Spitting Image

Saturday, 05 January 2013

Spitting Image - Series 1 - Episode 1 - Part 1-2

Spitting Image - S01E03 - Thatcher's Cabinet

Spitting Image - Last Ever Episode (1996)

George Bush on Mastermind (spitting Image)

Spitting Image - Royal Family Breakfast/Cecil Parkinson

Spitting Image - An Audience with Ronald Reagan

youtube - spitting image never met a nice south african.mp4

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9 Downing Street
9 Downing Street is one of the buildings situated on Downing Street in the City of Westminster in London, England.
Under the current government, the building is being used to house the office of the Chief Whip and is also the Downing Street entrance to the Privy Council Office.
Formerly the building was part of the more famous 10 Downing Street, official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury, who since the early years of the 19th century has always been the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Many internal refurbishments over the years have altered the interior of number 10, 11 and 12 to the point that they are all part of a single complex. It was part of a reorganisation in 2001 that the address was created.
Although number 9 is currently the address of the office of the Chief Whip, the Chief Whip's official residence is still 12 Downing Street.

Coordinates: 51°30′12.2″N 0°07′39.5″W / 51.503389°N 0.127639°W / 51.503389; -0.127639

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Argentina
Argentina ⁱ/ˌɑrdʒənˈtiːnə/, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina [reˈpuβlika aɾxenˈtina]), is a country in South America, the continent's second largest by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations.
Argentina's continental area is between the Andes mountain range in the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It borders Paraguay and Bolivia to the north, Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast, and Chile to the west and south. Argentine claims over Antarctica, as well as overlapping claims made by Chile and the United Kingdom, are suspended by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. Argentina also claims the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which are administered by the United Kingdom as British Overseas Territories.
A recognised middle power, Argentina is Latin America's third-largest economy, with a "very high" rating on the Human development index. Within Latin America, Argentina has the fifth highest nominal GDP per capita and the highest in purchasing power terms. Analysts have argued that the country has a "foundation for future growth due to its market size, levels of foreign direct investment, and percentage of high-tech exports as share of total manufactured goods", and it is classed by investors as middle emerging economy. Argentina is a founding member of the United Nations, Mercosur, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization, and is one of the G-15 and G-20 major economies.

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Australia
Australia ( /əˈstreɪljə/), officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent as well as the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.
For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of roughly 250 language groups. After discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing Crown Colonies were established.

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Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (ⁱ/ˌæzərbaɪˈdʒɑːn/ AZ-ər-by-JAHN; Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan Respublikası) is the largest country in the Caucasus region located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south. The exclave of Nakhchivan is bounded by Armenia to the north and east, Iran to the south and west, while having a short borderline with Turkey to the northwest.
Azerbaijan has an ancient and historic cultural heritage. Aside from having been the first Muslim-majority country to have operas, theater and plays, Azerbaijan today is among the Muslim-majority countries where support for secularism and tolerance is the highest. The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, the first democratic and secular republic in the Muslim world, was established in 1918, but was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920. Azerbaijan regained independence in 1991. Shortly thereafter, during the Nagorno-Karabakh War, neighboring Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, its surrounding territories and the enclaves of Karki, Yukhary Askipara, Barkhudarly and Sofulu. The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which emerged in Nagorno-Karabakh, continues to be not diplomatically recognized by any nation and the region is still considered a de jure part of Azerbaijan, despite being de facto independent since the end of the war. Azerbaijan has come under repeated international criticism for its record on human rights.

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Birmingham
Birmingham (ⁱ/ˈbɜrmɪŋəm/ BUR-ming-əm, locally /ˈbɜrmɪŋɡəm/ BUR-ming-gəm) is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 (2010 estimate), and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a population of 2,284,093 (2001 census). Birmingham's metropolitan area is also the United Kingdom's second most populous with a population of 3,683,000.
A medium-sized market town during the medieval period, Birmingham grew to international prominence in the 18th century at the heart of the Midlands Enlightenment and subsequent Industrial Revolution, which saw the town at the forefront of worldwide developments in science, technology and economic organisation, producing a series of innovations that laid many of the foundations of modern industrial society. By 1791 it was being hailed as "the first manufacturing town in the world". Birmingham's distinctive economic profile, with thousands of small workshops practising a wide variety of specialised and highly-skilled trades, encouraged exceptional levels of creativity and innovation and provided a diverse and resilient economic base for industrial prosperity that was to last into the final quarter of the 20th century. Its resulting high level of social mobility also fostered a culture of broad-based political radicalism, that under leaders from Thomas Attwood to Joseph Chamberlain was to give it a political influence unparalleled in Britain outside London and a pivotal role in the development of British democracy.

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Brazil
Brazil ⁱ/brəˈzɪl/ (Portuguese: Brasil, IPA: [bɾaˈziw]), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil, listen (help·info)), is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas and the largest lusophone country in the world.
Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 km (4,655 mi). It is bordered on the north by Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and the French overseas region of French Guiana; on the northwest by Colombia; on the west by Bolivia and Peru; on the southwest by Argentina and Paraguay and on the south by Uruguay. Numerous archipelagos form part of Brazilian territory, such as Fernando de Noronha, Rocas Atoll, Saint Peter and Paul Rocks, and Trindade and Martim Vaz. It borders all other South American countries except Ecuador and Chile.
Brazil was a colony of Portugal from the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 until 1815, when it was elevated to the rank of kingdom and the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves was formed. The colonial bond was in fact broken in 1808, when the capital of the Portuguese colonial empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, after Napoleon invaded Portugal.Independence was achieved in 1822 with the formation of the Empire of Brazil, a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system. The country became a presidential republic in 1889, when a military coup d'état proclaimed the Republic, although the bicameral legislature, now called Congress, dates back to the ratification of the first constitution in 1824. Its current Constitution, formulated in 1988, defines Brazil as a Federal Republic. The Federation is formed by the union of the Federal District, the 26 States, and the 5,564 Municipalities.

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Bulgaria
Coordinates: 42°45′N 25°30′E / 42.75°N 25.5°E / 42.75; 25.5
Bulgaria ⁱ/bʌlˈɡɛəriə/ (Bulgarian: България, IPA: [bɤ̞ɫˈɡarijɐ]), is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and the Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south and the Black Sea to the east. With a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi), Bulgaria is Europe's 14th-largest country. Its location has made it a historical crossroad for various civilisations and as such it is the home of some of the earliest metalworking, religious and other cultural artifacts in the world.
Prehistoric cultures began developing on Bulgarian lands during the Neolithic period. Its ancient history was marked by the presence of the Thracians, and later by the Greeks and Romans. The emergence of a unified Bulgarian ethnicity and state dates back to the First Bulgarian Empire, which dominated most of the Balkans and functioned as a cultural hub for Slavic peoples during the Middle Ages. With the downfall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1396, its territories came under Ottoman rule for nearly five hundred years. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 resulted in the Third Bulgarian State, recognised in 1908. The following years saw several conflicts with its neighbours, which prompted Bulgaria to align with Germany in both World Wars. In 1946 it became a Communist republic with a single-party system until 1989, when the Communist Party allowed multi-party elections. After 1990 Bulgaria transitioned to democracy and a market-based economy.

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Canary Wharf
Coordinates: 51°30′13″N 0°01′06″W / 51.503611°N 0.018333°W / 51.503611; -0.018333
Canary Wharf is a major business district located in London, United Kingdom. It is one of London's two main financial centres – alongside the traditional City of London – and contains many of the UK's tallest buildings, including the second-tallest (and tallest completed), One Canada Square.
Canary Wharf contains around 14,000,000 square feet (1,300,000 m²) of office and retail space, of which around 7,900,000 square feet (730,000 m²) is owned by Canary Wharf Group. Around 90,000 people work in Canary Wharf and it is home to the world or European headquarters of numerous major banks, professional services firms and media organisations including Barclays, Citigroup, Clifford Chance, Credit Suisse, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, KPMG, MetLife, Morgan Stanley, Skadden, State Street and Thomson Reuters.
Canary Wharf is located in the West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs in the Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London. The West India Docks once formed part of the busiest port in the world. After the docks were closed in 1980 the British Government adopted various policies to stimulate the redevelopment of the area, including through the creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1981 and granting the Isle of Dogs Enterprise Zone status in 1982. In 1987 the Canadian company Olympia and York agreed to construct a major office development on the Isle of Dogs, with construction commencing in 1988.

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Chile
Chile (ⁱ/ˈtʃɪliː/ or /ˈtʃɪleɪ/), officially the Republic of Chile (Spanish: República de Chile [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈtʃile] ( listen)), is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow strip of land between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far south. Along with Ecuador, it is one of two countries in South America that do not border Brazil. Chilean territory includes the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas and Easter Island. Chile also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometres (480,000 sq mi) of Antarctica, although all claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty.
Chile's distinctive shape—4,300 kilometres (2,700 mi) long and on average 175 kilometres (109 mi) wide—makes it the longest country in the world, north to south, with the fifth lengthiest coastline at over 78 thousand kilometers. The diverse climate of Chile ranges from the world's driest desert in the north—the Atacama—through a Mediterranean climate in the centre, humid subtropical in Easter Island, to an Oceanic climate, including alpine tundra and glaciers in the east and south. The northern desert contains great mineral wealth, principally copper. The relatively small central area dominates in terms of population and agricultural resources, and is the cultural and political center from which Chile expanded in the late 19th century when it incorporated its northern and southern regions. Southern Chile is rich in forests and grazing lands, and features a string of volcanoes and lakes. The southern coast is a labyrinth of fjords, inlets, canals, twisting peninsulas, and islands.

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Colombia
Colombia ( /kəˈlʌmbiə/ kə-LUM-biə, or /kəˈlɒmbiə/ kə-LOM-biə), officially the Republic of Colombia (Spanish: República de Colombia [reˈpuβlika ðe koˈlombja]), is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the northwest by Panama; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. Colombia has maritime borders with Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Colombia is the 26th largest country by area and the fourth largest in South America after Brazil, Argentina and Peru. With over 46 million people, Colombia is the 27th largest country in the world by population and has the second largest population of any Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico. Colombia is a middle power, with the fourth largest economy in Latin America, and the third largest in South America. Colombia is famous for the production of coffee, flowers, emeralds, coal, and oil. All of these products make up the primary sector of economy.

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Downing Street
Downing Street in London, England has for over two hundred years housed the official residences of two of the most senior British cabinet ministers: the First Lord of the Treasury, an office now synonymous with that of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, an office held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Prime Minister's official residence is 10 Downing Street; the Chancellor's official residence is next door at Number 11. The Government's Chief Whip has an official residence at Number 9.
Downing Street is located in Whitehall in central London, a few minutes' walk from the Houses of Parliament and a little farther from Buckingham Palace. The street was built in the 1680s by Sir George Downing (1632–1689) on the site of a mansion called Hampden House. The houses on the west side of the street were demolished in the nineteenth century to make way for government offices, now occupied by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

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Fuji Television
Fuji Television Network, Inc. (株式会社フジテレビジョン, Kabushiki Gaisha Fuji Terebijon^?) is a Japanese television station based in Daiba, Minato, Tokyo, Japan, also known as Fuji TV (フジテレビ, Fuji Terebi^?) or CX, based on the station's callsign "JOCX-DTV". It is the flagship station of the Fuji News Network (FNN) and the Fuji Network System.
Fuji Television also operates three premium television stations, known as "Fuji TV One", "Fuji TV Two", and "Fuji TV Next" (called together as "Fuji TV OneTwoNext"), all available in High-definition. It is owned by Fuji Media Holdings, Inc., the holding company of the Fujisankei Communications Group.
The headquarters are located at 2-4-8, Daiba, Minato, Tokyo. The Kansai office is found at Aqua Dojima East, Dojima, Kita-ku, Osaka. The Nagoya office is found at Telepia, Higashi-sakura, Higashi-ku, Nagoya.
Fuji Television Network Inc. was founded on November 18, 1948, and started broadcasting on March 1, 1959. In June of that year, Fuji TV formed a network with Tokai TV, Kansai TV, and Kyushu Asahi Broadcasting. In October 1966, a news network of exchanging news with local stations with the name of FNN (Fuji News Network) was formed.

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Israel
Coordinates: 31°N 35°E / 31°N 35°E / 31; 35
Israel, officially the State of Israel ( /ˈɪzriːəl/ or /ˈɪzreɪəl/; Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל‎, Medīnat Yisrā'el, IPA: [me̞diˈnät jisʁäˈʔe̞l] ( listen); Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل‎, Dawlat Isrāʼīl, IPA: [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the south, and it contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel is defined as a Jewish and Democratic State in its Basic Laws and is the world's only Jewish-majority state.
Following the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption and implementation of the United Nations plan to partition Palestine, on 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, a state independent from the British Mandate for Palestine. Neighboring Arab states invaded the next day in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Portions of these territories, including east Jerusalem, have been annexed by Israel, but the border with the neighboring West Bank has not yet been permanently defined.^{[neutrality is disputed]} Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have so far not resulted in peace.

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Japan
Japan ⁱ/dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国 Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku, together accounting for ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.
Archaeological research indicates that people lived in Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other nations followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since adopting its revised constitution in 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament called the Diet.

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Limehouse Studios
Limehouse Studios was an independently-owned television studio complex built in No. 10 Warehouse (30 Shed) of the South Quay Import Dock. This was located at the eastern end of Canary Wharf on the Isle of Dogs in London, which opened in 1983. The building was demolished just six years later, in 1989, to make way for the massive Olympia & York development of Canary Wharf which now occupies the site.
The warehouse was built for Fruit Lines Ltd, a subsidiary of Fred Olsen Lines for the Mediterranean and Canary Island fruit trade. At their request, the wharf was given the name Canary Wharf. The company moved to Millwall Docks, in 1970.
One of the first successes of the London Docklands Development Corporation, the studios were housed in the immensely strong converted shell of a disused rum and banana warehouse built in 1952. At a cost of about £3.6m, and under the design of Terry Farrell, this was transformed into a complex containing two studios of 3,000 square feet (279 m²) and 6,000 square feet (557 m²) and various associated production offices and post-production facilities. The two studios were contained in suspended concrete boxes mounted on independent giant springs to reduce external vibration, and the whole complex was fitted out to the highest standards.

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Nottingham
Nottingham (ⁱ/ˈnɒtɪŋəm/ NOT-ing-əm) is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and is one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group.
Nottingham is famed for its links with the legend of Robin Hood and, during the Industrial Revolution, obtained worldwide recognition for its lace-making, bicycle and tobacco industries. With origins tracable back to 600 AD, Nottingham was granted its city charter as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of Queen Victoria in 1897 and has since been officially titled the City of Nottingham. The city has historically been nicknamed The Queen of the Midlands, being the smaller yet less industrialised regional neighbour to the Midlands biggest city, Birmingham. Nottingham is considered the primary centre of England's East Midlands region, being home to numerous regional headquarters and media stations including the BBC East Midlands and the Regional Government Office.
Whilst Nottingham has always had a tightly-drawn authority boundary, accounting for its relatively small population of 306,700, Nottingham's Urban Area has a population of approximately 670,000; in the 2001 census, it was the eighth largest urban area in the United Kingdom. Eurostat's concept of the Larger Urban Zone listed the area's population at 825,600 as of 2004.

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Quebec
Coordinates: 53°45′N 071°59′W / 53.75°N 71.983°W / 53.75; -71.983 (Quebec)
Quebec /kwəˈbɛk/ or /kəˈbɛk/ (French: Québec [kebɛk] ( listen)) is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level.
Quebec is Canada's largest province by area and its second-largest administrative division; only the territory of Nunavut is larger. It is bordered to the west by the province of Ontario, James Bay and Hudson Bay, to the north by Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay, to the east by the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick. It is bordered on the south by the US states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York. It also shares maritime borders with Nunavut, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia.
Quebec is Canada's second most populous province, after Ontario. Most inhabitants live in urban areas near the Saint Lawrence River between Montreal and Quebec City, the capital. English-speaking communities and English-language institutions are concentrated in the west of the island of Montreal but are also significantly present in the Outaouais, Eastern Townships, and Gaspé regions. The Nord-du-Québec region, occupying the northern half of the province, is sparsely populated and inhabited primarily by Aboriginal peoples.

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Romania
Romania (ⁱ/roʊˈmeɪniə/ roh-MAY-nee-ə; dated: Roumania; or Rumania;Romanian: România [romɨˈni.a] ( listen)) is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast and east, and Bulgaria to the south.
At 238,400 square kilometers (92,000 sq mi), Romania is the ninth largest country of the European Union by area, and has the seventh largest population of the European Union with over 19 million people. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, the tenth largest city in the EU with about two million people.
The Kingdom of Romania emerged when the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were united under Prince Alexander Ioan Cuza in 1859. Independence from the Ottoman Empire was declared on 9 May 1877, and was internationally recognized the following year. At the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania. Greater Romania emerged into an era of progression and prosperity that would continue until World War II. By the end of the War, many north-eastern areas of Romania's territories were occupied by the Soviet Union, and Romania forcibly became a socialist republic and a member of the Warsaw Pact.

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Serbia
Serbia ⁱ/ˈsɜrbiə/, officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: Република Србија / Republika Srbija, pronounced [rɛpǔblika sř̩bija]), is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans. Serbia borders Hungary to the north; Romania and Bulgaria to the east; the Republic of Macedonia to the south; and Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro to the west; additionally, it borders Albania through Kosovo, whose status as part of Serbia is disputed. Serbia covers an area of 88,361 km² and has a population of just over 7.1 million, while the capital and largest city is Belgrade.
The arrival of the Serbs to the Balkans in the 7th century, established several states, eventually forming the Serbian Empire in the 14th century. By the 16th century, Serbia was conquered and occupied by the Ottoman Empire, at times interrupted by the Habsburgs. In the early 19th century the Serbian revolution re-established the country as the region's first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory and pioneered the abolition of feudalism in the Balkans. The former Habsburg crownland of Vojvodina united with Serbia in 1918. Following World War I, Serbia formed Yugoslavia with other South Slavic peoples which existed in several forms up until 2006, when the National Assembly of Serbia declared independence and the legal succession to the former State Union. In February 2008 the parliament of UNMIK-governed Kosovo, Serbia's southern province, declared independence, with mixed responses from international governments.

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TF1
Coordinates: 48°50′1.9″N 2°15′38.3″E / 48.833861°N 2.260639°E / 48.833861; 2.260639
TF1 is a national French TV channel, controlled by TF1 Group, whose major share-holder is Bouygues. TF1's average market share of 24% makes it the most popular domestic network. It's also considered as the most viewed television channel in Europe (since the British television ITV1 had lost this title). Flagship series include CSI, The Voice and House M.D.
TF1 originally stood for Télévision Française 1 (French Television 1). Since its privatisation in 1987, the abbreviation is no longer expanded, so as to avoid confusion with the government-owned channel France Télévisions^{[citation needed]}.
The channel is part of the TF1 Group of mass media companies, which also includes the news channel LCI and Eurosport, the largest European sports network. Together with France Télévisions, TF1 co-managed the international French news channel France 24 but has since sold its share. TF1 had possessed the satellite-network TPS, which have been sold to the Canal + Group.

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Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.

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Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research medieval history at the university for several years. His collaboration as writer and performer with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame. He gave up academia, and turned to writing full time, his first stage play Forty Years On being produced in 1968.
His output includes The Madness of George III and its film incarnation The Madness of King George, the series of monologues Talking Heads, the play The History Boys, and popular audio books, including his readings of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh.
Bennett was born in Armley in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire. The son of a co-op butcher, Walter and his wife Lilian Mary (nee Peel), Bennett attended Christ Church, Upper Armley, Church of England School (in the same class as Barbara Taylor Bradford) and then Leeds Modern School (now Lawnswood School), learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his national service and gained a place at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. However, having spent time in Cambridge during national service, and partly wishing to follow the object of his unrequited love, he decided to apply for a scholarship at Oxford University. He was accepted by Exeter College, Oxford from which he graduated with a first-class degree in history. While at Oxford he performed comedy with a number of eventually successful actors in the Oxford Revue. He was to remain at the university for several years, where he researched and taught Medieval History, before deciding he was not cut out to be an academic.

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Alan Partridge
Alan Gordon Partridge OBE (Honour Removed) is a fictional radio and television presenter portrayed by English comedian Steve Coogan and invented by Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring for the BBC Radio 4 programme On The Hour. A parody of both sports commentators and chat show presenters, among others, the character has appeared in two radio series, three television series and numerous TV and radio specials, including appearances on BBC's Comic Relief, which have followed the rise and fall of his career.
Whereas many of his personality defects are apparent in his appearances in shows such as The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, it is largely from I'm Alan Partridge onwards that his creators began to explore his personality in depth, and most of the observations that follow originated in that show.

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Alastair Burnet
Sir Alastair Burnet (born 12 July 1928) is a British journalist and broadcaster, known for his work in news and current affairs programmes.
Burnet was born in Sheffield, and educated at The Leys School, a boys' independent school in Cambridge, and at Worcester College, Oxford.
Burnet was a reporter and newscaster for ITN between 1963–73 and anchored ITN's coverage of the 1964, 1966 and 1970 General Elections and the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969.
For the BBC, he anchored the February and October 1974 General Election programmes. He worked on Panorama for the BBC in 1974. In 1973 he went freelance for a brief period and was editor of the Daily Express from 1974-76, resigning from the Economist, the news magazine he had edited simultaneously with his broadcasting career from 1965.
After leaving the Express, from which he refused to take a pay-off, Burnet returned to ITN in 1976, where he remained until 1991. One of the main newscasters for News at Ten between 1967–73, the main single newscaster for the newly-launched News at 5.45 from 1976–80, returning to News at Ten as one of its main presenters until his final broadcast on 29 August 1991. For ITN, Burnet anchored the 1979, 1983 and 1987 General Election programmes, the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 and presented several documentaries about the couple, In Person: The Prince and Princess of Wales (1986) and In Private - In Public: The Prince and Princess of Wales (1986).^{[citation needed]}

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Alistair Beaton
Alistair Beaton (born 1947) is a Scottish left wing political satirist, journalist, radio presenter, novelist and television writer. At one point in his career he was also a speechwriter for Gordon Brown.
Born in Glasgow, Beaton was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh, Moscow and Bochum and graduated from the University of Edinburgh with First Class Honours in Russian and German. He lives in Holloway, London.

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Alistair McGowan
Alistair McGowan (born 24 November 1964) is a British impressionist, stand-up comic, actor, singer and writer best known to British audiences for The Big Impression (formerly Alistair McGowan's Big Impression), which was, for four years, one of BBC1's top-rating comedy programmes - winning numerous awards, including a BAFTA in 2003. He has also worked extensively in theatre and appeared in the West End in Art, Cabaret, The Mikado and Little Shop of Horrors (for which he received an Laurence Olivier Award nomination). As a television actor, he played the lead role in BBC1's Mayo. He wrote the play Timing (nominated as Best New Comedy at the whatsonstage.com awards) and the book A Matter of Life and Death or How to Wean Your Man off Football with former comedy partner Ronni Ancona. He also provided voices for Spitting Image.
He made his début broadcast as a tennis commentator for BBC Sport at the 2011 Wimbledon Championships.
McGowan was born in Evesham to Marion and George McGowan. Although aware his father was born in Calcutta, India, Alistair and his sister Kay were unaware of the fact that their father had a Anglo-Indian & distant Irish background until McGowan explored his ancestry on BBC One's Who Do You Think You Are? in the 26 October 2007 episode four years after his father's death.

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Anders Mårtensson
Anders Mårtensson (February 17, 1893 – July 17, 1973) was a Swedish equestrian vaulter who competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics.
He was part of the Swedish team, which won the bronze medal in the team vaulting. In the individual vaulting competition he finished 15th.

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Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber Kt. (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre.
Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats.

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Andy Parsons
Andy Parsons (born 1967) is an English comedian and writer, who regularly appears on Mock the Week. With comedy partner Henry Naylor, he has written and presented nine seasons of Parsons and Naylor’s Pull-Out Sections for BBC Radio 2.
Parsons was born in Dorset. He attended Parc Eglos Primary School and Helston Comprehensive School (Cornwall), and Churston Ferrers Grammar School, Torbay (Devon) before going to Christ's College, Cambridge to study Law, where he met and former a double act with Henry Naylor which twice toured with the National Student Theatre Company and once with the Footlights. After completing his studies, Parsons got a job working as a legal clerk on a case at the Greenock shipyards, which he describes as "the most tedious thing I'd ever done." With Naylor he established TBA, London's first sketch comedy club.
His first TV writing job was for Spitting Image and he went on to become one of the main writers. He has also appeared as a guest on They Think It's All Over, QI, and BBC Radio 5 Live's Fighting Talk. He has missed only five episodes of Mock the Week and became a regular panellist at the beginning of Series 3. He, like the other regular panellists on Mock the Week, keeps the same seat throughout the series, Parsons being the one to the left of the host Dara Ó Briain.

