muppet movie. Notable film appearances include Absolution (1978) with Richard Burton, and Mrs Brown (1997) with Judi Dench.

Filmography

Television guest appearances

The South Bank Show on 13 May 1979

Aspel & Company in episode (#2.11), 23 March 1985

Minder as Tick Tack in episode \"Fatal Impression\" (#7.3), 16 January 1989

The South Bank Show on 4 October 1992

Late Show with David Letterman on 18 November 1993

Clive James in episode (#1.3), 6 March 1994

Pearl as William 'Billy' Pynchon in episode \"Billy Returns\" (#1.22), 25 June 1997 and episode \"Billy\" (#1.4), 30 September 1996

Veronica's Closet as Campbell in \"Veronica's Got a Secret\" (#1.11), 8 January 1998

Tracey Takes On... as Rory Cassidy in episode \"Culture\" (#3.9), 1 March 1998

3rd Rock from the Sun as Inspector Macaffery on episode \"Dial M for Dick\" (#5.4), 9 November 1999

Rove Live on 23 October 2001

The Late Late Show on 17 October 2003

Tinseltown TV on 6 December 2003

Parkinson in 1975 and on 2 January 1978; 3 April 1982; 23 January 1998; 17 December 1999; 20 October 2001; 18 October 2003; 4 September 2004; 16 December 2007

Late Night with Conan O'Brien on 14 December 2004

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on 15 December 2004

Last Call with Carson Daly on 22 December 2004

Britain's Finest on episode \"Actresses\", 18 July 2005 and episode \"Actors\", 11 July 2005

Real Time with Bill Maher on episode (#3.22), 28 October 2005

Enough Rope on 20 February 2006

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on 10 May 2006

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on 28 September 2006

Late Night with Conan O'Brien on 9 June 2007

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on 2 November 2009

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on 18 December 2010

Awards

Connolly was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Glasgow on 11 July 2001.

In 2003, the BAFTA presented him with a Lifetime Achievement award. Also in 2003, he received a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

On 4 July 2006, Connolly was awarded an honorary doctorate by Glasgow's Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) for his service to performing arts.

On 18 March 2007 and again on 11 April 2010, Connolly was named Number One in Channel 4's "100 Greatest Stand Ups".

On 22 July 2010, Connolly was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) by Nottingham Trent University

On 20 August 2010, Connolly was made a Freeman of Glasgow with the award of the Freedom of the City of Glasgow.

Support for charity

Connolly is a patron of the National Association for Bikers with a Disability.

Bibliography

References

External links

Connolly's official website

A Guardian interview with Connolly from 2001

"Enough Rope" interview with Andrew Denton; 20 February 2006

Connolly's interview with The Guardian, September 2001

"A laugh a minute? Life with Billy Connolly" - CNN.com

Category:1942 births Category:Boilermakers Category:British Parachute Regiment soldiers Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:Former Roman Catholics Category:Living people Category:People from Glasgow Category:Scottish atheists Category:Scottish banjoists Category:Scottish comedians Category:Scottish film actors Category:Scottish folk singers Category:Scottish people of Irish descent Category:Scottish stand-up comedians Category:Scottish television actors Category:Scottish voice actors