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Andy Riley
Andy Riley (born 27 April 1970) is a British author, cartoonist, comics scriptwriter, and television screenwriter.
Riley has written several best-selling cartoon books, The Book of Bunny Suicides (2003),Return of the Bunny Suicides, The Bumper Book of Bunny Suicides, Dawn of the Bunny Suicides, Great Lies To Tell Small Kids, Loads More Lies to Tell Small Kids, and Selfish Pigs, which have produced calendar, greetings card, Bunnycides iPhone app and poster spin-offs. From 2002 until February 2010 he drew a weekly comic strip called Roasted in The Observer Magazine, a collection of which was released in book form in October 2007. D.I.Y. Dentistry was released in October 2008 in hardback. 'Lucky Heather', his self-published comic, is available only from Gosh! Comics in London.
With Kevin Cecil, his friend since they attended Aylesbury Grammar School, he created and wrote the sitcoms The Great Outdoors for BBC Four, Hyperdrive for BBC Two and Slacker Cats for the ABC Family Channel. Their other television work includes Black Books, the Comic Relief one-off special Robbie the Reindeer, for which he and Cecil won a BAFTA in 2000, Little Britain, Trigger Happy TV, So Graham Norton, Smack the Pony, The Armando Iannucci Shows and Spitting Image. The Radio Four panel game they wrote with Jon Holmes and Tony Roche, The 99p Challenge, ran for five series from 2000.

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Arthur Scargill
Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938) is a British politician and trade unionist who was president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002, leading the union through the 1984/85 miners' strike, a key event in British labour and political history. A former Labour Party member, he is now the leader of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), which he founded in 1996.
Scargill was born in Worsbrough Dale, Barnsley, Yorkshire. His father, Harold, was a miner and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. His mother Alice (née Pickering) was a professional cook. Arthur was doted on by his parents as he was an only child, and his mother had previously been told that she was unable to have children^{[citation needed]}. He did not take the Eleven Plus exam and went to Worsbrough Dale School (now called the Elmhirst School), leaving at 15 to become a coal miner at Woolley Colliery from 1953, where he became the pit delegate ten years later. Scargill was a member of the Young Communist League from 1955 to 1962, when he joined the Labour Party.

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Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand (/ˈstraɪsænd/; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, writer, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, five Emmy Awards including one Daytime Emmy, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
She is one of the most commercially and critically successful entertainers in modern entertainment history, with more than 71.5 million albums shipped in the United States and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre. Along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Shirley Jones, she shares the distinction of being awarded an acting Oscar and also recording a number-one single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

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Barry Norman
Barry Leslie Norman, CBE (born 21 August 1933 in London) is a British film critic, writer and media personality. He presented BBC Television's Film 72 (and successive years) until 1998.
Norman, the son of film director Leslie Norman and the brother of script editor and director Valerie Norman, was educated at a state primary school and at the Highgate School, a boys' independent school in North London. He did not go to university, but instead began his journalistic career at the Kensington News, later spending a period in South Africa where he developed a hostility to the situation created there by the emergence of apartheid.
By the 1960s, Norman was a prominent journalist, and show business editor of the Daily Mail until 1971, when he was made redundant. Subsequently, he wrote a column each Wednesday for The Guardian, also contributing leader columns to the newspaper.
He was one of the collaborators with Wally Fawkes on the long running cartoon strip Flook. He has also contributed a column to the Radio Times for many years, and has written a number of novels.

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Ben Elton
Benjamin Charles "Ben" Elton (born 3 May 1959) is an English-Australian comedian, author, playwright and director. He was at the forefront of the British alternative comedy movement of the 1980s, as a writer on such cult series as The Young Ones and Blackadder, as well as also a successful stand-up comedian on stage and TV. He was a high-profile frontman of 1980s left-wing political satire. Since then he has published thirteen novels and more lately become known for writing the musical We Will Rock You (2002) and Love Never Dies (2010), the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera.
Elton was born in Catford, London, the son of Mary (Foster), an English teacher, and physicist and educational researcher Professor Lewis Elton. He is the nephew of the historian Sir G. R. Elton. Elton's father is of German Jewish descent and his mother is of English background. He studied at Stillness Junior School and Godalming Grammar School in Surrey, South Warwickshire College in Stratford-upon-Avon and the University of Manchester. Elton is married to Sophia Gare (an Australian saxophonist) and has three children (two sons and one daughter). He lives in Fremantle, Western Australia and in East Sussex, England. Elton has had dual British/Australian citizenship since 2004.

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Bernard Manning
Bernard John Manning (13 August 1930 – 18 June 2007) was an English comedian and nightclub owner. He was born and raised in Manchester in northwest England.
Manning told irreverent jokes about people from all walks of life, and his act was best known for material involving ethnic stereotypes and minority groups. This led to frequent criticism that his act was racist, which he always denied, saying: "I tell jokes. You never take a joke seriously." Manning became famous on British television during the 1970s, appearing on shows including The Comedians and The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club. The controversy surrounding his act meant that Manning was rarely seen on television in the later part of his career, but he continued to perform in theatres and pubs until his death.
Manning was born in the Ancoats district of Manchester. He had Russian Jewish ancestry on his father's side, as well as roots in Ireland, and was raised a "strict Catholic". He named his house in Alkrington, Greater Manchester "Shalom," the Hebrew word for "peace."

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Beryl Reid
Beryl Elizabeth Reid, OBE (17 June 1919 – 13 October 1996) was a British actress of stage and screen.
Born in Hereford, England in 1919, Reid was the daughter of Scottish parents and grew up in Manchester where she attended Withington and Levenshulme High Schools.
Leaving school at 16, she made her debut in 1936 as a music hall performer at the Floral Hall, Bridlington. Before and during World War II, she took part in variety shows and pantomimes. She had no formal training but later appeared at the Royal National Theatre in London as a comedy actress. Her first big success came in the BBC radio show Educating Archie as naughty schoolgirl Monica and later as the Brummie, "Marlene".
Her many film and television roles as a character actor were usually well-received. She reprised her Tony Award-winning performance of a lesbian soap opera star in The Killing of Sister George for the screen version and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Drama. The former tour of the play was not a success, people in shops refused to serve her and other performers due to the gay characters in the play.

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Bill Dare
Bill Dare is an English producer and devisor of radio and television comedy programmes.
The son of the actor and broadcaster Peter Jones, he is a graduate of the University of Manchester who subsequently became an actor, director and writer. Bill Dare is the producer or devisor of various (mainly comedy) programmes mainly for BBC Radio and Television, including The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Dead Ringers, The Now Show, The Late Edition, I've Never Seen Star Wars and The Secret World. He was also the producer of ITV's Spitting Image (1990–93).
He wrote and appeared in his own Radio 4 sketch show, Life, Death and Sex with Mike and Sue which ran for five series. More recently he has emerged as a more serious writer. Dare's first novel, Natural Selection is published in the UK and US, and his first stage play, Touch, was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007. He has one daughter, Rebecca, and lives in Crouch End, London.

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Billy Connolly
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'). His first trade, in the early 1960s, was as a welder (specifically a boilermaker) in the Glasgow shipyards, but he gave it up towards the end of the decade to pursue a career as a folk singer in the Humblebums and subsequently as a soloist. In the early 1970s, he made the transition from folk-singer with a comedic persona to full-fledged comedian.
Connolly is also an actor, and has appeared in such films as Indecent Proposal (1993); Muppet Treasure Island (1996); Mrs. Brown (1997), for which he was nominated for a BAFTA; The Boondock Saints (1999); The Man Who Sued God (2001); Water (1985); The Last Samurai (2003); Timeline (2003); Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004); Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006); Open Season (2006); The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008); and Open Season 2 (2008). Connolly reprised his role as Noah "Il Duce" MacManus in The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. Connolly appears as the King of Lilliput in the 2010 remake of Gulliver′s Travels.

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Bobby Robson
Sir Robert William "Bobby" Robson, CBE (18 February 1933 – 31 July 2009) was an English footballer and manager, who managed seven European clubs and the England national team during his career.
His professional playing career as an inside-forward spanned nearly 20 years, during which he played for three clubs: Fulham, West Bromwich Albion, and, briefly, Vancouver Royals. He also made 20 appearances for England, scoring four goals.
After his playing career he found success as both a club and international manager, winning league championships in both the Netherlands and Portugal, earning trophies in England and Spain, and taking England to the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup. His last management role was as a mentor to the manager of the Irish national football team.
Robson was created a Knight Bachelor in 2002, was inducted as a member of the English Football Hall of Fame in 2003, and was the honorary president of Ipswich Town. From 1991 onwards he suffered recurrent medical problems with cancer, and in March 2008, put his name and efforts into the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, a cancer research charity. In August 2008, his lung cancer was confirmed to be terminal; he said: "My condition is described as static and has not altered since my last bout of chemotherapy...I am going to die sooner rather than later. But then everyone has to go sometime and I have enjoyed every minute". He died just under a year later.

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Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (Russian: Бори́с Никола́евич Е́льцин; IPA: [bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn] ( listen); 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was the President of Russia, serving from 1991 to 1999.
Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet. On 12 June 1991 he was elected by popular vote to the newly created post of President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR), at that time one of the 15 constituent republics of the Soviet Union. He won 57% of the vote in a six-candidate contest and became the second democratically elected leader of Russia in history. Upon the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev and the final dissolution of the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991, Yeltsin remained in office as the President of the Russian Federation, the USSR's successor state. Yeltsin was reelected in the 1996 election; in the second round of the election Yeltsin defeated Gennady Zyuganov from the revived Communist Party by a margin of 13%. However, Yeltsin never recovered his early popularity after a series of economic and political crises in Russia in the 1990s.

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Brett Anderson
Brett Lewis Anderson (born 29 September 1967) is an English singer-songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Suede. After Suede disbanded in 2003, he briefly fronted The Tears, and has released four solo albums. Suede reformed in 2010. In Suede's early days, Anderson's androgynous style and unique, wide ranging vocals were an instant phenomenon in the UK.
Born in Haywards Heath, West Sussex into a working class family, Anderson's mother was an artist and his father was a classical music fan. He was brought up in a small council estate in Lindfield, a village adjoining Haywards Heath, attending Lindfield Junior School then Oathall Comprehensive School.
In his teens, Anderson played guitar for garage bands such as The Pigs and Geoff, the latter featuring future Suede bassist Mat Osman. In the late-1980s, Anderson and Osman formed Suede with Anderson's girlfriend, Justine Frischmann, soon recruiting guitarist Bernard Butler through an advertisement in the NME. After receiving percussional help from former Smiths drummer Mike Joyce, in 1991, Simon Gilbert joined Suede as their official drummer. It was around this time that Frischmann left Anderson for Blur frontman Damon Albarn, which created an early rift in the burgeoning Britpop scene of the early 1990s. After missing too many rehearsals and flaunting her relationship with Albarn while still living with Anderson, Frischmann was fired from the group, going on to front Elastica.

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Bruce Forsyth
Sir Bruce Joseph Forsyth-Johnson CBE, (born 22 February 1928), commonly known as Bruce Forsyth, or Brucie, is an English TV personality. He became known through the series Sunday Night at the London Palladium, going on to present television series such as The Generation Game, Play Your Cards Right, The Price Is Right (UK), You Bet! and Strictly Come Dancing.
Forsyth was born in Edmonton, London, the son of Florence Ada (née Pocknell) and John Thomas Forsyth-Johnson. His family owned a car repair garage in Victoria Road, Edmonton, and as members of the Salvation Army his parents played brass instruments and his mother was a singer. His great grandfather Joseph Forsyth Johnson (1840–1906) was a landscape architect who worked in Russia, Ireland and the United States. His great-great-great-great grandfather William Forsyth (1737–1804) was a founder of the Royal Horticultural Society and the namesake of the plant genus Forsythia.
Forsyth attended The Latymer School. After watching Fred Astaire in films at age eight, he trained in dance in Tottenham and then Brixton. He started in show business aged 14, with a song, dance, and accordion act called "Boy Bruce, the Mighty Atom." His first appearance was at the Theatre Royal, Bilston, with The Great Marzo at the top of the bill. Forsyth made his television debut in 1939 as a child, singing and dancing on a talent show introduced by Jasmine Bligh, probably an episode of Come and Be Televised (BBC, 1939), broadcast from Radiolympia.

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Caspar Weinberger
Caspar Willard "Cap" Weinberger (August 18, 1917 – March 28, 2006), was an American politician and businessman. He served in a variety of prominent state and federal positions for three decades, most prominently as Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1987.
Born in San Francisco, California, Weinberger served in the 41st Infantry Division in the Pacific theater of World War II. His entry into politics was as a California State Assemblyman from 1953 to 1959, and he would go on to serve as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. An accomplished private sector businessman, he later became vice president and general counsel of Bechtel Corporation, and still later Chairman of Forbes.
His tenure as Secretary of Defense is the third longest in U.S. history, and spanned the final years of the Cold War. He is also known for his key role in the administration's Strategic Defense Initiative and later indictments in the Iran-Contra affair. He was awarded both the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987 and an honorary British knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.

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Cecil Parkinson
(Edward) Cecil Parkinson, Baron Parkinson,PC (born 1 September 1931 in Carnforth, Lancashire), is a British Conservative politician and former Cabinet Minister.
The son of a railway worker, Parkinson was educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School, a state-run day and boarding school for boys, from where he won a scholarship to Cambridge University, where he read English at Emmanuel College, later switching to read Law. While at university, he was a Labour supporter and for a time was a member of the Labour Party. He did National Service as an NCO in the Royal Air Force. He married Ann Mary Jarvis in 1957. They have three daughters: Mary, Emma and Joanna.
After leaving university, Parkinson worked as a manager for the MetalBox Company, later becoming a consultant. He trained and qualified as a Chartered Accountant and in 1961, founded Parkinson-Hart securities.
In the June 1970 general election he stood as candidate for Northampton but was not elected. Parkinson was elected as MP for Enfield West at a by-election in November 1970, following the death of Iain Macleod. When that constitituency was abolished for the February 1974 general election he was elected for the new South Hertfordshire constituency. After the 1979 General Election, he was made a junior trade minister. In September 1981 he was made Chairman of the Conservative Party, and Paymaster-General with a seat in the cabinet and in 1982 was given the added official title of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Despite his relatively junior status, he was a member of the small War Cabinet which Mrs Thatcher set up to run the Falklands War.

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Chris Barrie
Chris Barrie (born 28 March 1960) is a British actor. He first achieved success as a vocal impressionist, notably in the ITV sketch show Spitting Image. He is best known for his roles as Arnold Rimmer in the sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, as Gordon Brittas in the BBC sitcom The Brittas Empire and as Lara Croft's butler Hillary in the Tomb Raider franchise films.
Barrie was born Christopher Jonathan Brown in Hanover, Lower Saxony, West Germany to a father who was serving in the British Army, and attended Methodist College Belfast boarding school in Northern Ireland. After dropping out of Brighton Polytechnic, he began his TV career as a sports personality impersonator on The David Essex Showcase; it was at this point that he adopted the surname "Barrie" for Equity reasons – as there was already an actor named Chris Brown on the Equity UK lists. He provided the voice of Ronald Reagan in the pop song "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, as well as various vocalisations for other tracks by FGTH and Art of Noise.

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Chris Emmett
Chris Emmett is a British actor and comedian best known for his work in the late 1970s on the BBC Radio 4 comedy The Burkiss Way. He was a regular on various series starring Roy Hudd, including The News Huddlines, The Newly Discovered Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Huddwinks and Crowned Hudds. He was also a regular on Week Ending and appeared in a number of sketches in the television game show 3-2-1.
Chris Emmett at the Internet Movie Database

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Chris Eubank
Chris Eubank, Lord of the Manor of Brighton (born Christopher Livingstone Eubanks on 8 August 1966)^{[citation needed]} is a British retired boxer who held world titles at middleweight and super middleweight. He was a world champion for over five years, undefeated in his first ten years as a professional, and remained undefeated at middleweight.
Christopher Livingstone Eubanks, is one of the sons of Rachel Scollins (later opting to delete the 's' from his surname) was born on 8 August 1966, in Dulwich, South London and spent his early days in Jamaica (from two months old to six years old). On his return to England, he lived in Stoke Newington, Dalston, Hackney and then Peckham; largely impoverished.
He attended Bellingden Junior School, and then Thomas Carlton Secondary School, from where he was suspended eighteen times in one year and then expelled, despite claiming he was gallantly trying to protect other children from bullies. He then attended Peckham Manor School, from where he was suspended five times in four weeks and then expelled. He was then put into care and spent time in various institutions under the care of Social Services. Some time was spent at Orchard Lodge Regional Resource Centre, Anerley in 1981. When he was 16, his father sent him to New York in the U.S. to live with his mother in the tough South Bronx district.

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Cliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard, OBE (born Harry Rodger Webb; 14 October 1940) is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist. With his backing group The Shadows, Richard, originally positioned as a rebellious rock and roll singer in the style of Little Richard and Elvis Presley, dominated the British popular music scene in the pre-Beatles period of the late 1950s and early 1960s. His 1958 hit single "Move It" is often described as Britain's first authentic rock and roll song, and John Lennon once claimed that "before Cliff and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music." A conversion to Christianity and subsequent softening of his music later led to a more middle of the road pop image, sometimes venturing into gospel music.
Over a 53-year career, Richard has become a fixture of the British entertainment world, amassing many gold and platinum discs and awards, including three Brit awards and two Ivor Novello awards. He has had more than 130 singles, albums and EPs make the UK Top 20, more than any other artist and holds the record (with Elvis Presley) as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its first six decades (1950s–2000s). He has achieved 14 UK No. 1 singles (or 18, depending on the counting methodology) and is the only singer to have had a No. 1 single in the UK in six consecutive decades: the 1950s through to the 2000s (discounting digital downloads and counting only CDs, he had a UK No. 1 single in the 2000s). Richard is the biggest selling singles artist of all time in the UK, with total sales of over 21 million and has reportedly sold an estimated 250 million records worldwide.

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Clive Sinclair
Sir Clive Marles Sinclair (born 30 July 1940) is an English entrepreneur and inventor, most commonly known for his work in consumer electronics in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
After spending several years as assistant editor of Practical Wireless and Instrument Practice, Sinclair founded Sinclair Radionics in 1961, where he produced the first slim-line electronic pocket calculator in 1972 (the Sinclair Executive). Sinclair later moved into the production of home computers and produced the Sinclair ZX80, the UK's first mass-market home computer for less than GB£100, and later, with Sinclair Research, the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum; the latter is widely recognised for its importance in the early days of the British home computer industry. Sinclair stated in 2010 that he does not use computers himself, using the telephone in preference to email.
Knighted in 1983, Sinclair formed Sinclair Vehicles and released the Sinclair C5, a battery electric vehicle that was a commercial failure. Since then Sinclair has concentrated on personal transport, including the A-bike, a folding bicycle for commuters that weighs 5.5 kilograms (12 lb) and folds down small enough to be carried on public transport.

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Dan Quayle
James Danforth "Dan" Quayle ( /ˈkweɪl/; born February 4, 1947) served as the 44th Vice President of the United States, serving with President George H. W. Bush (1989–1993). He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from the state of Indiana.
Quayle was born in Indianapolis but spent most of his childhood living in Arizona. He married Marilyn Tucker in 1972 and obtained his J.D. from Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in 1974. He practiced law in Huntington, Indiana with his wife before being elected to the United States Congress in 1976, aged 29. In 1980, Quayle was elected to the Senate.
In 1988, Vice President George H. W. Bush was nominated for the presidency by the Republican Party and asked his party to nominate Quayle as his vice presidential running mate. Although this choice was met with some dismay, the Bush/Quayle ticket won the 1988 election over Democrats Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen. As vice president, Quayle made official visits to 47 countries and was appointed chairman of the National Space Council. He secured re-nomination for vice-president in 1992 but the Bush/Quayle ticket was defeated by Democrat Bill Clinton and his vice-presidential running mate, Al Gore.

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David Coleman
David Coleman, OBE (born 26 April 1926, Alderley Edge, Cheshire) is an English former sports commentator and TV presenter who worked for the BBC for almost fifty years. In 2000, he was awarded the Olympic Order, the highest honour of the Olympic movement.
Born of Irish heritage (his immediate family hailed from County Cork), Coleman was a keen amateur runner. He attended a grammar school in Cheshire and competed as a schoolboy middle distance runner. In 1949, he won the Manchester Mile as a member of Stockport Harriers, the only non-international runner to do so. He competed in the English National Cross-Country Championships for Manchester Athletic Club in 1952 (116th, 3rd team) and 1953 (118). He ran 440 yards for Staffordshire and injury eventually caused him to give up competitive running. He later became president of the Wolverhampton & Bilston Athletics Club.
He worked as a reporter for the Stockport Express, and during military service worked for the British Army Newspaper Unit. Part of his time in National Service was carried out in Kenya.

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David Frost
Sir David Paradine Frost, Kt., OBE (born 7 April 1939), is a British journalist, comedian, writer, media personality and daytime TV game show host best known for his two decades as host of Through the Keyhole and serious interviews with various political figures, the most notable being Richard Nixon. Since 2006, he has been hosting the weekly programme Frost Over the World on Al Jazeera English.
David Paradine Frost was born in Tenterden, Kent, on 7 April 1939 as the son of a Methodist minister of Huguenot descent, the Rev. W. J. Paradine Frost, and his wife Mona, and with two elder sisters. While living in Gillingham, Kent, he was taught in the Bible class of the Sunday school at his father's church (Byron Road Methodist) by David Gilmore Harvey, and subsequently started training as a Methodist local preacher, which he did not complete. He attended Barnsole Road Primary School in Gillingham, then Gillingham Grammar School and finally Wellingborough Grammar School. He subsequently won a place at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a degree in English. Throughout his school years he was an avid football (soccer) and cricket player, and was actually offered a contract with Nottingham Forest F.C., which he turned down in order to attend university.

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David Owen
David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen CH PC FRCP (born 2 July 1938) is a British politician.
Owen served as British Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post; he co-authored the failed Vance-Owen and Owen-Stoltenberg peace plans offered during the Bosnian War. In 1981, Owen was one of the "Gang of Four" who left the Labour Party to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Owen led the SDP from 1983 to 1987, and the continuing SDP from 1988 to 1990. He sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.
In the course of his career, Owen has held, and resigned from, a number of senior posts. He first quit as Labour's spokesman on defence in 1972 in protest at the Labour leader Harold Wilson's attitude to the EEC; he left the Labour Shadow cabinet over the same issue later; and over unilateral disarmament in November 1980 when Michael Foot became Labour leader. He resigned from the Labour Party when it rejected one member, one vote in February 1981 and later as Leader of the Social Democratic Party, which he had helped to found, after the party's rank-and-file membership voted to merge with the Liberal Party.

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David Steel
David Martin Scott Steel, Baron Steel of Aikwood, KT, KBE, PC (born 31 March 1938) is a British Liberal Democrat politician who served as the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1976 until its merger with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1965 to 1997 and as a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) from 1999 to 2003, during which time he was the parliament's Presiding Officer. Since 1997, he has been a member of the House of Lords.
David Steel was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, the son of a Church of Scotland minister also called David Steel, who would later serve as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He was brought up in Scotland and Kenya, and educated at Dumbarton Academy; James Gillespies Boys' School, Edinburgh; the Prince of Wales School, Nairobi; and George Watson's College, Edinburgh.
He first took an active part in Liberal politics at the University of Edinburgh, and after graduating in Law worked for the Scottish Liberal Party and then the BBC before being elected to the House of Commons as the MP for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles at a 1965 by-election, becoming the "Baby of the House". He represented this seat until 1983, when he was elected in Tweedale, Ettrick and Lauderdale, a new constituency covering much of the same territory.

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David Stoten
David Stoten (born in Luton, Bedfordshire) is a short film maker and caricaturist on TV's Spitting Image. Stoten won the BAFTA award with longtime collaborator, Tim Watts in 1994 for The Big Story.
Since then, Stoten has provided storyboards for, amongst others, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Mr. Bean's Holiday and the award-winning TV series Charlie and Lola.
Credited as one of the "Spitting Image team" (under Roger Law), Stoten provided the cover to 2007's QI "E" Annual, as well as contributing incidental illustrations alongside such other cartoonists as Newman and Husband from Private Eye, Viz's Chris Donald, Geoff Dunbar, Ted Dewan and The Daily Telegraph's Matt. Stoten has since supplied caricatures to the "F", "G" and "H" editions and is an ongoing contributor to The Oldie.
As a sculptor, Stoten has provided many maquettes for the animation film industry whilst also sculpting an exclusive range of Gorillaz figures for the designer toy company Kidrobot.
Stoten was recently Head of Story for the Elton John produced Animated Feature Film Gnomeo and Juliet and currently is the Creative Development Lead at Arc Productions (formerly Starz Animation) in Toronto.

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Debbie Barham
Deborah Ann "Debbie" Barham (20 November 1976 – 20 April 2003) was an English comedy writer who died at the age of 26 of heart failure caused by a long struggle with anorexia.
During her 11-year career she wrote for comedians including Clive Anderson, Rory Bremner, Angus Deayton, Bob Monkhouse and Graham Norton, and for BBC programmes including The News Huddlines, Loose Ends and Week Ending. Though little known by the general public she was greatly respected in the profession, and had a reputation for mental quickness, her writing being not only of high quality but also fast and prolific, even when she was far from well.
She was educated at Sheffield High School (South Yorkshire),^{[citation needed]} and was a bright student, but left school early as she was unhappy there, and never went to university. Her early work was submitted under the name D. A. Barham, out of concern that a teenage girl would not be accepted in a world traditionally dominated by Oxbridge-educated men. The radio show About a Dog was based on her last comedy proposal.

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Debbie McGee
Debbie McGee (born 31 October 1958) is an English television, radio and stage performer who is best known as the wife and assistant of magician Paul Daniels. McGee is a former ballet dancer and, for three years, she was artistic director of her own ballet company. She currently presents a Sunday morning show for BBC Radio Berkshire.
McGee was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, to an English mother, Lillian 'Bubbles' Howes, and a Northern Irish father, Patrick McGee. Her sister is a banker in the City of London and her brother is an accountant. When McGee was young her parents ran a corner shop. Later, her father worked for a large gold manufacturing firm making rings and other jewellery.
McGee enjoyed music and dressing up from an early age, so her mother enrolled her in a dance school when she was seven. She attended Our Lady Immaculate RC Primary School in Tolworth, Surrey followed by Tolworth Girls' School, a secondary school also in Tolworth, Surrey. At 16 McGee auditioned for and won a place at the Royal Ballet School. After graduating, she joined the Iranian National Ballet in Tehran. Aged 19, she became part of the Corps de Ballet and later a soloist, but her ballet career was brought to an abrupt halt by the Islamic Revolution. She was forced to flee the country and ended up returning to the UK with little in the way of money and possessions. Seeking new work she auditioned for the Bernard Delfont Organisation, which was responsible for a number of big summer resort shows and touring productions.

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Denis Healey
Denis Winston Healey, Baron Healey CH, MBE, PC, MC (born 30 August 1917) is a retired British Labour politician, who served as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979.
Healey was born in Mottingham, London, but moved with his family to Keighley in the West Riding of Yorkshire when he was five. His middle name is in honour of Winston Churchill.
Healey was one of three siblings. His father was an engineer who worked his way up from humble origins studying at night school. His paternal grandfather was a tailor from Enniskillen in Ireland. Healey was educated at Bradford Grammar School. In 1936 he won an exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford, to read Greats where he was involved in Labour politics, although he was not active in the Oxford Union Society. At Oxford Healey joined the Communist Party in 1937 during the Great Terror but left in 1940 after the fall of France. Also at Oxford, Healey met future Conservative Prime Minister Teddy Heath (as he was then known), whom he succeeded as president of Balliol College Junior Common Room and who was to be a life-long friend and political rival. Healey achieved a double first for his degree, awarded in 1940.

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Don Austen
British puppeteer Don Austen joined the Jim Henson Creature Shop in 1986 for the movie Labyrinth. He was a puppeteer for other blockbuster movies including Santa Claus: The Movie (1985), The Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Bear (L'ours) (1988), The Witches (1990), and Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999).
Most notably he performed in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), inside both the Ghost of Christmas Present (alongside Michael Caine) and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. He also managed briefly to boost numbers in Muppet Treasure Island (1996) as Pirate Crew & Cannibals.
Austen's British TV debut was on the irreverent cult ITV puppet show Spitting Image. (1987–90)
Austen voiced and puppeteered Sky One's DJ Kat for more than 2000 award-winning DJ Kat Shows (1989–95) and 200 breakfast shows as Earl E Bird on Channel 4's Early Bird (1991).
Austen voiced/puppeteered feline gang leader Danny Mogg (1991) in comedy drama series The Wild Bunch. This TF1/Channel 4 co-production, recorded at AB Studios Paris, was a vehicle for French TV star Dorothee.

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Doug Naylor
Douglas R. Naylor (born 1955) is a British comedy writer, science fiction writer, director and television producer.
Naylor was born in Manchester, England and studied at the University of Liverpool. In the mid-1980s, Naylor wrote two regular comedy sketch shows for BBC Radio 4 entitled Cliché and Son of Cliché, as well as Wrinkles for Radio 4. These sketch shows were scripted by Naylor along with another writer, Rob Grant. This writing partnership was successful with Naylor and Grant going on to co-write and produce numerous BBC television series throughout the 1980s and 1990s. These included programmes such as Comic Relief, Spitting Image, and The 10 Percenters.
The collaborations between Grant and Naylor have often used the pseudonym Grant Naylor. This collaboration is today best remembered for the creation of the British science fiction comedy television series, Red Dwarf (their earlier radio sketch shows formed the basis for the show; Chris Barrie starred in both those and Red Dwarf). This show went on to achieve global cult status.

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Douglas Hurd
Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE, PC (born 8 March 1930), is a British Conservative politician and novelist, who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major between 1979 and his retirement in 1995.
Born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, Hurd first entered parliament in February 1974, as MP for the Mid Oxfordshire constituency (Witney from 1983). His first government post was as Minister for Europe, from 1979-83 (being the post's inaugural holder), and served in several cabinet posts from 1984 onwards, including Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1984–85), Home Secretary (1985–89) and Foreign Secretary (1989–95). He stood unsuccessfully for the Conservative Party leadership in 1990, but retired from frontline politics during a cabinet re-shuffle in 1995.
In 1997, Hurd entered the House of Lords. Viewed as one of the Conservative Party's senior elder statesmen, he is a patron of the Tory Reform Group, and remains an active figure in public life.
Douglas Hurd was born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, in 1930. His father Anthony Hurd (later Baron Hurd) and grandfather Sir Percy Hurd had both been Members of Parliament. Hurd attended Twyford School and Eton College. He then went on to Cambridge University, where he earned a first class degree in History at Trinity College and served as the President of the Cambridge Union Society.

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Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman (born August 8, 1937) is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters.
He first drew critical praise for the play Eh?, for which he won a Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk Award. This was soon followed by his breakthrough movie role as the good-looking but troubled Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1967). Since then Hoffman's career has largely been focused on cinema, with only sporadic returns to television and the stage. Some of his most notable films are Papillon, Marathon Man, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Lenny, All the President's Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, Rain Man, Wag the Dog, and Meet the Fockers.
Hoffman has won two Academy Awards (for his performances in Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man), five Golden Globes, four BAFTAs, three Drama Desk Awards, a Genie Award, and an Emmy Award. Dustin Hoffman received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999.

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Ed McMahon
Edward Leo Peter "Ed" McMahon, Jr. (March 6, 1923 – June 23, 2009) was an American comedian, game show host and announcer. He is most famous for his work on television as Johnny Carson's sidekick and announcer on The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992. He also hosted the original version of the talent show Star Search from 1983 to 1995. He co-hosted TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes with Dick Clark from 1982 to 1998. He also presented sweepstakes for the direct marketing company American Family Publishers (not, as is commonly believed, its main rival Publishers Clearing House).
McMahon annually co-hosted the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon. He performed in numerous television commercials, most notably for Budweiser. In the 1970s and 1980s, he anchored the team of NBC personalities conducting the network's coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. McMahon appeared in several films, including The Incident, Fun With Dick and Jane, Full Moon High, and Butterfly, as well as briefly in the film version of Bewitched. According to Entertainment Weekly, McMahon is considered one of the greatest "sidekicks".

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Edwin Meese
Edwin "Ed" Meese, III (born December 2, 1931) is an attorney, law professor, and author who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Administration (1967–1974), the Reagan Presidential Transition Team (1980), and the Reagan White House (1981–1985), eventually rising to hold the position of the 75th Attorney General of the United States (1985–1988). He currently holds fellowships and chairmanships with several public policy councils and think tanks, including the Constitution Project and The Heritage Foundation. He is also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
Meese was born in Oakland, California, and is the eldest of four sons born to Leone (née Feldman) and Edwin Meese, Jr. He was raised in a practicing Lutheran family of German descent. His father was an Oakland city government official, president of the Zion Lutheran Church, and served 24 years in the non-partisan office of Treasurer of Alameda County.
At age 10, Meese published along with his brothers a mimeographed neighborhood newspaper, the Weekly Herald, and used the proceeds to buy a War Bond. The young Meese also rode a bicycle on a paper route and worked in a drugstore. At Oakland High School, Meese was involved in the Junior State of America and led his high school debate team to statewide championships and was recognized as valedictorian, class of 1949. Two weeks prior to graduation, he was accepted to Yale University and granted a scholarship. Meese served as president of the Yale Political Union, chairman of the Conservative Party, and chairman of the Yale Debating Association. Meese made the dean's list, and graduated with a bachelor of arts of political science in 1953.

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Edwina Currie
Edwina Jones (born 13 October 1946), born Edwina Cohen and commonly known by her first married name, Edwina Currie, is a former British Member of Parliament. First elected as a Conservative Party MP in 1983, she was a Junior Health Minister for two years, before resigning in 1988 over the controversy over salmonella in eggs. By the time Currie lost her seat in 1997, she had begun a new career as a novelist and broadcaster.
Currie was born in South Liverpool, England to an Orthodox Jewish family and has identified herself as Jewish, although she has stated: "I find religious mumbo jumbo hard to swallow in any faith." A pupil at Liverpool Institute High School for Girls, Liverpool's Historic Canning area, she studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Anne's College, Oxford University where she was taught by Gabriele Taylor; subsequently, she gained a MA in economic history from the London School of Economics.
From 1975 until 1986, she was a Birmingham City Councillor for Northfield. In 1983, she stood for parliament as a Conservative Party candidate, and was elected as the member for South Derbyshire. Frequently outspoken, she was described as "a virtually permanent fixture on the nation's TV screen saying something outrageous about just about anything" and "the most outspoken and sexually interested woman of her political generation."

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Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms, and head of the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations. She is also head of state of the Crown Dependencies.
Elizabeth was born in London, and educated privately at home. Her father acceded to the throne as George VI in 1936 on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII. She began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, in which she served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. On the death of her father in 1952, she became Head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Her coronation service in 1953 was the first to be televised. Between 1956 and 1992, the number of her realms varied as territories gained independence and some realms became republics. Today, in addition to the first four aforementioned countries, Elizabeth is Queen of Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

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Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".
Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family at the age of 13. He began his career there in 1954, working with Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African American music to a wider audience. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was the most important popularizer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country and rhythm and blues. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage the singer for over two decades. Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", released in January 1956, was a number one hit. He became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial. In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender.

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Enn Reitel
Enn Reitel (born 21 June 1950) is a Scottish actor and impressionist who specialises in voice work.
Reitel's family arrived in Scotland as refugees from Estonia and German Empire. He trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
In 1982, Reitel starred in the Further Adventures Of Lucky Jim, a BBC2 sitcom written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Reitel played Jim Dixon, based on the character created by Kingsley Amis.
He appeared on stage in Me And My Girl at the Adelphi Theatre in 1986. On television he worked as an impressionist on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image and starred in the ITV sitcom Mog as a burglar who spent his days in a psychiatric hospital, pretending to be insane.
He played the lead role in the UK TV comedy series The Optimist which ran from 1983 for two series. The programme was almost entirely silent. In each episode 'The Optimist' wandered through life doing his best to look on the bright side. He was usually thwarted in his endeavours by the people he encountered. He also appeared in the first series of the UK comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway.

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Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos (September 11, 1917 – September 28, 1989) was a Filipino politician who held the title of President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He was a lawyer, member of the Philippine House of Representatives (1949–1959) and a member of the Philippine Senate (1959–1965). He was Senate President from 1963–1965.
While in power he implemented wide-ranging programs of infrastructure development and economic reform. However, his administration was marred by massive authoritarian corruption, despotism, nepotism, political repression, and human rights violations.
In 1983, his government was accused of being involved in the assassination of his primary political opponent, Benigno Aquino, Jr. Public outrage over the assassination served as the catalyst for the People Power Revolution in February 1986 that led to his removal from power and eventual exile in Hawaii. It was later discovered that, during his 20 years in power, he and his wife Imelda Marcos had moved billions of dollars of embezzled public funds to accounts and investments in the United States, Switzerland, and other countries.

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Frank Bough
Frank Bough ( /ˈbɒf/; born 15 January 1933) is a retired British television presenter who is best known as the former host of BBC sports and current affairs shows including Grandstand, Nationwide and Breakfast Time, which he fronted alongside Selina Scott.
Bough was born in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent, England. He was educated at Oswestry Boys' High School (a Shropshire County Council secular grammar school), Oswestry, Shropshire (not to be confused with the older independent Oswestry School), and at Merton College, Oxford, reputedly being one of the last generation of undergraduates to be awarded a fourth class degree.^{[citation needed]} He played football for the university against Cambridge, and performed his national service in the Royal Tank Regiment.
He joined the BBC as an anchorman and reporter, presenting the new Newcastle upon Tyne based Home at Six. It was known by this title very briefly before changing to North at Six and then in 1963 changing to BBC Look North (North East and Cumbria). In 1964 he began presenting the BBC Sports Review of the Year, which he would host for eighteen years. He also presented Sportsview, and in 1968 the BBC's flagship Saturday afternoon sports programme Grandstand. He was one of the BBC's football commentators for the 1966 World Cup and covered the match where North Korea infamously defeated Italy 1-0. He went on to present the early evening magazine programme, Nationwide. This made him one of the most familiar faces on British television throughout the 1970s.

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Frank Bruno
Franklin Roy "Frank" Bruno MBE (born 16 November 1961) is a British former boxer whose career highlight was winning the WBC heavyweight championship in 1995. Altogether, he won 40 of his 45 contests. Like Henry Cooper before him, Bruno has remained a popular celebrity with the British public since his ring career ended and still appears regularly in pantomime.
Bruno became a professional boxer in 1982, quickly racking up a streak of twenty-one consecutive wins by knockout. This streak caught the attention of international boxing magazines, such as The Ring, KO Magazine, Boxing Illustrated, Ring En Español. During this period Bruno defeated former world title contender Scott LeDoux, the dangerous fringe contender Floyd Cummings, former European Champion Rudy Gauwe, British contender Eddie Nielson and trial horses such as Bill Sharkey, Walter Santemore and Ken Lakusta. However, in May 1984 the up and coming future world heavyweight Champion, American James 'Bonecrusher' Smith, halted that streak when he defeated Bruno by knockout in the tenth and final round of their bout, with Bruno leading clearly on all three judges' cards. As a general view, Bruno was carefully managed, whereby he developed well to later give a strong account of himself in the big matches.

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François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (French: [fʁɑ̃swa mɔʁis mitɛˈʁɑ̃] ( listen); 26 October 1916 – 8 January 1996) was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the first figure from the left elected President under the Fifth Republic.
Reflecting family influences, Mitterrand started political life on the Catholic nationalist right. He served under the Vichy Regime in its earlier years. Subsequently, however, he joined the Resistance, moved to the left, and held ministerial office repeatedly under the Fourth Republic. He opposed de Gaulle's establishment of the Fifth Republic. Although at times a politically isolated figure, Mitterrand outmanoeuvred rivals to become the left's standard bearer in every presidential election from 1965 to 1988, except 1969. Elected President in the May 1981 presidential election, he was re-elected in 1988 and held office until 1995.

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Geoff Atkinson
Geoff Atkinson is a British comedy writer and producer.
He has written and produced various shows featuring Rory Bremner. He is managing director of Vera Productions, an Independent production company he set up with Bremner.
Starting off his career in Punch magazine, he ended up working with the likes of Douglas Adams and John Lloyd. He was one of the main writers on Spitting Image. He has also written for Alistair McGowan and Lenny Henry and Cannon and Ball.
In 1990 he wrote the short lived and highly controversial sitcom Heil Honey I'm Home! for British Satellite Broadcasting scrapped after only one episode was transmitted. It was a parody of 1950s American sitcoms, but featuring Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun as the leads.
In 2007 he was executive producer on the documentary Mark Thomas on Coca Cola.

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Geoffrey Howe
Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe, Baron Howe of Aberavon, CH, QC, PC (born 20 December 1926) is a former British Conservative politician. He was Margaret Thatcher's longest-serving Cabinet minister, successively holding the posts of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary, and finally Leader of the House of Commons and Deputy Prime Minister. His resignation on 1 November 1990 is widely considered to have precipitated Thatcher's own downfall three weeks later.
Geoffrey Howe was born in 1926 at Port Talbot in Wales. A pupil of the Bridgend Preparatory School, Bryntirion, he then attended Abberley Hall School, Worcestershire and Winchester College. He then did National Service as a Lieutenant with the Royal Corps of Signals in East Africa, by his own account giving political lectures in Swahili about how Africans should avoid communism and remain loyal to "Bwana Kingy George". Having declined an offer to remain in the army as a captain, he went up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he read Law and was chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association, and on the committee of the Cambridge Union Society. He was called to the Bar in 1952 and was made a QC in 1965. He stood as the Conservative Party candidate in Aberavon at the 1955 and 1959 general elections, losing in a very safe Labour Party seat. He became chairman of the Bow Group, an internal Conservative think tank of 'young modernisers' in the 1960s, and edited its magazine Crossbow.

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Geoffrey Perkins
Geoffrey Howard Perkins (22 February 1953 - 29 August 2008) was a comedy producer, writer and performer, and an important figure in British comedy broadcasting. This was recognised in December 2008 when he was awarded with an Outstanding Contribution to Comedy Award. Best known as the BBC head of comedy (1995–2001), he produced the first two radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and is one of the people credited with creating the bizarre panel game Mornington Crescent for I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
Perkins attended the Harrow County Grammar School, alongside such future-names as Nigel Sheinwald (now, as Sir Nigel, British ambassador to Washington), Michael Portillo and Clive Anderson, with whom he ran the debating society." Taking an early interest in drama, he worked with Clive Anderson to write, in 1970, a charity revue called Happy Poison.
Perkins read English at Lincoln College, Oxford and while there wrote for and directed The Oxford Revues of 1974 and 1975, contributing to, among others, a comedy production called Radio Active. After his time at Oxford, Perkins joined the Ocean Transport and Trading Company "(in the same intake as his confrère Portillo), [where] Perkins was put to work studying waste timber in Liverpool." Perkins did not last long in the field of commercial shipping, however (nor did Portillo). In 1977, drawing on his work for the Oxford Revue, Perkins joined "BBC Radio's light entertainment department [alongside] Cambridge graduates such as John Lloyd and Griff Rhys-Jones.

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George Mitsikostas
George Mitsikostas (Γιώργος Μητσικώστας, pronounced Yorgos Mitsikostas) is a famous mimic comedian in Greece. He started his career by mimicking politicians' voices in comedy radio shows for satire. His debut on TV was in 1990. Since then he has been in many Greek channels, afterwards started to imitate actors, singers and journalists as well, and changed the form of his shows. All of the titles of his shows are a word play, usually with his name:
It is said that sometimes when a Greek celebrity called a restaurant or an hotel to book a seat, the persons on the other end of the line thought it was Mitsikostas making pranks. Mitsikostas has admitted he has done such things in the past.
There is a famous political anecdote concerning famous Greek politician and ex prime minister of Greece for many years Andreas Papandreou, who upon first hearing, then mostly unknown, George Mitsikostas imitating him on the radio having a conversation with leader of the then opposition and also former Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, called his minister alarmed upon a scam being raised against his party by imposters.

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Gerald Kaufman
Sir Gerald Bernard Kaufman (born 21 June 1930) is a British Labour Party politician, who has been a Member of Parliament (MP) since 1970, first for Manchester Ardwick, and then subsequently for Manchester Gorton. He was a government minister during the 1970s, and a member of the Shadow Cabinet in the 1980s.
Born in Leeds to Jewish parents, who came from Poland before the First World War,the son of Louis and Jane Kaufman, he was the youngest of six children. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School, and graduated in philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford (Queen's College) where he was Secretary of the University Labour Club. He was assistant general secretary of the Fabian Society from (1954–55), a leader writer on the Daily Mirror (1955–64) and a journalist on the New Statesman (1964–65). He was Parliamentary Press Liaison Officer for the Labour Party (1965–70), and eventually, a member of Prime Minister Harold Wilson's informal "kitchen cabinet".
In the 1955 general election Kaufman had unsuccessfully contested the safe Conservative seat of Bromley, and in the 1959 general election, Gillingham.

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Guy Jenkin
Guy Jenkin is a comedy writer who is best known for working on sitcoms and comedies such as Drop the Dead Donkey, Jeffrey Archer: The Truth and Outnumbered co- written with Andy Hamilton. He wrote the 2003 drama film The Sleeping Dictionary, starring Jessica Alba, as well as the BBC Radio 4 situation comedy Legal, Decent, Honest and Truthful, with Jon Canter.
He also contributed to the popular drama Life On Mars, writing the sixth episode of the second series about heroin in 1973 and the Asian community. The episode explores racism at the time.

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Hannibal Lecter
Hannibal Lecter M.D. is a fictional character in a series of horror novels by Thomas Harris and in the films adapted from them.
Lecter was introduced in the 1981 thriller novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The novel and its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, feature Lecter as the secondary antagonist after the two serial killers in both novels. In the third novel, Hannibal, Lecter becomes the main character. His role as the antihero occurs in the fourth novel, Hannibal Rising, which explores his childhood and development into a serial killer.
The first film adapted from the Harris novels was Manhunter (based on Red Dragon) features Brian Cox as Lecter, spelled "Lecktor". In 2002, a second adaptation of Red Dragon was made under the original title, featuring Anthony Hopkins, who had played Lecter in the motion pictures The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Hopkins won an Academy Award for The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. In 2003, Hannibal Lecter (as portrayed by Hopkins) was chosen by the American Film Institute as the #1 movie villain.Empire magazine lists Lecter as the 5th Greatest Movie Character of All Time.

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Harry Carpenter
Harry Leonard Carpenter OBE (17 October 1925 – 20 March 2010) was a British BBC sports commentator broadcasting from the early 1950s until his retirement in 1994. His speciality was boxing. He was presenter of programmes such as Sportsnight (1975–1985) and Grandstand and also anchored coverage of Wimbledon and golf tournaments.
His rapport with former WBC World Heavyweight Champion Frank Bruno was well known. Carpenter often conducted post-match interviews with Bruno, whose catchphrase was "know what I mean, 'Arry?", and their relationship helped give Bruno a "cuddly bear" image and a popularity with the British public beyond the boxing fraternity.
The son of a wholesale fish merchant at Billingsgate Market, Carpenter was born at South Norwood in South London and attended Selhurst Grammar School in Surrey. During World War II he served as a telegrapher in the Royal Navy. He began sports reporting as a sub-editor for several national newspapers. He joined the BBC in 1949 and was the corporation's full-time boxing correspondent from 1962 until 1994, when Jim Neilly replaced him in that capacity. He served as a boxing columnist for the Sporting Record from 1950–1954. He then worked for the Daily Mail as a boxing writer and sports columnist from 1954 to 1962.

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Harry Enfield
Henry Richard "Harry" Enfield (born 30 May 1961) is a BAFTA-winning English comedian, actor, writer and director.
Born in Horsham, West Sussex, he is the oldest of three children, the son of English television, radio and newspaper journalist and presenter Edward Enfield. He has two sisters, Elizabeth (born 1966) and Lucy Katherine (born 1969). He was educated at the independent Arundale School in Pulborough, Dorset House School, Worth School, Collyer's Sixth Form College (all in West Sussex) and the University of York, where he was a member of Derwent College and read politics. He worked for a while as a milkman.
Enfield first came to public attention when appearing on Channel 4's Saturday Live as several different characters created with Paul Whitehouse. These quickly entered the national consciousness. Among these characters were Stavros, a Greek restaurant owner with fractured English; and Loadsamoney, an obnoxious character who constantly boasted about how much money he earned. Loadsamoney spawned a hit single in 1988 and a sell-out live tour. As a foil to Loadsamoney Enfield and Whitehouse created the Geordie "Bugger-All-Money" and in 1988 Enfield appeared as both characters during the Nelson Mandela Birthday Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium. In time Whitehouse and Enfield became disturbed that Loadsamoney was being seen in a positive light, rather than as a satirical figure, and they had him run over during a Comic Relief Red Nose Day show while leaving the studio after presenting host Lenny Henry with "the biggest cheque of the night"—a physically huge cheque for ten pence.

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Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger ( /ˈkɪsɪndʒər/; born May 27, 1923) is a German-born American writer, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. A recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, he served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. After his term, his opinion was still sought by many subsequent presidents and many world leaders.
A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. During this period, he pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People's Republic of China, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. Various American policies of that era, including the bombing of Cambodia, remain controversial to many.
Kissinger is still a controversial figure today. He is the founder and chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm.

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Henry Naylor
Henry Naylor is a British comedy writer and performer, best known for his work with comedy partner Andy Parsons in Parsons and Naylor's Pull-Out Sections.
He was head writer for Spitting Image, and has written for many shows including, Noel's House Party, Dead Ringers and Alistair McGowan's Big Impression. With Parsons, he has performed satirical shows in live venues in Australia and as part of the Edinburgh Fringe. Parsons and Naylor’s Pull-Out Sections broadcast its ninth season on BBC Radio 2 during Spring 2007. A compilation CD was released in 2003.
In 2008, he wrote much of Headcases, a satirical ITV show very similar to Spitting Image, but made with CGI rather than puppets.
His face is also known for playing Rowan Atkinson's sidekick 'Bough' in a series of commercials for Barclaycard. He reprised the role in early publicity for Johnny English, but the role was taken over by Ben Miller.
In 2003 he was in the news for throwing a full English breakfast at David Blaine during his Above the Below stunt on the south bank of the River Thames in London.

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Hugh Dennis
Peter Hugh Dennis (born 13 February 1962) is an English actor, comedian, writer, impressionist and voice-over artist, best known for being one half of Punt and Dennis with comedy partner Steve Punt and their long-running radio satire show The Now Show and his position as a permanent panellist on the TV satirical comedy show Mock The Week. He uses his middle name Hugh as his stage name because Equity already had a Peter Dennis when he first started.
Dennis, the younger of two boys, was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire and grew up in Mill Hill in North London as his father was appointed a parish vicar in London soon after his birth. His father, John Dennis later became the Bishop of Knaresborough and then of Saint Edmundsbury and Ipswich. He was educated at University College School in London. During his time at UCS, he played rugby with Will Self and was head boy in his final year. Subsequently, he was offered an exhibition at St John's College, Cambridge and read Geography. He also joined the Footlights, where he first met Punt and club president Nick Hancock and the trio collaborated on a number of projects besides the annual revue. After graduating with a first, he worked for Unilever for six years in the marketing department while performing comedy with Punt at venues including The Comedy Store on the weekends. He and Punt then formed half of the team of The Mary Whitehouse Experience on BBC Radio 1. When it the BBC commissioned the show to be into a series for BBC Two, he took a sabbatical to as the rehearsal days changed to weekdays and eventually went into comedy full-time.

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Ian Botham
Sir Ian Terence Botham OBE (born 24 November 1955) is a former England Test cricketer and Test team captain, and current cricket commentator. He was a genuine all-rounder with 14 centuries and 383 wickets in Test cricket, and remains well-known by his nickname "Beefy". While a controversial player both on and off the field at times, Botham also held a number of Test cricket records, and still holds the record for the highest number of wickets taken by an England bowler.
He is generally regarded as being England's greatest ever all-rounder, particularly in Test cricket, although having earned celebrity status, his award of a knighthood was ostensibly in recognition of his services to charity.
Just like fellow cricketers Jim Cumbes and Arnold Sidebottom, Botham was also a talented footballer, and made 11 appearances in the Football League.
On 8 August 2009, Botham was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.
Botham was born in Heswall on the Wirral, to Herbert Leslie Botham (who worked for Westland) and Violet Marie, née Collett (a nurse). Both his parents played cricket. He went to Milford Junior School in Yeovil, Somerset, where his "love affair" with sport began, and played for Somerset Under-15s. He left Bucklers Mead Comprehensive School at the age of 15 without completing his GCSEs, intent on playing cricket for Somerset, although he also had an offer to play football for Crystal Palace F.C. From an early age he was always single-minded. When informed that Botham wanted to be a sportsman, the Careers Mistress at his school said to him, "Fine, everyone wants to play sport, but what are you really going to do?" (interviewed BBC Radio 4's Fiona Glover, 20 November 2010, Saturday Live).

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Ian Hislop
Ian David Hislop (born 13 July 1960) is a British journalist, satirist, comedian, writer, broadcaster and editor of the magazine Private Eye. He has appeared on many radio and television programmes, but is best known as a team captain on the BBC quiz show Have I Got News for You.
Hislop was born on 13 July 1960 in Mumbles, Swansea, to a Scottish father, David Hislop, and a Channel Islander mother of English descent, Helen Rosemarie née Beddows.
Hislop did not know his grandparents. His paternal grandfather, David Murdoch Hislop, died just before he was born. He was Scottish and became a deacon at a Presbyterian church and a school headteacher at Newton Academy in Ayr. In the First World War he fought in Northern France with the 9th (Glasgow Highlanders) Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry.
Hislop's maternal grandfather, William Beddows, was originally from Lancashire. He joined the British Army in 1895 and fought in the Second Boer War with the King's Own Royal Regiment, and served in major campaigns including the Battle of Spion Kop. He moved to Jersey to serve as a Sergeant, having signed up in 1906 for another ten years in the army.

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Ian Paisley
Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside, PC (born 6 April 1926) is a politician and former church minister from Northern Ireland. As the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), he and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness were elected First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively on 8 May 2007. Paisley retired from religious ministry on 27 January 2012.
In addition to co-founding the DUP and leading it from 1971 to 2008, he is a founding member and was Moderator for 57 years of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. In 2005, Paisley's political party became the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, displacing his long-term rivals, the Ulster Unionists (UUP), who had dominated unionist politics in Northern Ireland since before the partition of Ireland.
On 4 March 2008 Paisley announced that he would step down as First Minister and leader of the DUP after the US-Northern Ireland Investment Conference in May 2008.Peter Robinson took over as DUP leader on 31 May 2008, and replaced Paisley as First Minister on 5 June 2008. Paisley was made a life peer in the Dissolution Honours List of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, ennobled on 18 June 2010 as Baron Bannside, of North Antrim in the County of Antrim.

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Idi Amin
Idi Amin Dada (c. 1924 – 16 August 2003) was the military dictator and third President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military coup of January 1971, deposing Milton Obote. He later promoted himself to Field Marshal while he was the head of state. While serving in the British Regiment he toured Kenya.
Amin's rule was characterised by gross human rights abuse, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings, nepotism, corruption, and gross economic mismanagement. The number of people killed as a result of his regime is estimated by international observers and human rights groups to range from 100,000 to 500,000. During his years in power, Amin shifted in allegiance from being a pro-Western ruler enjoying considerable Israeli support to being backed by Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi, the Soviet Union and East Germany.

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Imelda Marcos
Imelda R. Marcos (born Imelda Remedios Visitasion Romualdez on July 2, 1929) is a Filipino politician and widow of 10th Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Upon the ascension of her husband to political power, she held various positions to the government until 1986. She is the first politician elected as member of the Philippine legislature in three geographical locations (Manila, Leyte, Ilocos Norte). In 2010, she was elected to become a member of the House of Representatives to represent Ilocos Norte's second district. She is sometimes referred to as the Steel Butterfly or the Iron Butterfly. She is often remembered for symbols of the extravagance of her husband's political reign, including her collection of 2,700 pairs of shoes.
Her paternal ancestors, the Lopezes of Leyte, were wealthy, landed and prominent, and claimed to have founded the town of Tolosa, Leyte. Spanish mestizos, the Lopezes were descended from the Spanish friar and silversmith Don Francisco Lopez, originally from Granada in the Andalusian region of Spain. Together with Fray Salustiano Buz, he arrived by way of Acapulco to build Roman Catholic missions in the island provinces of Samar and Leyte (Buz would establish his home base in Palapag, Samar, the exit-entry point of the Manila Galleons in the Visayas islands). It was common then for Spanish friars to take mistresses, and Lopez's life-long relationship with a Chinese mestiza, Maria Crisostomo y Talentin of Basey, Samar, produced seven children. The eldest of them was Trinidad Lopez, or Doña Tidad in later years.

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Jack Docherty
Jack Docherty (born John Docherty, 1962, Edinburgh) is a Scottish writer, actor, presenter and producer.
He first performed at the 1980 Edinburgh Festival Fringe with the comedy sketch group The Bodgers which he formed with George Watson's College schoolfriends Moray Hunter, Gordon Kennedy and Pete Baikie. They performed each year from 1980 to 1985. Arfington, Arfington their 1984 show and Mr Hargreaves Did It their 1985 show were both shortlisted for The Perrier Award but lost out to The Brass Band and Theatre de Complicite respectively. They performed the shows at the Perrier Pick of the Fringe in London at the Donmar Warehouse. In 1982 he dropped out of Aberdeen University where he was studying law, after he and Moray Hunter were offered a contract to write for Saturday Stayback, the Chris Tarrant late night follow-up to O.T.T.. He then, again with Hunter, became a staff writer in the BBC radio comedy department contributing to various shows including Radio Active, In One Ear, Weekending and The News Huddlines. He also recorded one series with The Bodgers for Radio 4 called In Other Words...The Bodgers. For the second series, producer Alan Nixon teamed them with John Sparkes and Morwenna Banks for Bodgers, Banks and Sparkes, forming the cast that would go on to make the sketch show Absolutely for Channel 4.

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Jack Straw
John Whitaker "Jack" Straw (born 3 August 1946) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackburn since 1979. He served as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 and Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons from 2006 to 2007 under Tony Blair. From 2007 to 2010 he was the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and the Secretary of State for Justice, appointed as part of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's first Cabinet. Straw is one of only three people to have served in Cabinet continuously from 1997 to 2010 (the others being Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling).
When the Labour Party lost power in May 2010, he briefly became the Shadow Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister, but stood down from the frontbench after the Labour Party elected a new Shadow Cabinet.
Straw was born in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, England. One of his maternal great-grandparents was a Jewish German immigrant. Straw was brought up at Loughton, Essex by his mother, Joan Sylvia Gilbey on a council estate after his father Walter Arthur Whitaker Straw, an insurance salesman, left the family and condemned them to poverty. Walter Straw had been sent to prison in 1939 for being a conscientious objector.

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Jack the Ripper
"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the media. The letter is widely believed to have been a hoax, and may have been written by a journalist in a deliberate attempt to heighten interest in the story. Other nicknames used for the killer at the time were "The Whitechapel Murderer" and "Leather Apron".
Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes from the slums whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and letters from a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard. The "From Hell" letter, received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, included half of a preserved human kidney, supposedly from one of the victims. Mainly because of the extraordinarily brutal character of the murders, and because of media treatment of the events, the public came increasingly to believe in a single serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper".

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Jan Ravens
Janet "Jan" Ravens (born 14 May 1958) is an English actress and impressionist, famous for her voices on Spitting Image and Dead Ringers.
She grew up in Hoylake, then in Cheshire, on the west side of the Wirral with her father a local government clerk and her mother a nurse. She attended the West Kirby Grammar School for Girls. She was educated at Homerton College, Cambridge where she studied Education Studies and Drama and was the first female President of Cambridge University Footlights Club in 1979-80.
After Cambridge she became a radio comedy producer. She joined the cast of Jasper Carrott's comedy Carrott's Lib in 1983, and made her name very popular with the BBC. In 1986, she played the heavily pregnant Vanessa Plowright in the Tourists episode of Farrington of the F.O. (broadcast 13 March). In 1994, she spent a year with the RSC. She has done much voice-over work, being the Cadbury's Caramel bunny for several years, and as the seductive voice of a can of apple Tango. She has also appeared on Just A Minute on Radio 4, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Have I Got News for You, Alexei Sayle's Stuff and in Dictionary Corner on Channel 4's Countdown (one of the shows that Dead Ringers parodied). She was producer of the Radio 4 comedy Elephants to Catch Eels.

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Jeffrey Archer
Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is a best-selling English author and former politician whose political career ended with his conviction and subsequent imprisonment (2001–03) for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
Alongside his literary work, Archer was a Member of Parliament (1969–74), and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party (1985–86). He was made a life peer in 1992.
Jeffrey Howard Archer was born in the City of London Maternity Hospital. He was two weeks old when his family moved to the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where he spent most of his early life. He has an older brother born out of wedlock, also originally called Jeffrey, who was put up for adoption at an early age. The brother assumed the name David Brown and only discovered his relationship to Archer in 1980, even though Archer already apparently knew this, according to the journalist Michael Crick. His father, William (died 1956), was sixty-four when Archer was born. In 1951, he won a scholarship to Wellington School, in Somerset (not to be confused with the public school Wellington College, which is possible from the ambiguous biography in Archer's earlier books). At this time his mother, Lola, contributed a column "Over the teacups" to the local press in Weston-super-Mare and wrote about the adventures of her son 'Tuppence'; this caused Archer to be the victim of bullying while at Wellington School.

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Jeremy Paxman
Jeremy Dickson Paxman (born 11 May 1950) is an English journalist, author and broadcaster. He has worked for the BBC since 1977. He is noted for a forthright and abrasive interviewing style, particularly when interrogating politicians. His regular appearances on the BBC2's Newsnight programme have been criticised as aggressive, intimidating and condescending, and also applauded as tough and incisive. He is also the question master of University Challenge, succeeding Bamber Gascoigne when the programme was revived in 1994.
Paxman was born in Leeds. His mother, Joan, born 1920, was a housewife. Paxman is the eldest of four children and has two brothers, one of whom, Giles, is the British Ambassador to Spain (having previously been ambassador to Mexico), and a sister, Jenny, a producer at BBC Radio.
He was brought up in Yorkshire and Peopleton, near Pershore, Worcestershire. In 1964, he went to Malvern College and read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he edited the undergraduate newspaper Varsity. While at Cambridge, Paxman was briefly a member of the Labour Club.

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Jessica Martin
Jessica Martin (born 25 August 1962 in Fulham, London, England) is an actor and comedian. She is probably best known for her work as an impressionist and voice artist on the television series Spitting Image, impersonating the voice of Her Majesty The Queen. She also appeared on Yorkshire Television's 3-2-1 in the 1980s with impressionist Aiden J. Harvey.
Jessica has also done voices on PC Pinkerton, Faeries, Junglies and Romuald the Reindeer.
She appeared in the Doctor Who serial The Greatest Show in the Galaxy and some of The Krypton Factor observation rounds in 1988. Martin provides voice acting for the English language version of the PlayStation 2 game Dragon Quest VIII, most notably as Empyrea.
In 2004 Jessica recorded a song for the CD Weird & Wonderful - A Collection Of Songs by Alexander S. Bermange celebrating weirdos and weirdness, featuring sixteen West End stars (released on Dress Circle Records). In 2008, she joined author and columnist Mark Steyn to release a cover of It's a Marshmallow World, a holiday song first popularized by Bing Crosby.[1]

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Jimmy Tarbuck
Jimmy Tarbuck OBE or Tarby (born 6 February 1940) is an English comedian. Growing up he was a schoolmate of John Lennon.
His first television show was It's Tarbuck 65! on ITV in 1964. He has also hosted numerous quiz shows, including Winner Takes All, Full Swing, and Tarby's Frame Game. He was the last original host of Sunday Night at the London Palladium, from 1965.
In the 1980s, he hosted similar Sunday night variety shows, Live From Her Majesty's, Live from the Piccadilly and finally Live from the Palladium, which were produced by London Weekend Television for ITV.
Nicknamed Tarby, he is a Conservative Party supporter, and at the height of his celebrity was a prominent supporter of Margaret Thatcher and her policies, once baking her a cake for her 60th birthday in October 1985.
He was appearing on the fourth series of BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing in 2006, but he was forced to pull out on medical advice.
In 2008, he returned to a variety format on television screens when he co-hosted, alongside Emma Bunton, an edition of ITV1's new variety show, For One Night Only.

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Jo Brand
Josephine Grace "Jo" Brand (born 23 July 1957) is a BAFTA winning British comedienne, writer, and actress. Commencing her entertainment career with a move from psychiatric nursing to the alternative comedy stand up scene and early performances on Saturday Live, she went on to appearances on The Brain Drain, Channel 4's Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, Getting On and various television appearances including as a regular guest on QI. In 2003, she was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
Jo Brand was born 23 July 1957 in Wandsworth, London. Her mother was a social worker. Brand is the middle of three children, with two brothers. When she was about four, the family moved to the village of St Mary's Platt near Sevenoaks in Kent, and a year later to Benenden. Brand was educated at Helenswood School, Hastings, Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School and Bexhill College. She worked as a psychiatric nurse for ten years, at the South London Bethlem, Cefn Coed Hospital in Swansea and Maudsley Hospital in South London.

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John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese (/ˈkliːz/; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s he became a member of Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, The Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
In the mid 1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. He also starred in Clockwise, and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films as R/Q, two Harry Potter films and three Shrek films.
With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films.

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John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH (/ˈɡiːlɡʊd/; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937. He was known for his beautiful speaking of verse and particularly for his warm and expressive voice, which his colleague Sir Alec Guinness likened to "a silver trumpet muffled in silk". Gielgud is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
John Gielgud was born in South Kensington in London to Kate Terry and Frank Gielgud. He was of theatrical lineage on his mother's side, being the grandson of actress Kate Terry, whose actor-siblings included Ellen Terry, Marion Terry and Fred Terry.
Gielgud's Catholic father, Franciszek Giełgud, born in 1880, was a descendant of a Polish noble family residing at a manor in a town called Giełgudyszki (now Gelgaudiškis in Marijampolė County, Lithuania). In his autobiography, Gielgud states repeatedly and clearly that his father was Polish Catholic, and mentions Gelgaudiškis as being his ancestral home whence his family and their surname originated.

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John Major
Sir John Major, KG, CH, PC, ACIB (born 29 March 1943) is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. He held the posts of Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cabinet of Margaret Thatcher and was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon from 1979 to 2001.
Despite Thatcher's "notorious" assertion that "she expected to continue in control as a backseat driver," Major's mild and consensual style was seen as complete contrast to Thatcher's forceful and confrontational manner. Early in his term, he presided over British participation in the First Gulf War (March 1991) and negotiated "Game, Set and Match for Britain" at the Maastricht Treaty (December 1991). Despite the British economy then being in recession he led the Conservatives to a fourth consecutive election victory, winning the most votes in British electoral history in the 1992 general election, albeit with a much reduced majority in the House of Commons. He is to date, the last Conservative leader to win an outright majority in a general election.

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John Prescott
John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott (born 31 May 1938) is a British politician who was the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. Born in Prestatyn, Wales, he represented Hull East as the Labour Member of Parliament from 1970 to 2010. In the 1994 leadership election, he stood for both Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, winning election to the latter office. He was appointed Deputy Prime Minister after Labour's victory in the 1997 election, with an expanded brief as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.
A former ship's steward and trade union activist, by the 1980s he was presented as the political link to the working class in a Labour Party increasingly led by modernising, middle-class professionals. In his youth, Prescott managed to overcome the handicap of failing his 11-plus entrance examination for grammar school, going on to graduate from Ruskin College in Oxford. Prescott also developed a reputation as a key conciliator in the often tense relationship between Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

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John Sessions
John Gibb Marshall (born 11 January 1953), better known by the stage name John Sessions, is a Scottish actor and comedian. He is known for comedy improvisation in television shows such as Whose Line Is It Anyway?; as a panellist on QI; and as a character actor in numerous films, both in the UK and in Hollywood.
Sessions was born in Largs, and spent some of his earliest years in Kempston, Bedfordshire and St Albans, Hertfordshire. He has an elder brother and a twin sister. Sessions is openly gay. His name change occurred when he became a performer, owing to the presence of a John Marshall on the Equity register already. He graduated with an M.A. in English literature from Bangor University, where he had begun to appear to audiences with his comedy in shows such as "Look back in Bangor" and "Marshall Arts". He later studied for a PhD from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, although he did not complete the doctorate.
This period in his life was unhappy. In a 'Worst of Times' column for The Independent from around 1990, he talked of how the freezing Canadian weather had depressed him, he was smoking 'far too many cigarettes', 'had a couple of disastrous flings' and described his PhD dissertation as '200 pages of rubbish'.

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John Stroud
John Stroud (born (1957-10-29)October 29, 1957 in New Albany, Mississippi) is a retired American basketball player who played four years at the University of Mississippi, before being drafted by the Houston Rockets in the 1980 NBA Draft. However, he played only one season in the NBA, appearing in 9 games total with the Rockets.

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Johnny Carson
John William "Johnny" Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host and comedian, known for thirty years as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1992). Carson received six Emmy Awards, the Governor Award, and a 1985 Peabody Award. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987. Johnny Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1993.
Although his show was already successful by the end of the 1960s, during the 1970s Carson became an American icon and remained so until his retirement in 1992. He adopted a casual, conversational approach with extensive interaction with guests, an approach pioneered by Arthur Godfrey and previous Tonight Show hosts Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Late night hosts David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Craig Ferguson, and Jimmy Fallon have all cited Carson's influence on their late-night talk shows, which resemble his in format and tone.
Carson was born in Corning, Iowa, in the year 1925, to Homer Lloyd "Kit" Carson, a power company manager, and Ruth Hook Carson, who was of Irish descent. He grew up in the nearby towns of Avoca, Clarinda, and Red Oak in southwest Iowa before moving to Norfolk, Nebraska, at the age of eight. At the age of twelve, Carson found a book on magic at a friend's house and immediately purchased a mail-order magician's kit. He debuted as "The Great Carsoni" at fourteen and was paid $3; many other performances at local picnics and country fairs followed.

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Jon Blair
Jon Blair (born 1950) is a South African born writer, producer and director of documentary films, drama and comedy who has lived in England and the United States ever since he was drafted into the South African army in the late 1960s. He is the only director of documentaries working in the United Kingdom who has won all three of the premier awards in his field: an Oscar, an Emmy (twice) and a British Academy Award.^{[citation needed]}
He is the author of The Biko Inquest, a play based on the inquest in South Africa into the death in prison of the black leader, Steve Biko. The play, originally written for television, and then later adapted for the Royal Shakespeare Company, pioneered the use of drama in current affairs. Blair directed the play Off Broadway in New York, starring Fritz Weaver and Philip Bosco, where it received considerable critical acclaim and ran for four months.^{[citation needed]} After successful productions around the world it was produced on the London stage, and also for television, starring Albert Finney. A version of the play with an all black cast was staged in Nigeria in 1979 directed by and starring writer, poet and playwright, the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.^{[citation needed]}

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Jon Culshaw
Jonathan Peter Culshaw (born 2 June 1968 in Ormskirk, Lancashire) is an English impressionist and comedian. He was educated at St Bede's RC High School, Ormskirk and St John Rigby College, in Orrell, Wigan.
He is famous for his work on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Two's Dead Ringers, ITV's 2DTV, BBC One's The Impressions Show with Culshaw and Stephenson and his contributions to BBC Radio 1, particularly on The Chris Moyles Show. He also appeared in ITV's Heartbeat on 26 November 2006.
His radio career began in hospital radio in Ormskirk. His first job was at Red Rose Radio (now Rock FM) in Preston in 1987, where even then he used to occasionally read the weather in the voice of Frank Bruno. He did voice-over work then was catapulted to prominence with Spitting Image, where he voiced around forty characters, including John Major, the then Prime Minister.
For around four years in the late 1980s, he was a DJ on the commercial radio station Viking FM, based in Hull, and also had a breakfast show on Pennine Radio (now The Pulse of West Yorkshire) and Radio Wave in Blackpool. It was a receptionist at Viking FM who persuaded Culshaw he should go onstage with his impressions and make it his living. He later appeared on BBC Radio 2's It's Been a Bad Week, appeared as a guest on the BBC2 Star Trek Night Quiz in August 1996, and was also a regular guest on the Chris Moyles afternoon show on BBC Radio 1 from 1998–2002, where he would phone up commercial organisations such as a Kwik-Fit garage in the voice of Patrick Moore or Obi-Wan Kenobi, politely requesting whether they could service his X-wing fighter, and how much time it would take.

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Jon Glover
Jon Glover is a British actor. He has appeared in various television programmes including Play School, Survivors, the Management consultant in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Casualty, Bodger and Badger and Peak Practice.
He provided the voices of several characters in the Animals of Farthing Wood animated series, and is also known for voice-acting for Noah's Island, Spitting Image and the character King Trode in the English language version of the PlayStation 2 game Dragon Quest VIII. He often appears in radio plays for Radio 4. He was a regular on the Radio 4 satirical programme Week Ending during the 1980s. He played the upper crust English character Mr Cholmondley-Warner in spoof 1940s government documentaries in Harry Enfield's Television Programme with excessive Received Pronunciation.
He also did voices on other animated programmes such as Little Ghosts, The Adventures of Paddington Bear, Mr. Bean (2002), Ludwig, Metalheads, The Baskervilles, Zombie Hotel and Dennis the Menace.

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Katarina Ewerlöf
Katarina Ewerlöf is a Swedish actress born 28 December 1959 and who was educated at the theater university in Stockholm scene school, and has worked at Royal Dramatic Theatre. Ewerlöf worked during many years in the 1970s and 80s away from public attention in theatres, and had her first big hit as a major part in the TV series Pappas flicka in 1997. She has recorded some audio books.

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Kate Adie
Kathryn "Kate" Adie (/ˈeɪdi/), OBE (born 19 September 1945), is a British journalist. Her most high-profile role was that of chief news correspondent for BBC News, during which time she became well known for reporting from war zones around the world. She currently presents From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4.
Adie was born in Northumberland, within sight of St Mary's Island. She was adopted as a baby by a Sunderland couple, John and Maud Adie, and grew up there; she is an avid fan of the city's football team, Sunderland A.F.C. She had an independent school education at Sunderland Church High School, and then studied at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where she obtained a degree in Scandinavian Studies and starred in several Gilbert and Sullivan productions.
Her career with the BBC began as a station assistant at BBC Radio Durham, then a producer for Radio Bristol. She then switched to television, directing outside broadcasts. She was a reporter for regional TV News in Plymouth and Southampton, and joined the national news team in 1976.

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Kate Robbins
Katherine (Kate) Robbins is an English actress, comedienne and singer.
Robbins is a first cousin once removed of Paul McCartney and older sister of Amy Robbins (her mother and McCartney were first cousins). She attended Wirral Grammar School for Girls and won the Drama Prizes each year, notably with her monologue "All this glitters is not gold". Her first released recording, in 1978, was of the song "Tomorrow", owned by McCartney's music publishing company, from the musical Annie. Robbins first came to prominence whilst representing United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 1980 as part of the group Prima Donna. They finished third.
The following year, Robbins joined the cast of the ITV soap opera Crossroads, playing the part of a pop singer who was recording a single in the fictional motel's basement recording studio. The song, "More Than In Love", was released commercially in the UK (credited as Kate Robbins and Beyond) and gave Robbins a major hit single, reaching number 2 in the UK Singles Chart. It was her only hit. The backing group Beyond had taken part in the UK's Song for Europe contest earlier in the year, losing to Bucks Fizz.

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Keith Richards
Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943) is an English musician and songwriter, and a founder member of The Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards has created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and has named him the 4th greatest guitarist of all time. Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting partner Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones' lead vocalist, are listed among Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Richards' notoriety for illicit drug use stems in part from several drug busts during the late 1960s and 1970s.
Keith Richards is the only child of Bert Richards and Doris Dupree Richards. He was born at Livingston Hospital in Dartford, Kent. His father was a factory worker injured in World War II during the Normandy invasion.
Richards' paternal grandparents were socialists and civic leaders whose family originated from Wales. His maternal grandfather, Augustus Theodore Dupree, who toured Britain with a jazz big band, "Gus Dupree and his Boys", fostered Richards' interest in guitar.

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Ken Livingstone
Kenneth Robert "Ken" Livingstone (born 17 June 1945) is a British Labour Party politician who has twice held the leading political role in London local government, first as the Leader of the Greater London Council from 1981 until the Council was abolished in 1986, and then as the first elected Mayor of London from the creation of the office in 2000 until 2008. He also served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Brent East from 1987 to 2001. He stood unsuccessfully as the Labour Party candidate in the London mayoral elections of 2008 and 2012.
Born into a working class family in Lambeth, he first joined the Labour Party in 1968 and was elected to represent Norwood at the Greater London Council in 1973, before moving to represent Hackney North and Stoke Newington in 1977, and then to Paddington in 1981, the same year he also became the Leader of the Council itself. In 1999, Livingstone sought the Labour nomination to be the first elected Mayor of London, although his candidacy was opposed by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. Despite losing the Labour candidacy to Frank Dobson, Livingstone contested the 2000 election successfully as an independent candidate regardless, which led to his expulsion from the Labour Party.

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Kenneth Clarke
Kenneth Harry "Ken" Clarke, PC, QC, MP (born 2 July 1940) is a British Conservative politician, currently Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. He was first elected to Parliament in 1970; and appointed a minister in Edward Heath's government in 1972. One of Britain's best-known politicians, his past government roles include Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Since 1997 he has been President of the Tory Reform Group.
Clarke was a minister throughout the 18 years of successive Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997, serving in the cabinets of both Margaret Thatcher and John Major. After the Conservative defeat in the 1997 general election Clarke became a backbencher. He has contested the Conservative Party leadership three times—in 1997, 2001 and 2005—and was defeated each time. Although he is considered popular with the general public, his pro-European integration views conflict with the modern Conservative Party's EU-sceptic stance. Notably, he is President of the Conservative Europe Group and Vice-President of the European Movement UK. Despite this conflict, and his involvement with the tobacco industry, Conservative leader David Cameron returned Clarke to the Shadow Cabinet in March 2009 as Shadow Business Secretary. When Cameron became Prime Minister in May 2010 he appointed Clarke Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.

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Kevin Cecil
Kevin Robert Cecil (born 11 December 1969 in London) is a British screenwriter.
Writing alongside Andy Riley (with whom he has been friends since attending Aylesbury Grammar School), he has won two BAFTA awards, the first for writing the Comic Relief one-off special, Robbie the Reindeer, in 2000, and the second for Black Books in 2005. He went to Oxford University where he attended New College reading English Literature.
He has also written for The Armando Iannucci Shows, Armstrong & Miller, Little Britain, Trigger Happy TV, So Graham Norton, Smack the Pony and Spitting Image and on radio he co-created The 99p Challenge.
The second Robbie the Reindeer special, Legend of the Lost Tribe, which Cecil and Riley co-wrote won an International Emmy for best children's programme in 2003.
Kevin also co-created and wrote a Sci-Fi comedy series for television entitled Hyperdrive. The first series aired on BBC2 in 2006, and the second series aired on the same channel in 2007. The programme starred Nick Frost, Kevin Eldon and Miranda Hart who was nominated for best newcomer in the British Comedy Awards in 2006 for her role in the programme.

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Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko (24 September 1911 – 10 March 1985) was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later, on 10 March 1985. Chernenko was also Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 11 April 1984 until his death.
Chernenko was born to a poor family in the village of Bolshaya Tes (now in Novosyolovsky District, Krasnoyarsk Krai). His father, Ustin Demidovich (of Ukrainian origin),^{[citation needed]} worked in copper and gold mines while his mother took care of the farm work.
Chernenko joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) in 1929, and became a full member of the Communist Party in 1931. From 1930 to 1933, he served in the Soviet frontier guards on the Soviet-Chinese border. After completing his military service, he returned to Krasnoyarsk as a propagandist. In 1933 he worked in the Propaganda Department of the Novosyolovsky District Party Committee. A few years later he was promoted head of the same department in Uyarsk Raykom. Chernenko then steadily rose through the Party ranks, becoming the Director of the Krasnoyarsk House of Party Enlightenment then in 1939, the Deputy Head of the AgitProp Department of Krasnoyarsk Territorial Committee and finally, in 1941 he was appointed Secretary of the Territorial Party Committee for Propaganda. It was in the 1940s that Chernenko established a close-knit relationship with Fyodor Kulakov. In 1945, he acquired a diploma from a party training school in Moscow, and in 1953 he finished a correspondence course for schoolteachers.

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Kylie Minogue
Kylie Ann Minogue, OBE ( /ˈkaɪliː mɨˈnoʊɡ/; born 28 May 1968) — often known simply as Kylie — is an Australian singer, recording artist, songwriter, showgirl, and actress. After beginning her career as a child actress on Australian television, she achieved recognition through her role in the television soap opera Neighbours, before commencing her career as a recording artist in 1987. Her first single, "Locomotion", spent seven weeks at number one on the Australian singles chart and became the highest selling single of the decade. This led to a contract with songwriters and producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman. Her debut album, Kylie (1988), and the single "I Should Be So Lucky", each reached number one in the United Kingdom, and over the next two years, her first 13 singles reached the British top ten. Her debut film, The Delinquents (1989) was a box-office hit in Australia and the UK, and received generally positive reviews.
Initially presented as a "girl next door", Minogue attempted to convey a more mature style in her music and public image. Her singles were well received, but after four albums her record sales were declining, and she left Stock, Aitken & Waterman in 1992 to establish herself as an independent performer. Her next single, "Confide in Me", reached number one in Australia and was a hit in several European countries in 1994, and a duet with Nick Cave, "Where the Wild Roses Grow", brought Minogue a greater degree of artistic credibility. Drawing inspiration from a range of musical styles and artists, Minogue took creative control over the songwriting for her next album, Impossible Princess (1997). It failed to attract strong reviews or sales in the UK, but was successful in Australia.

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Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM ( /ˈlɒrəns ɵˈlɪvi.eɪ/; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor, director, and producer. One of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century, he was the youngest actor to be knighted and the first to be elevated to the peerage. He married three times, to actresses Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright. Actor Spencer Tracy said that Olivier was 'the greatest actor in the English-speaking world'.
Olivier played a wide variety of roles on stage and screen from Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to modern American and British drama. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. He is regarded by some to be the greatest actor of the 20th century, in the same category as David Garrick, Richard Burbage, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving in their own centuries. Olivier's AMPAS acknowledgments are considerable: twelve Oscar nominations, with two awards (for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet), plus two honorary awards including a statuette and certificate. He was also awarded five Emmy awards from the nine nominations he received. Additionally, he was a three-time Golden Globe and BAFTA winner.

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Laurie Rowley
Laurence Peter Rowley, better known as Laurie Rowley (30 July 1941 – 16 August 2009) was an English comedy writer from Leeds, Yorkshire. He is most famous for a sketch writer, working on shows such as The Two Ronnies and Not the Nine O'Clock News, for which he wrote the "Darts" sketch, which satirised the heavy drinking habits of darts players at the time.
Born in Leeds, Rowley was educated at the St Augustine's Catholic school as a child. After leaving school he had jobs as a shower fitter, a manager of a 10-pin bowling alley, a magician, a bingo caller and a shopkeeper. He turned to comedy in the 1970s, first by winning caption competitions in the satirical magazine Punch. He later attempted to become a cartoonist but was not successful. Rowley then became a comedy writer, first sending in sketches to the BBC Radio 2 comedy series The News Huddlines in 1976, and later to the BBC television sketch series The Two Ronnies.
Rowley later went on to write for another BBC sketch series, Not the Nine O'Clock News. Amongst the sketches he wrote were the "Darts" sketch, which is a satirical sketch mocking darts players of the period who were regularly seen drinking alcoholic beverages heavily on television. The sketch had an impact on the game itself, because it caused it fall in popularity, with people believing it to be a game for drunks. As a result, professional darts organisations put in rules banning the drinking of alcohol during a match.

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Leon Brittan
Leon Brittan, Baron Brittan of Spennithorne QC, PC, DL (born 25 September 1939, North London) is a British barrister, politician and former Conservative Member of Parliament, as well as former member of the European Commission and former Home Secretary of the United Kingdom. His brother is Sir Samuel Brittan, an economics commentator at the Financial Times and financial journalist.
Leon Brittan was born to parents of Lithuanian Jewish descent, and was educated at the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and then Trinity College, Cambridge where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society and Chairman of Cambridge University Conservative Association. He started his career as a lawyer. He is a cousin of both Malcolm Rifkind and Mark Ronson.^{[citation needed]}
After unsuccessfully contesting the constituency of North Kensington in 1966 and 1970, he was elected to parliament in the general election of February 1974 for Cleveland and Whitby, and became an opposition spokesman in 1976. He was made a Queen's Counsel in 1978. Between 1979 and 1981 he was Minister of State at the Home Office, and then was made Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a Cabinet position. At the 1983 election he changed his seat to Richmond. He was Home Secretary from 1983 to 1985, and was then moved to Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. He resigned over the Westland affair.^{[citation needed]}

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Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (Russian: Леони́д Ильи́ч Бре́жнев; IPA: [lʲɪɐˈnʲid ɪlʲˈjitɕ ˈbrʲeʐnʲɪf] ( listen); Ukrainian: Леоні́д Іллі́ч Бре́жнєв, 19 December 1906 (O.S. 6 December) – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in length. During Brezhnev's rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically, in part because of the expansion of the Soviet military during this time, but his tenure as leader has often been criticised for marking the beginning of a period of economic stagnation in which serious economic problems were overlooked, problems which eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Brezhnev was born in Kamenskoe into a Russian worker's family. After graduating from the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum, he became a metallurgical engineer in the iron and steel industry, in Ukraine. He joined Komsomol in 1923, and in 1929 became an active member of the Communist Party. He was drafted into immediate military service during World War II and left the army in 1946 with the rank of Major General. In 1952 Brezhnev became a member of the Central Committee, and in 1964, Brezhnev succeeded Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary. Alexei Kosygin succeeded Khrushchev in his post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.

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Lester Piggott
Lester Keith Piggott (born 5 November 1935) is a retired English professional jockey, popularly known as "The Long Fellow". With 4,493 career wins, including nine Epsom Derby victories, he is one of the most well-known English flat racing jockeys of all time.
Lester Piggott was born in Wantage to a family that could trace its roots as jockeys and trainers back to the 18th century. The Piggotts were a Cheshire farming family who in the 1870s ran the Crown Inn in Nantwich for at least 40 years. Lester's grandfather Ernest (Ernie) Piggott (1878–1941) owned a racehorse stable at The Old Manor in Letcombe Regis and his father (Ernest) Keith Piggott (1904–1993) another at South Bank in Lambourn, where Lester lived until 1954. Ernie Piggott rode three Grand National winners, in 1912, 1918 and 1919 and was married to a sister of the jockeys Mornington Cannon and Kempton Cannon, who both rode winners of the Derby, in 1899 and 1904 respectively. He was also three-times British jump racing Champion Jockey (in 1910, 1913 and 1915). Keith Piggott was a successful National Hunt jockey and trainer, winning the Champion Hurdle as a jockey in 1939 and the Grand National as a trainer in 1963 with Ayala, becoming the British jump racing Champion Trainer of the 1962–63 season. Lester Piggott is the cousin, through his mother Lilian Iris Rickaby, of two other jockeys, Bill and Fred Rickaby. Fred Rickaby was British flat racing Champion Apprentice in 1931 and 1932.

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Louise Gold
Louise Gold (born 1956) is an English singer, actress and puppeteer whose career has spanned almost four decades.
From 1977, Gold was a puppeteer and voice actress for The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, and she has performed voice and puppet work on various other Muppet films and specials. She was a founder and lead puppeteer for the satirical television show Spitting Image from 1984 to 1986. She is also known as an actress in musical theatre, having starred in numerous shows on the West End since 1982, playing such roles as Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, Tanya in Mamma Mia!, Phyllis in Follies, Baroness Bomburst in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Miss Andrew in Mary Poppins, and Mrs Sowerberry and Mrs Bedwin in Oliver!.
Gold was born in London, England, to parents who were active with Unity Theatre in London. Her father was John Gold (1920–1998), a journalist, and her mother was an actress, Una Brandon-Jones (1916–2010). Her brother, Max, is also an actor. Gold trained at The Arts Educational Schools from age 11.

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Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (12 October 1935 – 6 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor, who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, and established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century. He was one of The Three Tenors and became well known for his televised concerts and media appearances. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work on behalf of refugees and the Red Cross, amongst others.
Pavarotti began his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy. That same year, he made his first international appearance in La traviata in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He sang in opera houses in addition to Italy, in the Netherlands, Vienna, London, Ankara, Budapest and Barcelona. The young tenor earned valuable experience and recognition while touring Australia at the invitation of soprano Joan Sutherland in 1965. He made his United States debut in Miami soon afterwards, also on Sutherland's recommendation. His position as a leading lyric tenor was consolidated in the years between 1966 and 1972, during which time he first appeared at Milan's La Scala and other major European houses. In 1968, he debuted at New York City's Metropolitan Opera as Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohème. At the Met in 1972, in the role of Tonio in Donizetti's La fille du régiment he earned the title "King of the high Cs" when he sang the aria "Ah mes amis ... pour mon âme". He gained worldwide fame for the brilliance and beauty of his tone, especially into the upper register. He was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-Aida Verdi roles and Puccini works such as La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. The late 1970s and 1980s saw Pavarotti continue to make significant appearances in the world's foremost opera houses.

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Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS, née Roberts (born 13 October 1925) is a British politician and the longest-serving (1979–1990) British prime minister of the 20th century, and the only woman ever to have held the post. A Soviet journalist nicknamed her the "Iron Lady", which later became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As prime minister, she implemented conservative policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.
Originally a research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975 Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition, as well as the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became prime minister after winning the 1979 general election.
After entering 10 Downing Street, Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives to reverse what she perceived as Britain's precipitous national decline. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and high unemployment, until economic recovery and the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her Community Charge (popularly referred to as "poll tax") was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership.

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Mark Burton
Richard Mark Burton (known as Mark Burton) (born 16 January 1956) is a New Zealand politician. He is a member of the Labour Party. He served as Minister of Defence; Minister of Justice; Minister of Local Government; Minister in Charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations; Deputy Leader of the House; and the Minister Responsible for the Law Commission in the Fifth Labour Government of New Zealand.
Burton was born in Northampton, England, but was brought to New Zealand by his family when ten years old. He attended high school in Wanganui. He has been involved in a wide range of social and community organisations, including the Red Cross, the Department of Social Welfare, the Central Plateau Rural Education Activities Programme, the Council of Social Services, the Taupo Employment Support Trust, and the Taupo Sexual Abuse Counselling Service. He received a medal for his work in 1990.

In the 1993 elections, Burton stood as the Labour Party's candidate for Tongariro, an electorate in the central North Island, defeating Ian Peters. This later became the seat of Taupo, which Burton retained.

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Mary Whitehouse
Constance Mary Whitehouse, CBE (born Constance Mary Hutcheson, 13 June 1910 – 23 November 2001) was an English social activist known for her prominent opposition to social liberalism and the mainstream British media, both of which she accused of encouraging a more permissive society. She was the founder and first president of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, through which she led a longstanding campaign against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). A staunch social conservative, the motivation for her activities derived from her traditional Christian beliefs and her work as a teacher of sex education.
Born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, Whitehouse became an art teacher, at the same time becoming involved in evangelical Christian groups such as the Student Christian Movement and Moral Re-Armament. She became a public figure via the 'Clean-Up TV' pressure group, established in 1964, in which she was the most prominent figure. The following year she founded the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, using it as a platform to criticise the BBC for what she perceived was a lack of accountability in the BBC, and an excessive portrayal of sex, violence and bad language.

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Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC (23 July 1913 – 3 March 2010) was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992. He was deputy leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980, and later became the Leader of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983.
Associated with the Labour left for most of his career, he was a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and British withdrawal from the European Economic Community. He was first promoted to Cabinet as Employment secretary under Harold Wilson in 1974, and later served as Leader of the House of Commons under James Callaghan. A passionate orator, he was Labour leader at the 1983 general election when the party received its lowest share of the vote since 1918.
His parallel career as a journalist included appointments as editor of Tribune, on several occasions, and the Evening Standard newspaper. Among the books he authored are Guilty Men (an attack on Neville Chamberlain and others for the policy of appeasement), a biography of Jonathan Swift (The Pen and the Sword, 1957) and a biography of Aneurin Bevan.

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Michael Heseltine
Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine, CH, PC (born 21 March 1933) is a British businessman, Conservative politician and patron of the Tory Reform Group. He was a Member of Parliament from 1966 to 2001 and was a prominent figure in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. In 1990, he stood for leadership of the Conservative Party against Margaret Thatcher, and whilst he was unsuccessful, this triggered Thatcher's eventual resignation.
A self-made millionaire, Heseltine entered parliament in 1966, entered the Cabinet in 1979 as Secretary of State for the Environment, and was Secretary of State for Defence from 1983 to 1986. In the latter role, he was instrumental in the political battle against the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Heseltine was widely considered an adept media performer and charismatic Minister, although frequently at odds with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He resigned from the Cabinet in 1986 over the Westland Affair and returned to the backbenches. Following Geoffrey Howe's resignation speech in November 1990, Heseltine challenged the incumbent Margaret Thatcher for the leadership of the Conservative Party, polling well enough to deny her an outright victory on the first ballot. Following her resignation in a dramatic Tory "palace coup", Heseltine returned to the Cabinet under her successor John Major.

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Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Often referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contribution to music, dance, and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades. The seventh child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5 in 1964, and began his solo career in 1971.
In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music. The music videos for his songs, including those of "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller", were credited with transforming the medium into an art form and a promotional tool, and the popularity of these videos helped to bring the relatively new television channel MTV to fame. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made him a staple on MTV in the 1990s. Through stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk, to which he gave the name. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style influenced numerous hip hop, post-disco, contemporary R&B, pop and rock artists.

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Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger, (born 26 July 1943) is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor, best known as the lead vocalist and a founder member of The Rolling Stones.
Jagger's career has spanned over fifty years. Allmusic has described Jagger as "one of the most popular and influential frontmen in the history of rock & roll". His distinctive voice and performance, along with Keith Richards' guitar style, have been the trademark of The Rolling Stones throughout the career of the band. In 1989, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with The Rolling Stones.
Jagger gained much press notoriety for admitted drug use and romantic involvements, and was often portrayed as a counterculture figure. In the late 1960s Jagger began acting in films (starting with Performance and Ned Kelly), to mixed reception. In 1985, Jagger released his first solo album, She's the Boss, and was knighted in 2003. In early 2009, he joined the eclectic supergroup SuperHeavy.
Jagger was born into a middle class family at Livingstone Hospital, in Dartford, Kent, England. His father, Basil Fanshawe ("Joe") Jagger (13 April 1913 – 11 November 2006), and his grandfather David Ernest Jagger were both teachers. His mother, Eva Ensley Mary (née Scutts; 6 April 1913 – 18 May 2000), born in New South Wales, Australia, was a hairdresser and an active member of the Conservative Party. Jagger is the elder of two sons (his brother Chris Jagger was born on 19 December 1947) and was raised to follow in his father's career path.

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Mike Gatting
Michael "Mike" William Gatting OBE (born 6 June 1957 in Kingsbury, England) is a former English cricketer, who played first-class cricket for Middlesex (1975–1998; captain 1983–1997) and for England from 1977 to 1995, captaining the national side in twenty-three Test matches between 1986 and 1988. He is currently the ECB Managing Director of Cricket Partnerships.
Cricket writer, Colin Bateman, stated, "talk of Gatting the batsman always evokes adjectives such as pugnacious, bold, brave and belligerent".
Before playing cricket professionally, Gatting used to play football for Watford reserves. As a fourteen year old goalkeeper on trial at Queen's Park Rangers, Gatting was told that he was too short and fat to make the grade. He turned to cricket for his sporting future, whilst QPR signed the other trailist that day, Phil Parkes.
In domestic cricket, Gatting was one of the most prolific batsmen in England for most of his career, but it took him several years to establish himself in the England team. He initially had great difficulty converting fifties into centuries at Test match level and he did not achieve a Test century until his fifty-fourth Test innings; he went on to accumulate ten hundreds in all. His highest Test score of 207 was scored in Madras; this was the second double century by an English cricketer in India in the same innings as Graeme Fowler, who scored the first double century: this was the first time that two English batsmen had made double centuries in the same Test innings. He captained England to an Ashes series victory in Australia in 1986/87.

wn.com/Mike_Gatting
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Russian: Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв, tr. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachyov; IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil sʲɪrˈɡʲejəvʲɪtɕ ɡərbɐˈtɕof] ( listen); born 2 March 1931) is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the Soviet Union, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991. He was the only general secretary in the history of the Soviet Union to have been born during the Communist rule.
Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai into a peasant Ukrainian–Russian family, and in his teens operated combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a degree in law. While he was at the university, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and soon became very active within it. In 1970, he was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet in 1974, and appointed a member of the Politburo in 1979. Within three years of the deaths of Soviet Leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo in 1985. Before he reached the post, he had occasionally been mentioned in western newspapers as a likely next leader and a man of the younger generation at the top level.

wn.com/Mikhail_Gorbachev
Moray Hunter
Moray Hunter is a Scottish comedian, writer and performer. He is perhaps most famous for his roles in the Channel 4 sketch show, Absolutely. Alongside Jack Docherty he played one half of the eccentric double-act, Don and George, in Absolutely and later in the spin-off series, Mr. Don and Mr. George. Moray is also known for his role as the Absolutely character, Callum Gilhooley, a blathering anorak-wearing motorbike enthusiast who is based loosely on Siadwell, a character from BBC Scotland's Naked Video played by fellow Absolutely actor, John Sparkes. Moray also provided the voice for a shadow puppet in one of Aardman Animations' short films, Humdrum.
As a writer, Moray has contributed to Smack the Pony, Alas Smith and Jones, Spitting Image, The Lenny Henry Show and The Clan.
He is a supporter of Heart of Midlothian F.C.

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Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (Arabic: معمر محمد أبو منيار القذافي‎) (June 1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi /ˈmoʊ.əmɑr ɡəˈdɑːfi/ (Arabic: مُعَمَّر القَذَّافِي‎ Muʿammar al-Qaḏḏāfī audio (help·info)) or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. Gaddafi seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1969 and served as the country's head of state until 1977, when he stepped down from his official executive role as Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council of Libya, and claimed subsequently to be merely a symbolic figurehead. He styled himself as "Leader of the Revolution"; in 2008 a meeting of traditional African rulers bestowed on him the title "King of Kings". A leading advocate for a United States of Africa, he served as Chairperson of the African Union (AU) from 2 February 2009 to 31 January 2010.
Gaddafi replaced the Libyan Constitution of 1951 with laws based on the political ideology he had formulated, which he called the Third International Theory and published in The Green Book. After establishing the Jamahiriya (جماهيرية, "state of the masses") system in 1977, he officially stepped down from power and after that time held a largely symbolic role within the country's official governance structure. Rising oil prices and extraction in Libya led to increasing revenues. By exporting as much oil per capita as Saudi Arabia and through various welfare programs, Libya achieved the highest living standards in Africa; Libya remained debt-free.

wn.com/Muammar_Gaddafi
Nancy Reagan
Nancy Davis Reagan (born Anne Frances Robbins; July 6, 1921) is the widow of former United States President Ronald Reagan and was First Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989.
Nancy was born in New York City; her parents divorced soon after her birth and she grew up in Maryland, living with an aunt and uncle while her mother pursued acting jobs. As Nancy Davis, she was an actress in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s, starring in films such as Donovan's Brain, Night into Morning, and Hellcats of the Navy. In 1952 she married Ronald Reagan, who was then president of the Screen Actors Guild, and they had two children. Nancy was the First Lady of California when her husband was Governor from 1967 to 1975. In that capacity, she began work with the Foster Grandparents Program.
Nancy Reagan became First Lady of the United States in January 1981 following her husband's election. She was criticized early in his first term largely due to her decision to replace the White House china, despite it being paid for by private donations. Nancy restored a Kennedy-esque glamor to the White House following years of lax formality, and her interest in high-end fashion garnered much attention, as well as criticism. She championed recreational drug prevention causes by founding the "Just Say No" drug awareness campaign, which was considered her major initiative as first lady. Always protective of her husband, more controversy ensued when it was revealed in 1988 that she had consulted an astrologer to assist in planning the president's schedule after the 1981 assassination attempt on her husband. She had a strong influence on her husband and played a role in a few of his personnel and diplomatic decisions.

wn.com/Nancy_Reagan
Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock (born 28 March 1942) is a British politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992—his leadership of the party during nearly nine years (all in opposition) making him the longest serving opposition leader in British political history.
Following Labour's defeat in the 1992 election, Kinnock resigned as party leader and after his departure from the House of Commons three years later served as a European Commissioner from 1995–2004. Until the summer of 2009 he was the Chairman of the British Council. Kinnock served as President of Cardiff University from 1998 until 2009. Today, he is regarded as one of Labour's elder statesmen.
Kinnock, an only child, was born in Tredegar, Wales. His father Gordon Herbert Kinnock was a coal miner who suffered from dermatitis and had to find work as a labourer; and his mother Mary Kinnock was a district nurse. Gordon died of a heart attack in November 1971 aged 64; Mary died the following month aged 61.

wn.com/Neil_Kinnock
Nicholas Witchell
Nicholas Newton Henshall Witchell (born 23 September 1953) is an English journalist. He is the current diplomatic and royal correspondent for BBC News. Previously he was a newscaster.
Witchell was born in Shropshire and educated at Epsom College, a British independent school in Surrey, and later studied law at the University of Leeds, where he edited the student newspaper. In 1974 Terence Dalton Limited published Witchell's book The Loch Ness Story. The book provides a history of the alleged sightings of the Loch Ness Monster and includes a chapter entitled 'The "Monster" on Land'. Witchell's belief in the existence of the creature is described as "quite unshakeable". He has worked for the BBC since 1976.^{[dead link]} He has also reported from Northern Ireland.
Witchell, along with Sue Lawley, then became the first newsreader of the BBC Six O'Clock News when that programme, now called the BBC News at Six, was launched in 1984. In 1988, the Six O'Clock News studio was invaded during a live broadcast by a group of women protesting against Britain's Section 28 (a law against the teaching of homosexuality in schools). Witchell famously grappled with the protesters and is said to have sat on one woman, provoking the ambiguous frontpage headline in the Daily Mirror, "Beeb man sits on lesbian".

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Nick Newman
Nick Newman (born 17 July 1958) is a satirical British cartoonist and comedy scriptwriter.
The son of an RAF officer, Newman was born in Kuala Lumpur and schooled at Ardingly College where his satirical career began, working on revues with Ian Hislop. In his last term at Ardingly, Newman was 'asked to leave' (thrown out), after wiring up the chapel to play rock music during a chapel service. Despite this incident Newman managed to secure a place at Oxford University where he read history, and continued to be friends with Ian Hislop.
Hislop and Newman subsequently wrote for Maureen Lipman and co-wrote several episodes of Murder Most Horrid for Dawn French. Newman and Hislop's credits also include two series of My Dad's the Prime Minister for BBC 1, sketches for The Harry Enfield Show, creating the character Tim Nice-But-Dim, and the BBC Radio 4 series Gush, a satire based on the first Gulf War, in the style of Jeffrey Archer. Writing for radio, he has co-written all episodes of Dave Podmore's World of Cricket, Dave Podmore's Ashes and Strictly Dave Podmore - with Chris Douglas and Andrew Nickolds. Also with Chris Douglas, he wrote 2 series of Mastering the Universe for Dawn French on Radio 4. In 2008 he co-wrote A Bunch of Amateurs - starring Burt Reynolds, Sir Derek Jacobi and Samantha Bond - which was the Royal Film Performance for that year.

wn.com/Nick_Newman
Nigel Lawson
Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, PC (born 11 March 1932), is a British Conservative politician and journalist. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) representing the constituency of Blaby from 1974–92, and served as the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government of Margaret Thatcher from June 1983 to October 1989. He was made a life peer in 1992.
Lawson is the father of food writer and celebrity cook Nigella Lawson, and journalist Dominic Lawson.
Lawson was born to a wealthy family in Hampstead in 1932. His father, Ralph Lawson (1904–1982), was the owner of a commodity-trading firm in the City of London, while his mother, Joan Elisa Davis, was from a wealthy family of stockbrokers. His family was Jewish. His paternal-grandfather Gustav Leibson, a merchant from Mitau (now Jelgava in Latvia) changed his name from Leibson to Lawson after becoming a British Citizen in 1911. Nigel was educated at Westminster School (following in the footsteps of his father, who had also been sent there) and Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a first class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, he carried out his military service in the Royal Navy – during which time he commanded a small torpedo boat. Lawson began his career as a financial journalist and progressed to the positions of city editor of The Sunday Telegraph in 1961 and editor of The Spectator (1966–1970).

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Nigel Plaskitt
Nigel Plaskitt (born 27 July 1950is a British actor, puppeteer, producer, and both stage and television director.
His voice and puppetry talents have appeared on television shows such as Pipkins, Spitting Image and Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet. He has also contributed to films, such as Muppet Treasure Island and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Plaskitt appeared in the Doctor Who sci-fi serial The Ribos Operation.
In British television advertisements, Plaskitt appeared as the character Malcolm for Vicks Sinex during the 1970s and 1990s. He was the puppeteer behind the ITV Digital/PG Tips Monkey.
He has also been involved with in the British Theatre, staging the UK tour of Doctor Dolittle, resident puppet consultant on the West End production of Avenue Q, and director of several shows (including Spitting Image colleague Louise Gold's cabaret act).
Simon Sheridan's The A to Z of Classic Children's Television (Reynolds & Hearn books, 2004, reprinted 2007) ISBN 1-903111-27-7. Features an interview with Nigel Plaskitt and his work on the series Pipkins.

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Norma Major
Dame Norma Christina Elizabeth Major, DBE (née Johnson, born Wagstaff, 12 February 1942), is the wife of Sir John Major, the former British Prime Minister. Major has been a keen supporter of the British Conservative Party.

She is the daughter of the late Norman Wagstaff and the late Edith Johnson, and was born Norma Christina Elizabeth Wagstaff. She was born in Shropshire while her father was stationed there. He was killed in a motorcycle accident a few days after the end of World War II, when Norma was three years old, and her mother subsequently changed the family name back to her maiden name, so that she was called Norma Johnson as she was growing up.
Norma was educated at a boarding school in Bexhill-on-Sea, Oakfield Preparatory School in Dulwich, and Peckham School for Girls where she was Head Girl. She was a skilled dressmaker and trained as a teacher, working at St Michael and All Angels Church of England School, Camberwell. She was also a member of the Young Conservatives.
At a Conservative Party meeting during the campaign for the 1970 Greater London Council elections she was introduced to John Major by Peter Golds, a party agent. They married on 3 October 1970.

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Norman Fowler
(Peter) Norman Fowler, Baron Fowler,PC (born 2 February 1938) is a British Conservative politician who was from 1981 to 1990 a member of Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet.
He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford, in the county of Essex; after which he did National Service as a Second Lieutenant in the Essex Regiment. Whilst studying at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association in Michaelmas 1960, in which term he entertained both the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Home Secretary (and de facto Deputy Prime Minister, although he did not hold the title until 1962) Rab Butler. He then became a journalist, and worked on The Times.
During the mid 1970s Fowler was shadow Minister of Transport. In April 1976 he was photographed outside the Palace of Westminster having just taken delivery of his third four cylinder MG MGB GT, having reportedly rejected the idea of buying a V8 version on account of the cost. At a time when a recently promoted Minister of Transport had imputed ownership of the family car to his wife, apparently on grounds of political correctness, former journalist Fowler's acknowledgment of his choice of a sports car provided an interesting contrast.

wn.com/Norman_Fowler
Norman Tebbit
Norman Beresford Tebbit, Baron Tebbit, CH, PC (born 29 March 1931), is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet from 1981 to 1987 as Secretary of State for Employment (1981–83), Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1983–85), Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1985–87) and Chairman of the Conservative Party (1985–87). He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1992, representing the constituencies of Epping (1970–74) and Chingford (1974–92). In 1984, he was injured in the Provisional Irish Republican Army's bombing of the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, and his wife Margaret was left permanently disabled.
Born into a working class family in Ponders End, Middlesex, Tebbit went to Edmonton County School, an academically selective state school in north London. He was then a journalist for the Financial Times before serving with the Royal Air Force, during which he flew Meteor and Vampire jets and once had to break open the cockpit canopy of a burning Mosquito aircraft to escape from it. On leaving the RAF he joined BOAC in 1953 as a pilot, during which time he was an official in the British Air Line Pilots' Association. He was elected MP for Epping in 1970 and then for Chingford in Feb 1974. He is recorded as an MP member of the Conservative Monday Club in 1970.

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Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden ( /oʊˈsɑːmə bɪn moʊˈhɑːmɨd bɪn əˈwɑːd bɪn ˈlɑːdən/; Arabic: أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن‎, ʾUsāmah bin Muḥammad bin ʿAwaḍ bin Lādin; March 10, 1957 – May 2, 2011), was the founder of Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. He was a member of the wealthy Saudi bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.
Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror, with a US$25 million bounty by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA operatives in a covert operation ordered by United States President Barack Obama.

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Paddy Ashdown
Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, GCMG, KBE, PC (born 27 February 1941), usually known as Paddy Ashdown, is a British politician and diplomat.
After service as a Royal Marine and as an intelligence officer for the UK security services, Ashdown was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Yeovil from 1983 to 2001, and leader of the Liberal Democrats from 1988 until August 1999; later he was the international High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 27 May 2002 to 30 May 2006, following his vigorous lobbying for military action against Yugoslavia in the 1990s. A gifted polyglot, Ashdown is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and other languages. He was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (GCMG) in the New Year Honours 2006.
Ashdown is the eldest of seven children, and was born in New Delhi in British India, to a family of soldiers and colonial administrators who spent their lives in India. His father was a lapsed Catholic, and his mother a Protestant. His mother was a QA nurse. Ashdown's father, John, was an Indian Army officer in the 14th Punjab Regiment and the Indian Army Service Corps. During the retreat to Dunkirk in May 1940, John Ashdown ignored an order to abandon the Indian troops under his command, instead leading them to the port and on to one of the last ships to leave, without losing a single man. Although court martialled for disobeying orders, he was exonerated, and by the end of the War had risen to the rank of colonel.

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Paul Daniels
Paul Daniels, born Newton Edward Daniels on 6 April 1938, is a British magician and television performer. He achieved international fame through his television series The Paul Daniels Magic Show, which ran on the BBC from 1979 to 1994.
Daniels was born at 51 North Street in South Bank, Redcar & Cleveland,the son of Handel Newton Daniels and Nancy Lloyd. Handel (known as Hugh) was a cinema projectionist at the Hippodrome Theatre and a former worker at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) Wilton.^{[citation needed]}
During World War II, Daniels was evacuated to the Helmsley area. After Sir William Turners Grammar School on Coatham Road in Coatham, Redcar (now the Redcar & Cleveland College Connections Campus on Corporation Road) and his first job as a junior clerk in the treasurer's office of Eston council, Daniels served as a conscript in the 1st Battalion, The Green Howards, during his National Service and was posted to the British garrison in Hong Kong, before training as an accountant in the Civil Service. Even at this early age he had thinning hair which he claimed to be an act of 'magic'. Daniels later sported a wig for much of his television career. After working as a junior clerk and then as an auditor in local government Daniels joined his parents in the grocery business they were running at the time.^{[citation needed]} He later set up his own shop – at one point a mobile shop – but eventually gave this up in favour of his growing career as a magician.

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Paul Gascoigne
Paul John Gascoigne (born 27 May 1967), nicknamed Gazza, is an English retired professional footballer.
Playing in the position of midfield, Gascoigne's career included spells at Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio, Rangers, Middlesbrough, Everton and Gansu Tianma, at all of which he scored at least one goal. He was capped 57 times for the England national football team.
Gascoigne was born in the Dunston area of Gateshead, England.
Gascoigne started playing football at the age of four, playing in the street and nearby park. He played for his school Brighton Avenue Primary School, Gateshead team from the age of eight, and later played for the local Redheugh Boys' Club although being underage. He later attended Breckenbeds Junior High School (which closed in September 1996) then the Heathfield Senior High School (also closed in September 1996), both in the Low Fell area of Gateshead.
He was noticed by football scouts while playing for Gateshead Boys, and given a trial at Ipswich Town although he failed to impress. Further trials at Middlesbrough and Southampton proved unsuccessful, before Newcastle United signed him as a schoolboy in 1980. At school he was once caught practising his autograph during a geography lesson, his reason being that he was "going to be a famous footballer". His teacher was unimpressed, telling him that "only one in a million becomes a professional footballer." Nevertheless, he was signed on as an apprentice at Newcastle in 1983, initially playing for the youth team under Colin Suggett.

wn.com/Paul_Gascoigne
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM (born 18 June 1942) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of the Beatles (1960–1970) and Wings (1971–1981), he has been described by Guinness World Records as "The Most Successful Composer and Recording Artist of All Time", with 60 gold discs and sales of over 100 million albums and 100 million singles. With John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, he gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, and with Lennon formed one of the most celebrated songwriting partnerships of the 20th century. After leaving the Beatles, he began a solo career and later formed the band Wings with his first wife, Linda Eastman, and singer-songwriter Denny Laine.
According to the BBC, his Beatles song "Yesterday" has been covered by over 2,200 artists—more than any other song. Wings' 1977 release, "Mull of Kintyre", became one of the best-selling singles ever in the UK, and he is "the most successful songwriter" in UK chart history, according to Guinness. As a songwriter or co-writer, he is included on thirty-one number one titles on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2012 he has sold over 15.5 million RIAA certified units in the United States.

wn.com/Paul_McCartney
Peter Fluck
Peter Nigel Fluck (born April 7, 1941, Cambridge) is a caricaturist and one half of the partnership known as Fluck and Law (with Roger Law), creators of the satirical TV puppet show Spitting Image.
He attended Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, a grammar school, then Cambridge School of Art (now part of Anglia Ruskin University).
After Spitting Image finished its run, he moved to Cornwall to work as an artist.
He married Anne-Cécile de Bruyne in 1963 in Cambridge. They have a son and a daughter. He lives in Cadgwith. He has an older brother, David.

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Phil Collins
Philip David Charles "Phil" Collins, LVO (born 30 January 1951) is an English singer-songwriter, drummer, pianist and actor best known as a drummer and vocalist for British progressive rock group Genesis and as a solo artist.
Collins sang the lead vocals on several chart hits in the United Kingdom and the United States between 1975 and 2010, either as a solo artist or with Genesis. His singles, sometimes dealing with lost love, ranged from the drum-heavy "In the Air Tonight", dance pop of "Sussudio", piano-driven "Against All Odds", to the political statements of "Another Day in Paradise".
Collins's professional music career began as a drummer, originally in a band called The Real Thing with Andrea Bertorelli, who later became his first wife. Collins played drums and shared lead vocals (with Brian Chatton) in Flaming Youth which recorded one album, (Ark II). In 1970, he took over drums for Genesis, which had already recorded two albums. In Genesis, Collins originally supplied backing vocals for front man Peter Gabriel, singing lead on only two songs: "For Absent Friends" from 1971's Nursery Cryme album and "More Fool Me" from Selling England by the Pound, which was released in 1973. Following Gabriel's departure in 1975, Collins became the group's lead singer.

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Phil Cornwell
Phil Cornwell (born 5 October 1957) is an English comedian, actor, impressionist and writer. He is probably best known as being part of the Dead Ringers television and radio series. Cornwell has co-written and performed principal roles in The Glam Metal Detectives and Stella Street.
Cornwell was born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. He is popularily known for voicing Murdoc Niccals in the virtual band, Gorillaz. He provided the voices of Mick Jagger and David Bowie for the Steve Wright in the Afternoon show on BBC Radio 1 in the late eighties. These impersonations - augmented by many others, including the series narrator, Michael Caine - formed the backbone of the BBC TV series Stella Street, written and performed with John Sessions. He played the part of Harry Noakes, Captain of the cockleboat Renown in the TV mini-series Dunkirk.
He has appeared in several films made by The Comic Strip, including the role as Dave Spanker in Detectives on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown. He also played Dave Clifton, a local radio DJ on Radio Norwich - a fictional radio station in both series of I'm Alan Partridge.

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Philip Pope
Philip R. J. Pope is a British composer and actor. He was educated at Downside School and New College, Oxford.
He appeared in the Oxford Revue in Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1978 and 1979, both with Angus Deayton. He performed in the BBC radio comedy series Radio Active (1980–87) and has also starred in a number of TV comedy shows, including Who Dares Wins (1983–88), Chelmsford 123 (1988–90) and KYTV (1989–93) Round the Bend (1989–1991). He made guest appearances on Blackadder as the painter Leonardo Acropolis and Shelley as pop star Hobo with Hywel Bennett as James Shelley. Pope also appeared as Tony Angelino in the Only Fools and Horses episode Stage Fright with David Jason & Nicholas Lyndhurst — written by John Sullivan. Pope has regularly featured in the radio series Old Harry's Game (1995–2009). Pope performs regularly as a singer with the Thame Chamber Choir.
Pope co-wrote with Richard Curtis the Hee Bee Gee Bees' single "Meaningless Songs" (B-side "Posing in the Moonlight") released in 1980 to parody the style of a series of Bee Gees disco hits. The Hee Bee Gee Bees went on to record two albums spoofing numerous acts including Eagles, Michael Jackson, The Police, Status Quo and Supertramp. Pope also wrote or co-wrote many comic songs for Not the Nine O'Clock News and Spitting Image including British Number 1 hit single "The Chicken Song" with Rob Grant & Doug Naylor and along with Simon Franglen, he did the main theme for Round the Bend for Yorkshire TV, a three series comedy shown on CITV, later shown on Channel 4 and Nickelodeon.

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Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Italian: Giovanni Paolo II, Polish: Jan Paweł II), born Karol Józef Wojtyła (Polish: [ˈkarɔl ˈjuzɛf vɔjˈtɨwa]; 18 May 1920, Wadowice, Republic of Poland – 2 April 2005, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City), reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005. He was the second-longest serving Pope in history and the first non-Italian since 1523.
John Paul II was acclaimed as one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century. He was instrumental in ending communism in his native Poland and eventually all of Europe. John Paul II significantly improved the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, Islam, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. Though criticised by progressives for upholding the Church's teachings against artificial contraception and the ordination of women, and by traditionalists for his support of the Church's Second Vatican Council and its reform, he was also widely praised for his firm, orthodox Catholic stances.

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Raisa Gorbachova
Raisa Maximovna Gorbachova (Russian: Раи́са Макси́мовна Горбачёва tr. Raisa Maksimovna Gorbachyova, née Titarenko, Титаре́нко (5 January 1932 – 20 September 1999) was a major fundraiser for preservation of the Russian heritage, for new talents' education and for children's blood cancer treatment programs in Russia. She was the wife of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Raisa Maximovna Titarenko was born in the city of Rubtsovsk in the Altai region of Siberia. She was the eldest of three children of Maxim Andreyevich Titarenko, a railway engineer originally from Chernihiv, Ukraine, and his Siberian wife, Alexandra Petrovna Porada, originally from Veseloyarsk. She spent her childhood in the Ural Mountains region, and met her future husband while studying philosophy in Moscow. She earned an advanced degree at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, and taught briefly at the Moscow State University.
They married in September 1953 and moved to her husband's home region of Stavropol in southern Russia upon graduation. There, she taught Marxist-Leninist philosophy and defended her sociology research thesis about kolkhoz life. She gave birth in 1958 to their only child, daughter Irina Mikhailovna (married name: Virganskaya; Ири́на Миха́йловна Вирга́нская). When her husband returned to Moscow as a rising Soviet Communist Party official, Gorbachova took a post of a lecturer at her alma mater, Moscow State University. She left the post when her husband became a leader of the Soviet Union in 1985. Her public appearances beside her husband as First Lady were a novelty at home and went a long way in humanizing the country's image. Her dynamic personality and style caught the attention of Western media and observers.^{[citation needed]}

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Ray Cooney
Raymond George Alfred Cooney, OBE (born 30 May 1932) is an English playwright and actor. His biggest success, Run for Your Wife, lasted nine years in London's West End and is its longest-running comedy. He has had 17 of his plays performed there.
Cooney began acting in 1946 and appeared in many of the Whitehall farces of Brian Rix throughout the 1950s and '60s. It was during this time that he co-wrote his first play One For The Pot.
In 1961, together with Tony Hilton, he co-wrote the screenplay for the British comedy film What a Carve Up!, featuring Sid James and Kenneth Connor.
Cooney co-wrote a farce with his son Michael, Tom, Dick and Harry.
In 1983, Cooney created the Theatre of Comedy Company and became its artistic director. During his tenure the company produced over twenty plays such as Pygmalion starring Peter O'Toole and John Thaw, Loot, and Run For Your Wife.
Cooney has also appeared on TV and in several films, including a film adaptation of his successful theatrical farce Not Now, Darling (1973), which he co-wrote with John Chapman.

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Ray Harris
Ray Harris (September 7, 1927 – November 13, 2003) was an American rockabilly musician and songwriter. He formed a band with Wayne Powers, and wrote the songs "Come On, Little Mama" and "Greenback Dollar, Watch and Chain". He eventually recorded these at Sun Records with Sam Phillips. He has also produced artists at Hi Records. Like other artists such as Sonny Burgess, Hayden Thompson, Billy Lee Riley and Warren Smith, chart success largely eluded him.
Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Harris died in November 2003 in Mooreville, Mississippi, at the age of 76.

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Richard Coombs
Richard Coombs is a puppeteer from England, who has worked extensively on many British television shows, feature films, commercials & music videos. In 1987 & 1988, he worked on the ITV Saturday morning children's show, Get Fresh, where he operated the puppet, Gilbert the Alien, alongside fellow puppeteer John Eccleston, but Gilbert's voice was done by the comedian, Phil Cornwell. Coombs was one of the 3 puppeteers (again alongside Eccleston & another puppeteer called, Michael J. Bassett), who each alternately controlled & voiced the puppet character, Scally The Dog, who co-presented Children's ITV, from 1989 - 1991. In January 2003, he returned as Scally on the CITV's 20th Birthday Bash programme, alongside fellow presenter, Jeanne Downs. He is also a Punch and Judy performer & has worked on several Jim Henson muppet projects too.
He was one of the puppeteers on the ITV satiricial show, Spitting Image & also worked on the 2005 film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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Richard Curtis
Richard Whalley Anthony Curtis, CBE (born 8 November 1956) is a New Zealand-born British screenwriter, music producer, actor and film director, known primarily for romantic comedy films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones's Diary, Notting Hill, Love Actually and The Girl in the Café, as well as the hit sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Vicar of Dibley. He is also the founder of the British charity Comic Relief.
Curtis was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the son of Glyness S. and Anthony J. Curtis, who was an executive at Unilever. Curtis and his family lived in several different countries during his childhood, including Sweden and the Philippines. Part of the family still lives in Sydney. Curtis has lived in England since he was 11. He began school at Papplewick School, Ascot (as did his younger brother Jamie). For a short period in the 1970s Curtis lived in Warrington, where he attended Appleton Grammar School, before he won a scholarship to the prestigious Harrow School in London. He achieved a first-class degree in English Language and Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, and it was at Oxford that he met, and began working with, Rowan Atkinson.

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Richard Herring
Richard Keith Herring (born 12 July 1967) is a British comedian and writer, whose early work includes his involvement in the double-act, Lee and Herring. He is described by the British Theatre Guide as "one of the leading hidden masters of modern British comedy". He has written and performed in a body of live one-man comedy shows including the acclaimed Talking Cock and the resulting book of the same name. He has collaborated with the broadcaster Andrew Collins, initially on the radio series Banter, then on Collins' BBC 6 Music show and Collings and Herrin Podcast.
During the 2000s, Herring has toured with a new stand-up show almost every year. His 2009 show Hitler Moustache was the subject of much controversy, but also received critical approval and sold out for the entire Edinburgh Festival. His 2010 show Christ on a Bike: The Second Coming received several 4 and 5 star reviews and was taken on a 94 date tour of the UK in the Spring of 2011. It was the subject of protests from Christians in Glasgow. and Lowestoft

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Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961.
Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. After completing his undergraduate work at Whittier College, he graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937, and returned to California to practice law. He and his wife, Pat Nixon, moved to Washington to work for the federal government in 1942. He subsequently served in the United States Navy during World War II. Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950. His pursuit of the Hiss Case established his reputation as a leading anti-communist, and elevated him to national prominence. He was the running mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party presidential nominee in the 1952 election. Nixon served for eight years as vice president. He waged an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy, and lost a race for Governor of California in 1962. In 1968, he ran again for the presidency and was elected.

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Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE (born 7 July 1940), better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for the Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He joined the Beatles in August 1962, taking the place of Pete Best. In addition to his drumming, Starr is featured on lead vocals on a number of successful Beatles songs (in particular, "With a Little Help from My Friends", "Yellow Submarine", and the Beatles version of "Act Naturally"). He is credited as a co-writer of the songs "What Goes On" and "Flying", and as the writer of "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden".
As drummer for the Beatles, Starr was musically creative, and his contribution to the band's music has received high praise from notable drummers in more recent times. Starr described himself as "your basic offbeat drummer with funny fills". Drummer Steve Smith said that Starr's popularity "brought forth a new paradigm" where "we started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect" and that Starr "composed unique, stylistic drum parts for The Beatles songs". In 2011, Starr was picked as the fifth-best drummer of all-time by Rolling Stone readers.

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Rob Grant
Robert Grant is a British comedy writer and television producer, who was born in Salford and studied Psychology at Liverpool University for two years.
In the mid-1980s, Grant collaborated with co-writer Doug Naylor on radio programmes such as Cliché and its sequel Son Of Cliché, Wrinkles for Radio 4 and television programmes such as Spitting Image, The 10 Percenters, and various projects for Jasper Carrott.
The 'Grant Naylor' collaboration, as it had become known, was best known for the creation of the cult science-fiction comedy series, Red Dwarf, which evolved from Dave Hollins: Space Cadet, a recurring sketch within Son Of Cliché. Grant was briefly seen (uncredited) in an episode of Red Dwarf entitled "Backwards" (1989), as a man who 'un-smoked' a cigarette.
In the mid-1990s, the 'Grant Naylor' collaboration was ended when Grant left Red Dwarf after the sixth series, citing creative differences ("... it was basically 'musical differences' ...") with Doug Naylor. His main reason however, he said, was that he 'wished to have more on his 'tombstone' than Red Dwarf on its own'.

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Robert Maxwell
Ian Robert Maxwell MC (10 June 1923 – 5 November 1991) was a Czechoslovakian-born British media proprietor and former Member of Parliament (MP), who rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire. His death revealed huge discrepancies in his companies' finances, including the Mirror Group pension fund, which Maxwell had fraudulently misappropriated.
Robert Maxwell was born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch into a poorYiddish-speaking Jewish family in the small town of Slatinské Doly (now Solotvino, Ukraine) in the easternmost province of pre-World War II Czechoslovakia. His parents were Mechel Hoch and Hannah Slomowitz. He had six siblings. In 1939, the area was reclaimed by Hungary. Most members of his family died in Auschwitz after Hungary was occupied in 1944 by its former ally, Nazi Germany, but he had already escaped to France. In Marseille he joined the Czechoslovak army in exile in May 1940.
After the defeat in France and the retreat to Great Britain, Maxwell took part in the protest against the leadership of the Czechoslovak army and, together with 500 other soldiers, was transferred to the British Pioneer Corps, and later to the North Staffordshire Regiment in 1943. He was then involved in action across Europe, from the Normandy beaches to Berlin, and achieved the rank of sergeant. He gained a commission in 1945 and was promoted to captain. In January 1945 he received the Military Cross from Field Marshal Montgomery. It was during this time that British Intelligence changed his name several times, finally settling on Ian Robert Maxwell.^{[citation needed]}

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Robert Runcie
Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie, Baron Runcie, PC, MC (2 October 1921 – 11 July 2000) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1980 to 1991.
Runcie was born and spent his early life in Great Crosby, Merseyside, to middle class and rather non-religious parents. He initially attended St Luke's Church, Crosby (where he was confirmed in 1936), before switching to the Anglo-Catholic St Faith's Church about a mile down the road. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby, before going up to Brasenose College, Oxford.
He earned a commission in the Scots Guards during World War II, serving as a tank commander and earning the Military Cross for two feats of bravery in March 1945: he rescued one of his men from a crippled tank under heavy enemy fire, and the next day took his own tank into an exceptionally exposed position in order to knock out three anti-tank guns. As a result, he is unique among modern Archbishops of Canterbury in having killed fellow human beings. In May 1945, he was among the first British troops to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

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Robin Cook
Robert Finlayson Cook (28 February 1946 – 6 August 2005), known as Robin Cook, was a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Livingston from 1983 until his death, and notably served in the Cabinet as Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001.
He studied at the University of Edinburgh before becoming a Member of Parliament for Edinburgh Central in 1974. In parliament he was noted for his debating ability which saw his rise through the political ranks and ultimately to the Cabinet.
He resigned from his positions as Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons on 17 March 2003 in protest against the invasion of Iraq. At the time of his death, he was President of the Foreign Policy Centre and a vice-president of the America All Party Parliamentary Group and the Global Security and Non-Proliferation All Party Parliamentary Group.
Robin Cook was born in the County Hospital, Bellshill, Scotland, the only son of Peter and Christina Cook (née Lynch). His father was a chemistry teacher who grew up in Fraserburgh, and his grandfather was a miner before being blacklisted for being involved in a strike.

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Robin Day
Sir Robin Day, OBE (24 October 1923 – 6 August 2000) was a British political broadcaster and commentator. His obituary in the Guardian stated that "he was the most outstanding television journalist of his generation. He transformed the television interview, changed the relationship between politicians and television, and strove to assert balance and rationality into the medium's treatment of current affairs".
He was the son of a telephone engineer who became telephone manager at Gloucester.
Day attended Brentwood School from 1934 to 1938, briefly attended The Crypt School, Gloucester and later Bembridge School on the Isle of Wight.
He served with the army in east Africa, where he reached the rank of Captain but was demoted to Lieutenant as part of a cull of rear-echelon jobs.
After the war Day attended St Edmund Hall, Oxford and, while a student, was elected president of the Oxford Union debating society. Day also took part in a debating tour of the United States, run by the English-Speaking Union.

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Roger Law
Roger Law (born September 6, 1941, Ely) is a caricaturist and one half of Fluck & Law (with Peter Fluck), creators of the satirical TV puppet show Spitting Image.
He went to Littleport Secondary Modern School in Littleport, Cambridgeshire. He attended Cambridge School of Art (now part of Anglia Ruskin University) from which he was expelled in 1960. He met Peter Fluck during his time there.
He was an illustrator and cartoonist for The Observer from 1962-5, the for The Sunday Times from 1965-7 and 1971-5.
After Spitting Image finished in 1996, Law became the Artist in residence at the National Art School in Sydney, Australia. he subsequently moved to Jingdezhen, China where he makes large porcelain vessels.
He married Deidre Amsden (a quilt designer) in 1960 in Cambridge. They have a son (born 1962) and daughter (born 1965).
the son Shem law and daughter Sophie law

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Roger Moore
Sir Roger George Moore KBE (born 14 October 1927) is an English actor. He is best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in the official film series between 1973 and 1985.
Moore was born in Stockwell, London. The only child of George Alfred Moore, a policeman, and Lillian "Lily" (née Pope), a housewife, he attended Battersea Grammar School, but was evacuated to Holsworthy, Devon during Second World War and was then educated at Dr Challoner's Grammar School in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. He then attended the College of the Venerable Bede at the University of Durham but never graduated. At 18 years old, shortly after the end of the war, Moore was conscripted for national service. He was commissioned as an officer and eventually became a Captain. Moore served in the Royal Army Service Corps, commanding a small depot in West Germany. He later transferred to the entertainment branch (under luminaries such as Spike Milligan), and immediately prior to his national service, there was a brief stint at RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), during which his fees were paid by film director Brian Desmond Hurst, who also used Moore as an extra in his film Trottie True. Moore was a classmate at RADA with his future Bond colleague Lois Maxwell, the original Miss Moneypenny. The young Moore first appeared in films during the mid to late-1940s, as an extra. Moore's film idol as a child was Stewart Granger. As a 17-year-old, Moore appeared as an extra in the film Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), finally meeting his idol on the set. Moore later worked with Granger in The Wild Geese.

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Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( /ˈrɒnəld ˈwɪlsən ˈreɪɡən/; February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States, serving from 1981 to 1989. Prior to that, he was the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and a radio, film and television actor.
Born in Tampico, Illinois and raised in Dixon, Reagan was educated at Eureka College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology. After his graduation, Reagan moved first to Iowa to work as a radio broadcaster and then in to Los Angeles in 1937 where he began a career as an actor, first in films and later television. Some of his most notable films include Knute Rockne, All American, Kings Row, and Bedtime for Bonzo. Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and later as a spokesman for General Electric (GE); his start in politics occurred during his work for GE. Originally a member of the Democratic Party, his positions began shifting rightward in the late 1950s, and he switched to the Republican Party in 1962. After delivering a rousing speech in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship, winning two years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as well as 1976, but won both the nomination and general election in 1980, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.

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Rory Bremner
Roderick "Rory" Keith Ogilvy Bremner,FKC (born 6 April 1961) is a Scottish impressionist, playwright and comedian, noted for his work in political satire and impressions of prominent British politicians. He is also known for his work on Mock the Week as a panellist (for Series 1 and 2), award-winning show Rory Bremner...Who Else? and sketch comedy series Bremner, Bird and Fortune, which features veteran comedians John Bird and John Fortune.
Born in Edinburgh, Rory Bremner was born to Major Donald Stuart Ogilvy Bremner (December 1907–1979) (who was 53 years old at Rory's birth) and his second wife Ann Simpson (1922–2001). He has an older brother and an older half-sister (from his father's first marriage). Bremner was educated at Clifton Hall School and Wellington College and then studied Modern Languages at King's College London, graduating with a degree in French and German in 1984.
While at university, Bremner worked in the cabaret circuit in the evenings and was involved in the drama club. He first came into the limelight in 1985, when his single, N-N-Nineteen Not Out (released under the name, "The Commentators") was a big hit in the British charts. It was a parody of Paul Hardcastle's number one hit, 19, with Bremner impersonating cricket commentators, including Richie Benaud and Brian Johnston, and replacing references to the Vietnam War with references to the England cricket team's disastrous 1984 home series against the West Indies in which the England captain David Gower had averaged 19.

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Roy Hattersley
Roy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley FRSL (born 28 December 1932) is a British Labour politician, author and journalist from Sheffield. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.
Roy Hattersley has been a socialist and Labour supporter from his youth, electioneering at the age of 12 for his local MP and city councillors, beginning in 1945. His own mother, Enid Hattersley, was a city councillor, and later, Lord Mayor of Sheffield (in 1981). Enid Hattersley kept the fact secret from her son (until he was in his 50s) that his father, who died an atheist, had been a Roman Catholic priest, Father Frederick Hattersley, and had renounced the Church to marry her.
He won a scholarship to Sheffield City Grammar School and went from there to study at the University of Hull. Having been accepted to read English at the University of Leeds, he was diverted into reading Economics when told by a Sheffield colleague of his mother that it was necessary for a political career.

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Ruhollah Khomeini
Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (روح‌اللّه مصطفوی موسوی خمینی, Persian pronunciation: [ruːholˈlɑːhe muːsæˈviːje xomeiˈniː], 22 or 24 September 1902 – 3 June 1989) was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. Following the revolution, Khomeini became the country's Supreme Leader — a position created in the constitution as the highest ranking political and religious authority of the nation – until his death.
Khomeini was a marja ("source of emulation") in Twelver Shi'a Islam, author of more than forty books, but is primarily known for his political activities. He spent more than 15 years in exile for his opposition to the last Shah. In his writings and preachings he expanded the Shi'a Usuli theory of velayat-e faqih, the "guardianship of the jurisconsult (clerical authority)" to include theocratic political rule by the Islamic jurists. This principle (though not known to the wider public before the revolution) was installed in the new Iranian constitution after being put to a referendum.

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Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG (born 11 March 1931) is an Australian American media mogul. Murdoch became managing director of Australia's News Limited, inherited from his father, in 1952. He is the founder, Chairman and CEO of global media holding company the News Corporation, the world's second-largest media conglomerate.
In the 1950s and '60s, he acquired various newspapers in Australia and New Zealand, before expanding into the United Kingdom in 1969, taking over the News of the World followed closely by The Sun. He moved to New York in 1974 to expand into the US market and became a naturalised US citizen in 1985. In 1981, he bought The Times, his first British broadsheet.
In 1986, keen to adopt newer electronic publishing technologies, he consolidated his UK printing operations in Wapping, causing bitter industrial disputes. His News Corporation acquired Twentieth Century Fox (1985), HarperCollins (1989) and The Wall Street Journal (2007). He formed BSkyB in 1990 and during the 1990s expanded into Asian networks and South American television. By 2000 Murdoch's News Corporation owned over 800 companies in more than 50 countries with a net worth of over $5 billion.

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Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd al-Tikrītī; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, which espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup, later referred to as the 17 July Revolution, that brought the party to long-term power of Iraq.
As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalized oil and other industries. The state-owned banks were put under his control, leaving the system eventually insolvent mostly due to the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, and UN sanctions. Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace. Positions of power in the country were filled with Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.

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Sandy Gall
Henderson Alexander "Sandy" Gall, CMG, CBE (born 1 October 1927), is a Scottish journalist, author, and former ITN news presenter whose career as a journalist has spanned more than 50 years.
Born in Penang, Malaysia, Gall's father was a rubber planter. Gall was educated in Scotland at Trinity College (Glenalmond College), a boys' independent school in Glenalmond in Perth and Kinross, where he boarded. He graduated from Aberdeen University in 1952. In 1953 he joined Reuters as a foreign correspondent for whom he reported for the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the Congo Crisis 1960-1963.
He joined ITN in 1963 as a foreign correspondent. He was the first ITN journalist to report the Vietnam War when the United States Marines landed on 8 March 1965. He returned to Vietnam several times until 1975 when Saigon fell and he was forcibly removed from the country by the communist authorities. During this time he also reported from Cambodia, China, Afghanistan, and Africa. He also covered the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. In 1972 he was arrested with his Reuters colleague Nicholas Moore in Uganda and held for three days in the Makindye police camp. He was one of the original staff on News at Ten in 1967 and became one of its senior presenters.

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Selina Scott
Selina Scott (born 13 May 1951) is a British newsreader, journalist, television producer and presenter.
Scott was born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, in 1951, the eldest of five children. Her late father, Charles, was a police sergeant and her mother, Betty (née Bumby), was formerly a journalist from Ryedale, North Yorkshire.
She completed her secondary education at the Laurence Jackson School in Guisborough, North Yorkshire, where she was head girl, whilst living in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Cleveland. She then continued her studies at the University of East Anglia, reading English and American Literature.
Initially resisting the temptation to continue a family trait working in journalism Scott succumbed and went to work on The Sunday Post in Dundee, Scotland, for two years. She then took up the post of Press officer for the Tourist board on the Isle of Bute. She then began broadcasting after being hired by Ted Brocklebank, then Head of News & Current Affairs, later a Tory MSP, as a reporter and presenter with Grampian TV in 1978. She made her television debut on the nightly news programme Grampian Today, presenting from a North Sea oil platform and at the summit of Cairn Gorm. She later became one of the launch team for North Tonight.

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Sid and Marty Krofft
Sid Krofft (born July 30, 1929) and Marty Krofft (born April 9, 1937), are a sibling team of television producers who were influential in children's television and variety show programs in the USA, particularly throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.
They are largely known for a unique brand of ambitious fantasy programs, often featuring large-headed puppets, high-concept plots, and extensive use of low-budget special effects. The team also dominated the arena of celebrity music/variety programs during the period.
The Krofft brothers, Sid and Marty, were born in Montreal. For many years, they claimed to have been born to a family of fifth-generation puppeteers, but they revealed in 2008 that this story was invented by a publicist in the 1940s. Their father was, in fact, a clock salesman who moved from Canada to Providence, R.I., and then to New York City. Sid Krofft became a noted puppeteer who worked in vaudeville and was a featured player with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. In the 1940s, Sid created a one-man puppet show, "The Unusual Artistry of Sid Krofft," and performed it throughout the world. His father joined him on tour in Paris while Marty stayed in New York, where he started using his older brother's puppets to earn money by staging performances. By the 1950s, the Krofft brothers were working together, and in 1957, they developed Les Poupées de Paris, a puppet show with more mature themes.

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Sissela Kyle
Sissela Maria Kyle (born March 17, 1957 in Örgryte, Gothenburg, Sweden) is a Swedish actress and comedian.
Kyle is the second cousin of the British singer Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens)

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Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.
After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.
He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.
As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.

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Steve Bendelack
Steve Bendelack is a British film and television director, who has worked primarily on comedy programmes.
Originally an assistant to Peter Fluck and Roger Law on satirical TV puppet show Spitting Image, Bendelack went on to direct the show in later years. He also directed The Mary Whitehouse Experience, The Royle Family, The League of Gentlemen, Dark Ages, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Cowards and the first season of Little Britain. He also directed the BBC3 pilot for The Mighty Boosh, in 2003, but was replaced by Paul King for the series proper. He also produced the opening scene for the 1990s edition of Whose Line Is It Anyway? for a short period, but stopped midway through the series. Bendelack has directed the feature films The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse and Mr. Bean's Holiday.

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Steve Connelly
Steven Lee Connelly (1974) is a former American Major League Baseball pitcher. He played for the Oakland Athletics during the 1998 season.
Early Life Connelly was born in Long Beach, California and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. Upon graduation Connelly was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates but chose instead to attend the University of Oklahoma where he helped contribute to the 1994 National Championship team.
Playing Career Drafted in the 24th round by the Oakland Athletics in the 1995 amateur draft, Connelly spent 4 years within the Oakland organization. Placed on waverers after the 1998 season, Connelly spent the next 5 seasons within the San Francisco Giants' organization before ending a 9 year professional career.
Coaching Career Connelly works as the volunteer assistant pitching coach for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a Division II member of the Gulf South Conference.

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Steve Coogan
Stephen John "Steve" Coogan (born 14 October 1965) is a BAFTA-winning English actor, comedian, writer, impressionist and producer. Born in Middleton, Lancashire, he began his career as a stand-up comedian and impressionist, working as a voice artist throughout the 1980s on satirical puppet show Spitting Image. In the early 1990s, Coogan began creating original comic characters which he presented in stage shows, this led to him winning the 1992 Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, for his show with long-time collaborator John Thomson. The most prominent characters he developed at this time were Paul Calf, a stereotypical lower class Mancunian and his sister the promiscuous Pauline (played by Coogan in drag).
Working with Chris Morris, Patrick Marber and Armando Iannucci for On the Hour and The Day Today, Coogan developed his most popular and most developed character; Alan Partridge, a socially awkward and politically incorrect regional media personality, who developed to feature in his own eponymous television series, Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge and I'm Alan Partridge, which were well received and were nominated for five BAFTAs in total. Outside the UK, Coogan is better known for his roles in films including 24 Hour Party People, The Wind in the Willows, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Night at the Museum, Tropic Thunder, Hamlet 2, A Cock and Bull Story, The Trip and The Other Guys.

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Steve Davis
Steve Davis, OBE (born 22 August 1957 in Plumstead, London) is an English professional snooker player. He has won more professional titles in the sport than any other player, including six World Championships during the 1980s, when he was the world number one for seven years and became the sport's first millionaire. He has won 28 ranking events in total, second only to Stephen Hendry.
Davis' achievements also include three Masters and a record six UK Championship titles. In 1988 he became the first player to complete snooker's Triple Crown in a single season. He is also a former four-time World Doubles champion with Tony Meo and won the World Team Classic/World Cup four times with England. In 1982, he became the first player to compile a televised maximum break and is one of four players to have compiled over 300 competitive century breaks. Though he has not won a major tournament since 1997, he continues to play snooker at a high level and reached the quarter-finals at the 2010 World Championship. He was still ranked in the world's top 16 at the age of 50, and is ranked number 51 after the 2012 World Championship.

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Steve Nallon
Steve Nallon (born 8 November 1960) is a British actor, writer and impressionist, best known for impersonating Margaret Thatcher on television throughout her time as British prime minister (1979–1990).
Nallon, a graduate of the University of Birmingham, began his career as a stand-up performer on the northern club circuit, before joining the Spitting Image team in 1984.
Although most famous for providing the voice of Margaret Thatcher on the show, he also voiced other characters, including Roy Hattersley and The Queen Mother who was Nallon's personal favourite character. He continues to perform in the guise of Lady Thatcher, but combines impressions with other types of work, including writing and performing in the Radio 4 comedy series, The Nallon Tapes.
In late 2003, he starred in Steve Nallon's Christmas Carol, a theatrical adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol at the Birmingham Repertory.

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Steve Punt
Stephen Punt (born September 1962) is a British writer, comedian and actor, best known for being one half of double act Punt and Dennis alongside Hugh Dennis. He is mostly known for his contribution as a writer and programme associate for various panel game shows, most notably Mock the Week and Would I Lie To You?, and has written for comedians such as Rory Bremner, and Jasper Carrott.
Punt was educated at Whitgift School and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he read English. While at Cambridge, he joined the Footlights, where he first met comedy partner Hugh Dennis and was vice-president from 1983 to 1985 with Nick Hancock as president. He was in the writing team for three revues in a row.
While at university Punt began writing for the BBC Radio 4 series Week Ending. Punt and Dennis later became resident guest comedians on shows presented by Jasper Carrott, including Carrott Confidential and Canned Carrott with Punt contributing in the writing team as well. They also toured with Carrott as a live support act.

wn.com/Steve_Punt
Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee (born 5 April 1968) is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director. He made his name in the mid 1990s as one half of the radio duo Lee and Herring, a popular success followed through with extensive touring to built up a loyal live following. He gave up comedy in the early 2000s when he became disillusioned by the business and believed he was doomed to be a cult act with limited appeal who had reached the extent of any potential audience. Lee returned to stand up after co-writing and co-directing the surprise mock Broadway hit Jerry Springer - The Opera. Since then he has returned to the live circuit and though BBC and C4 specials and series, has rebuilt a niche audience and a reputation as an anti populist, anti "after the pub" comedian.
He remains a significant voice in UK stand up despite his refusal to appear on the panel shows that have seen many of his contemporaries eclipse him in ticket sales, if not critical acclaim. Although Lee's audience figures are comparatively low, he usually tours to 400-600 capacity venues and standing outside the comedy mainstream, he is well regarded by critics and has been a regular pundit on BBC political programming. In December 2011 he won the award for best male television comic for his series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle which also won best comedy entertainment programme at the 2011 British Comedy Awards. A 2009 article in The Times referred to him as "the comedian's comedian, and for good reason" and named him "face of the decade". His stand-up features frequent use of "repetition, call-backs, nonchalant delivery and deconstruction", a device he jokingly ascribes to his tedious, exacting middle-class persona.

wn.com/Stewart_Lee
Stuart Silver
Stuart Silver is an award-winning Writer/Performer/Director. He works solo and collaboratively and is co-founder of the BAFTA-nominated, performance duo nobleandsilver, who won the 2000 Perrier Award (now the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards) for Best Newcomer. Stuart has since appeared onstage in his own one-man show, ‘You Look Like Ants’ and in shorter pieces. He has also featured in television shows such as (nobleandsilver):GET OFF ME, The Mighty Boosh, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and Man to Man with Dean Learner.
Stuart Silver and his writing and performance partner Kim Noble first came to national prominence upon winning the Best Newcomer Perrier Award in 2000. Trained in Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, the duo received as much praise from the art community as from comedy aficionados. Their work drew together visual art, stand-up, theatre, spoken word and performance art.
Noble and Silver’s post-Perrier shows include the 2001 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show in Pleasance Above which was a collage of video, recorded sound and performance and a month-long residency in London's Beaconsfield art space, entitled We're Spending Four Weeks at Beaconsfield, So Let's Hope Everything Goes OK (Part 4). Throughout this time in residence, they performed daily "situational" shows within and around the gallery, which became a live work environment, building in complexity and using a small cast to become a part of the visitor's art experience. This residence included an increasingly spoof corporate video at the entrance proclaiming an inflated series of benefits and services offered by the gallery, a performance in the upstairs gallery space every 15 minutes directed to one visitor at a time and nobleandsilver having to prepare and serve food from the kitchen.

wn.com/Stuart_Silver
Sylvester Stallone
Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone (/stəˈloʊn/; born July 6, 1946), commonly known as Sylvester Stallone, and nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, film director and occasional painter. Stallone is known for his machismo and Hollywood action roles. Two of the notable characters he has portrayed are boxer Rocky Balboa and soldier John Rambo. The Rocky and Rambo franchises, along with several other films, strengthened his reputation as an actor and his box office earnings.
Stallone's film Rocky was inducted into the National Film Registry as well as having its film props placed in the Smithsonian Museum. Stallone's use of the front entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Rocky series led the area to be nicknamed the Rocky Steps. Philadelphia has a statue of his Rocky character placed permanently near the museum, on the right side before the steps. It was announced on December 7, 2010 that Stallone was voted into boxing's Hall of Fame.
Sylvester Stallone was born Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone in New York City, the elder son of Frank Stallone, Sr., a hairdresser, and Jackie Stallone (born Jacqueline Labofish), an astrologer, former dancer, and promoter of women's wrestling. His younger brother is actor and musician Frank Stallone. Stallone's father was born in Gioia del Colle, Apulia, Italy, and emigrated to the United States as a child. Stallone's mother is of half Russian Jewish and half French descent.

wn.com/Sylvester_Stallone
Terry Wogan
Sir Michael Terence Wogan, KBE, DL (born 3 August 1938), also known as Terry Wogan, is a veteran Irish radio and television broadcaster who holds dual Irish and British citizenship. Wogan has worked for the BBC in the United Kingdom for most of his career. Before he retired from the weekday breakfast programme Wake Up to Wogan on BBC Radio 2 on 18 December 2009, it had a regular 8 million listeners, making Wogan the most listened-to radio broadcaster of any European nation. He began his career at Raidió Teilifís Éireann where he presented shows such as Jackpot in the 1960s.
Wogan has been a leading media personality in the UK since the late 1960s and is often referred to as a national treasure. He is perhaps best known in the United Kingdom for his BBC1 chat show Wogan, for his work presenting Children in Need, as the host of Wake Up to Wogan, the original host of the BBC game show Blankety Blank (before being replaced by Les Dawson), a presenter of Come Dancing in the 1970s, and as the BBC's commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest on radio and television from 1971 to 2008. Wogan currently hosts a two hour Sunday morning show, Weekend Wogan on Radio 2.

wn.com/Terry_Wogan
The Boat That Rocked
The Boat That Rocked (retitled Pirate Radio in North America) is a 2009 British comedy film written and directed by Richard Curtis, with pirate radio in the United Kingdom during the 1960s as its setting. The film has an ensemble cast featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, and Kenneth Branagh. Set in 1966, it tells the story of the fictitious pirate radio station "Radio Rock" and its crew of eclectic disc jockeys, who broadcast rock and pop music to the United Kingdom from a ship anchored in the North Sea while the British government endeavors to shut them down. It was produced by Working Title Films for Universal Pictures, and was filmed on the Isle of Portland and at Shepperton Studios.
The film opened 1 April 2009 and was a commercial failure at the British box office, making only GB£6.1 million in its first twelve weeks, less than a quarter of its over £30 million production cost. It received mixed reviews, with most criticism directed at its muddled storyline and 2¼-hour length. For its North American release it was re-edited to trim its running time by twenty minutes, and retitled Pirate Radio. Opening 13 November 2009, Pirate Radio was still commercially unsuccessful, earning only about US$8 million (approximately £5 million).

wn.com/The_Boat_That_Rocked
The Vicar of Dibley
The Vicar of Dibley is a British sitcom created by Richard Curtis and written for its lead actress, Dawn French, by Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer, with contributions from Kit Hesketh-Harvey. It aired from 1994 to 2007. The Vicar of Dibley is set in a fictional small Oxfordshire village called Dibley, which is assigned a female vicar following the 1992 changes in the Church of England that permitted the ordination of women. The main character was an invention of Richard Curtis, but he and Dawn French extensively consulted the Rev. Joy Carroll, one of the first female priests, and garnered many character traits and much information.
In ratings terms, the programme is among the most successful in the digital era, with the various Christmas and New Year specials in 1999, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 all entering the top 10 programmes of the year.The Vicar of Dibley received multiple British Comedy Awards, two International Emmys, and was a multiple British Academy Television Awards nominee. In 2004, it placed third in Britain's Best Sitcom.

wn.com/The_Vicar_of_Dibley
Tim Rose
Timothy Alan Patrick Rose (September 23, 1940 – September 24, 2002), best known professionally as Tim Rose, was an American singer-songwriter, who spent much of his life in London, England and had more success in Europe than in his native country. Known for his gruff voice, Rose was often compared to Ray Charles, Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker.^{[citation needed]}
Rose was born in Washington, D.C., and raised by his mother Mary, who worked for the Army Corps of Engineers, his aunt, and his grandmother in an area known as South Fairlington Historic District, in Arlington, Virginia, where he was to meet Scott McKenzie, who lived nearby. Rose learned to play the banjo and guitar, and won the top music award in high school. Rose graduated from Gonzaga College Prep School, a noted Jesuit institution in DC, class of 1958. From there he joined the United States Air Force (in the Strategic Air Command), in the pre-Vietnam era, and was stationed in Kansas.^{[clarification needed]} He later worked as a merchant marine on the S.S. Atlantic and in a bank, before becoming involved in the music industry.

wn.com/Tim_Rose
Tim Watts
Tim Watts is a short film maker and caricaturist on TV's Spitting Image. Watts won the BAFTA award with longtime collaborator, David Stoten in 1994 for The Big Story.

wn.com/Tim_Watts
Tony Benn
Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC (born 3 April 1925), formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, is a British Labour Party politician, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for fifty years, and was also a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.
His successful campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963. In the Labour Government of 1964–1970 he served first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as a notably "technocratic" Minister of Technology. In the period when the Labour Party was in Opposition, Benn served for a year as the Chairman of the Labour Party. In the Labour Government of 1974–1979, he returned to the Cabinet, initially serving as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy, retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister. During the Labour Party's time in Opposition during the 1980s, he was seen as the party's prominent figure on the left, and the term "Bennite" has come to be used in Britain for someone of a more radical left-wing position.

wn.com/Tony_Benn
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He resigned from all of these positions in June 2007.
Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election of July 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under his leadership, the party used the phrases "New Labour" and "New Socialism" to define its policy, and moved away from its support of state socialism since the 1960s and created a new version of the ethical socialism that was last pursued by Clement Attlee. Critics of Blair claim that "New Labour" did not adhere to socialism as claimed, and that it effectively advocated capitalism. Blair subsequently led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1997 general election. At 43 years old, he became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. In the first years of the New Labour government, Blair's government implemented a number of 1997 manifesto pledges, introducing the minimum wage, Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and carrying out devolution, establishing the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

wn.com/Tony_Blair
Tony Hendra
Tony Hendra (born 1941) is an English satirist and writer who has worked mostly in the United States. Educated at St Albans School (where he was a classmate of Stephen Hawking) and Cambridge University, he was a member of the Cambridge University Footlights revue in 1962, alongside John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor.
In 1964 Hendra moved to America, where he worked as a comedian, sometimes teamed with comic actor Nick Ullett as "Hendra and Ullett," appearing on the Merv Griffin Show multiple times and six times on the Ed Sullivan Show. He wrote for National Lampoon magazine from its beginning in 1970 and in 1971 became the first editor hired by founders Doug Kenney and Henry Beard. In 1972 Hendra co-created National Lampoon's first album Radio Dinner with Michael O'Donoghue on which he performed a parody of John Lennon entitled Magical Misery Tour. In 1973 he produced, directed and co-wrote (with Sean Kelly), the Lampoon's off-Broadway revue Lemmings in which Hendra cast John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Christopher Guest in their first starring roles. Hendra was an editor of the Lampoon until 1974, and was co-editor-in-chief with Sean Kelly from 1975-1978.

wn.com/Tony_Hendra
Tony Sarchet
Tony Sarchet is a British television and radio writer for alternative comedy shows.
Sarchet studied chemistry at University College Oxford , where he was a member of the University College Players and wrote a review called Gargoyles at the Oxford Playhouse with John Albery and Graham Wall in 1978.
He started his professional career writing for hit shows including Three of a Kind and Spitting Image, and for comedians such as Lenny Henry and Jasper Carrott.
In 1984, his Sony Award winning BBC Radio 4 satire Delve Special begun, a comedic parody of Roger Cook's investigative journalism series 'Checkpoint'. This time starring Stephen Fry as investigative journalist David Lander. When Roger Cook moved to television, so did his parody, in the Tony Sarchet written series This is David Lander and This is David Harper (this last series with Tony Slattery in the main role).
Sarchet went on to write the Screen One TV film Trust Me starring Alfred Molina and in 2001 the ITV sitcom High Stakes with Richard Wilson.

wn.com/Tony_Sarchet
Virginia Bottomley
Virginia Bottomley, Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone, PC, DL (née Virginia Hilda Brunette Maxwell Garnett, born 12 March 1948, Dunoon, Scotland) is a British Conservative Party politician. She was a Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons from 1984 to 2005. She was raised to the peerage in 2005. Considered to be a "One Nation Conservative", Bottomley is a Life Member of the Tory Reform Group. Virginia is a member of the Supervisory Board of AkzoNobel NV, an NED on BUPA and a Trustee of The Economist Newspaper. As part of her pro-bono activities, Virginia is Chancellor of the University of Hull and Governor of the London School of Economics. She is a member of the UK Advisory Council of the International Chamber of Commerce. She has been Chair of the Board Practice at executive head hunting firm Odgers Berndtson since 2001.
Virginia Hilda Brunette Maxwell Garnett was born in Dunoon to W. John Garnett, former director of what was then called The Industrial Society, and Barbara Rutherford-Smith, former pupil of the School of St Helen and St Katharine, teacher and elected Conservative member of the Inner London Education Authority. Her aunt on her father's side was Labour Greater London Council Member Peggy Jay. She met Peter, now Sir Peter Bottomley her husband, when she was 12.

wn.com/Virginia_Bottomley
William Todd Jones
William Todd-Jones (sometimes known as William Todd Jones) is a British puppet designer, performer, director, movement consultant and writer, for film, television and theatre in the UK and abroad. He worked on the forthcoming Pixar movie, John Carter of Mars, directed by Andrew Stanton, for which he taught stilt-walking and was the in-camera reference for the Calot, Woola. He has performed creatures & puppets on numerous feature films including; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Harry Potter V, Jim Henson's Labyrinth, the various Muppet movies, The Neverending Story, Judge Dredd, Batman, Pinocchio, Lost in Space, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 101 Dalmatians and Fierce Creatures.
In recent years he has specialised in bridging the disciplines of live performance and computer graphic animation, developing techniques in optical motion capture, performance animation and digital puppetry. He was integral to the development and production of the pre-school TV series, "What's Your News?", broadcast on Nick Jr, which was entered for the “Japan Prize”, an international competition for educational shows, organised by NHK (Japan’s equivalent of the BBC) in Tokyo. They had over 360 shows entered from 65 countries and “What’s Your News” not only won “Best Pre-School Show” but also the overall “Grand Prix Prize”.

wn.com/William_Todd_Jones

best ever spitting image part 1 of 7

best ever spitting image part 1 of 7...

published: 12 May 2009

author: kers80bhp

Spitting Image - Series 1 - Episode 1 - Part 1-2

Please Visit our Forum to watch more classic British TV Series: www.GrangeHillClub.Co.Uk...

published: 06 Jan 2011

author: UKTVClassic

Spitting Image - S01E03 - Thatcher's Cabinet

What do we call it when people go around stealing other people's property?...

published: 21 Jun 2011

author: junkrika

I Did It My Way

Another grand musical number from Maggie, about how she did it her way. Spitting Image is ...

published: 03 Oct 2009

author: Sparrowmaiden

Spitting Image - Last Ever Episode (1996)

LOL at the Quentin Tarantino puppet! :-D...

published: 20 Jan 2011

author: faym1982

George Bush on Mastermind (spitting Image)

to bring a smile to your face :)...

published: 09 Sep 2008

author: ascend2luv

Spitting Image - Royal Family Breakfast/Cecil Parkinson

...

published: 05 Jan 2010

author: AndrewJimScott

Spitting Image - Tony Blair Interview

Brain Wladen from the 90's (???) In his (Short- lived???) chat show, I think....

published: 18 Feb 2010

author: AndrewJimScott

Spitting Image - 80s House Price Slump

www.the-crunch.com...

published: 30 Mar 2008

author: ally008

Spitting Image - An Audience with Ronald Reagan

"How's your arsehole doing?" "Casper Whinburger is just fine." 1987 Also look out for pupp...

published: 04 Sep 2009

author: AndrewJimScott

youtube - spitting image never met a nice south african.mp4

...

published: 30 Nov 2008

author: rjegyt

Essex Is Crap Song From Spitting Image

One of the funniest things I ever saw on Spitting Image. Having lived in Essex for most of...

published: 15 May 2009

author: STORMCLOUDGREY

SPITTING IMAGE (24th November 1991)

Spitting Image was a British satirical puppet show which ran on the ITV television network...

published: 24 Feb 2010

author: Dee Raz

Spitting Image - Every Bomb You Drop

...

published: 30 May 2009

author: stormtrouper2

youtube - spitting image never met a nice south african.mp4

...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Essex Is Crap Song From Spitting Image

One of the funniest things I ever saw on Spitting Image. Having lived in Essex for most of...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image 1987 Election Special. Tomorrow belongs to me

This is the closing scene from the Spitting Image 1987 Election Special. It is a parody of...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image - 80s House Price Slump

http://www.the-crunch.com...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image - My God Is Bigger Than Your God

After being off youtube so long I just think it's right to have it back on there. Satire ...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image - RS232 Interface Lead

Already uploaded but thought I'd upload it on it's own....

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Neil Kinnock in Spitting Image - Series 5

Highlights from this series include Jeffrey Archer appearing on Mastermind, Neil Kinnock b...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image - Granthem Anthem

Reuploaded for nedoflanders. Who posted this a long time ago.So I thought It about time i...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image - Cricket Song

...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image - There's An Indifference at Mcgregors You'll Enjoy!

'There's an indifference at Mcgregors you'll enjoy!' Highly amusing parody of a fast food ...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image - Ronnie Reagan Song

...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image - We're Wets

...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image - Not Quite Free

...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

Spitting Image The World Cup Song, 1990

Spitting Image The World Cup Song, 1990. Kevin Powell on bass, Music by Phillip Pope, Mu...

published: 26 Jun 2011

author: fegman2

best ever spitting image part 7 of 7

best ever spitting image part 7 of 7...

published: 14 May 2009

author: kers80bhp

best ever spitting image part 6 of 7

best ever spitting image part 6 of 7...

published: 14 May 2009

author: kers80bhp

best ever spitting image part 5 of 7

best ever spitting image part 5 of 7...

published: 14 May 2009

author: kers80bhp

best ever spitting image part 4 of 7

best ever spitting image part 4 of 7...

published: 14 May 2009

author: kers80bhp

best ever spitting image part 3 of 7

best ever spitting image part 3 of 7...

published: 14 May 2009

author: kers80bhp

best ever spitting image part 2 of 7

best ever spitting image part 2 of 7...

published: 14 May 2009

author: kers80bhp

best ever spitting image part 1 of 7

best ever spitting image part 1 of 7...

published: 14 May 2009

author: kers80bhp

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photo: AP / Juan Karita

File - Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez, front, gestures during a ceremony honoring Bolivia's Independence heroines in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Wednesday, July 18, 2012.

Argentina reasserts claim over Falklands

Al Jazeera

04 Jan 2013

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has released a public letter urging the United Kingdom to relinquish its control over the disputed Falkland Islands. ... The veterans delivered a letter addressed to the British Ambassador in Argentina, John Freeman, criticising the British government for refusing to discuss the sovereignty of the islands with the Argentine government ... 508 Source .. Al Jazeera and agencies. Share....(size: 19.6Kb)

photo: WN / Imran Nissar

Youth Brigade of Kashmir carry out a protest demonstration in Srinagar, India, on Monday 24, December 2012. As solidarity with Delhi gang-rape case. The protesters were demanding action against people involved in rape incidents across the country.

Indian gang rape: suspects to appear in court

The Daily Telegraph

03 Jan 2013

A gang of men accused of repeatedly raping a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in a deadly crime that repulsed the nation are to appear in court today for the first time. A British tourist join others in a candlelight vigil to mourn the death of a gang rape victim, in Kolkata, India Photo. AP. 3.52AM GMT 03 Jan 2013 ... Police have ordered a bone test to determine his age and whether he can stand trial in an adult court....(size: 11.3Kb)

photo: US Navy / HMC Josh Ives

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Mark Martin, right, civil affairs team lead for Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Farah, shakes hands and laughs with Mawlawi Guhlam M. Ruhaani, director of Hajj and Endowment, at the conclusion of a key leader engagement in Farah City, Dec. 29, 2012.

US working hard to have support for Afghan reconciliation

Zeenews

03 Jan 2013

Washington. Aiming to get cooperation through dialogue, the US said that it is working hard to create an environment within Afghanistan and also in the region to have support for Afghan-Afghan reconciliation ... Responding to questions, Nuland said the US supports an Afghan-led process of reconciliation ... Saying that Pakistan needs to engage with Afghanistan directly, Nuland said the US supports dialogue between the two ... PTI ... First Published....(size: 2.3Kb)

photo: AP / Mohammad Hannon

A Syrian refugee speaks to his family through a hole in their tent in Zaatari Syrian refugee camp, near the Syrian border in Mafraq, Jordan, Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012.

UN lifts Syria death toll over 60,000

NZ Herald

02 Jan 2013

The United Nations has estimated that more than 60,000 people have been killed in Syria's 21-month-old uprising against authoritarian rule, a toll one-third higher than what anti-regime activists had counted. The UN human rights chief called the toll "truly shocking". Opposition activist groups had been estimating the death toll at more than 45,000 and this was the first time that the UN estimate was higher ... 30, 2012 ... - AP. ....(size: 6.3Kb)

photo: AP / Yadana Htun

Kachin refugees wait for rations by Kachin Independence Army at Je Yang IDP camp, the biggest and closest camp to Laiza, northern Myanmar, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013.

Myanmar Refugees Fearful After Fighting Escalates

The New York Times

04 Jan 2013

LAIZA, Myanmar (AP) — Ethnic Kachins living in makeshift camps in Myanmar described their terror at the army's use of air power during fighting with Kachin rebels seeking more autonomy as the government said Friday that it has exercised maximum restraint. Connect With Us on Twitter. Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List. Reporters and Editors ... Are We Becoming Cyborgs?. IHT Magazine ...   ... ....(size: 10.1Kb)

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Icelandic man duct taped to chair after being drunk and disorderly

Celebrity Café

05 Jan 2013

The unidentified man was reportedly spitting on others, grabbing women and harassing airline workers before air passengers intervened and subdued the man with duct tape. User Mezane posted the story on Reddit along with a photograph detailing the experience ... This was 2 hours into a 6 hour flight.” ... image ... ....(size: 1.5Kb)

Drunk man bound, taped to seat of plane over threats

The Examiner

05 Jan 2013

On Jan. 4, Fox News reported that the unnamed passenger aboard a flight out of Reykjavik began spitting on passengers and yelling, "The plane was going to crash." ... In addition to the spitting episodes and verbal rants, the intoxicated man tried to choke a woman sitting next to him on the plane ... Also read.. "Cops banned from Denny's ... ....(size: 1.8Kb)

Mel Gibson's dad divorced: Hutton Gibson free from Teddy Joye Hicks after elder abuse claims

Zap2it

05 Jan 2013

Mel Gibson's dad, Hutton Gibson, divorced wife Teddy Joye Hicks after a seven-month separation ... For her part, Teddy Joye claims Mel sabotaged her marriage, and literally spit in her face ... ....(size: 0.9Kb)

Movie review: 'Silent Night'

The Examiner

05 Jan 2013

Rating for Silent Night. 3. There is no point in remaking anything ... Frankly, most of them are throwaways that exist solely for the sake of making a few extra bucks off of an already established title ... Many of them are straight out of a Rob Zombie film, cruel and hateful, spitting vitriol at everything that comes in contact with them ... They spit surprising insults at Aubrey (the doormat) and even hurl direct sexual harassment ... 'Gentlemen... ....(size: 7.1Kb)

Passengers use duct tape to restrain unruly man on Iceland to New York flight

Fox31 Denver

05 Jan 2013

By Brittany Brady. Man restrained with duct tape on Iceland to NY flight. Photo courtesy. Andy Ellwood (http.//andyellwood.tumblr.com) ... The man was “hitting, screaming and spitting at other passengers, while yelling profanities,” according to airline spokesman Michael Raucheisen, who said the passenger’s “behavior was considered to be unruly and threatening.” ... ....(size: 1.8Kb)

Australian climbers 'lucky' to survive 200m fall on NZ's Mount Cook

Canberra Times

05 Jan 2013

TWO Australian climbers attempting to scale Mount Cook in New Zealand have been rescued after being struck by a falling chunk of ice and falling 200 metres down an ice slope. The pair managed to break their fall, then, injured, made their way to a hut at about 1am and called for help ... It was a very lucky escape.'' ... ''It differs from season to season but obviously this year it's in a condition to spit stuff out.'' ... ....(size: 2.5Kb)

Objekt's favourite tracks

The Guardian

05 Jan 2013

The man behind mutant dubstep monster Cactus empties the contents of his psychic record bag. Objekt. The track I'll be opening my next DJ set with. Madteo Vox Your Nu Yr Resolution. I almost always start my sets with something beatless as it's a good palate cleanser for whatever came before. The whole Madteo album makes you feel like you're sleepwalking through treacle.The track I always play to rescue a dancefloor. Objekt ... Spitting Bile ... ....(size: 3.9Kb)

Man on Icelandair Flight Is Said to Have Been Restrained by Fellow Passengers

The New York Times

05 Jan 2013

It landed online Friday. a picture of a middle-aged man crudely bound and taped to his airline seat, apparently against his will ... But Mr ... It involved, he said in an e-mail, “a disruptive male passenger who was hitting, screaming and spitting at other passengers while yelling profanities.” He continued. ... More about the popular online image of an airline passenger bound by tape during a flight to Kennedy International Airport ... ....(size: 6.7Kb)

Man duct-taped by fellow passengers

NZ Herald

05 Jan 2013

A drunken passenger on a New York-bound flight from Iceland was duct-taped to his seat by fellow passengers after reportedly attacking one woman, spitting on other passengers and screaming the plane was going to crash. A friend of one of the observing passengers, Andy Ellwood of New York, posted a picture of the subdued flyer to his ... 'When he became unruly, (i.e ... He was escorted off the flight by police when it landed.' ... - Daily Mail . ....(size: 2.8Kb)

Aussies escape death in Mt Cook fall

Canberra Times

05 Jan 2013

THEY are calling it the miracle of Mount Cook. Two Australians making a night-time ascent were struck by a chunk of ice and knocked 200 metres down an ice slope - in the very area that claimed the life of an Australian mountaineer in 2008 ... Neal Davis, 35, and Adam Glen, 34, were lifted to safety by helicopter on Saturday ... ''It differs from season to season but obviously this year it's in a condition to spit stuff out.'' ... ....(size: 3.2Kb)

Man restrained after becoming unruly on Iceland to New York flight

CNN

05 Jan 2013

January 5, 2013 -- Updated 0115 GMT (0915 HKT). New York (CNN) -- Get too far out of line aboard an international flight and you could be restrained in your seat with zip ties and duct tape ... The man was "hitting, screaming and spitting at other passengers, while yelling profanities," according to airline spokesman Michael Raucheisen, who said the passenger's "behavior was considered to be unruly and threatening." ... 0. Comments » ... ... ....(size: 3.5Kb)

Man killed by Pennsylvania State Police had 'crazed look'

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

05 Jan 2013

The man who cut a Pennsylvania State Police trooper with scissors Friday morning had "a crazed look in his eye" minutes before authorities said he was shot and killed by police in an East Huntingdon strip mall parking lot ... "He never spoke," she said ... About 9 a.m ... Ms ... O'Donnell, who was inside the store about 15 minutes, was "acting very strange" and grabbing items off shelves and spitting on the floor. Mr ... O'Donnell into custody....(size: 3.5Kb)

Alice and Clare

The Guardian

05 Jan 2013

A thrilling night out with Sharon Gless, my youthful crush. Alice Arnold, right, with partner Clare Balding. 'Where do you take a huge American star to dinner?' Photograph. Linda Nylind for the Guardian. In my early 20s I developed a crush. I had had crushes before of course. I had followed my peers and swooned over Donny Osmond. Then I switched allegiance to David Cassidy ... The blonde one ... It wasn't ... It was not good ... Not little spits and spots....(size: 5.4Kb)

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This article is about the TV show. For the video game, see Spitting Image (video game). For the unrelated 1998 book by Jerry Lembecke, see The Spitting Image.

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Spitting Image
200px Spitting Image album cover for "Da Do Run Ron" satirical parody of Ronald Reagan
Genre	Political satire Shock value
Format	Puppet show Parody
Voices of	Chris Barrie Harry Enfield Jon Glover Louise Gold Steve Nallon Kate Robbins John Sessions et al.
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of series	18
No. of episodes	132
Production
Producer(s)	Pozzitive Television Spitting Image Productions Central Independent Television
Running time	30 to 60 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	ITV
Original run	26 February 1984 – 18 February 1996

Spitting Image is a British satirical puppet show that aired on the ITV network from 1984 to 1996. It was produced by Spitting Image Productions for Central Independent Television. The series was nominated for 10 BAFTA Awards, winning one for editing in 1989.

The series featured puppet caricatures of celebrities famous during the 1980s and 1990s. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and fellow Tory politicians, American president Ronald Reagan, and the British Royal Family were the most prominent targets.

History [link]

Development [link]

Martin Lambie-Nairn proposed a satirical television show featuring puppets to Peter Fluck and Roger Law, two illustrators and sculptors who worked mostly for print. The puppets, caricaturing public figures, were designed by Fluck and Law. They were assisted by caricaturists including David Stoten, Pablo Bach, Steve Bendelack and Tim Watts. Musical parodies were by Philip Pope (former member of Who Dares Wins and The Hee Bee Gee Bees) and later Steve Brown (who appeared as bandleader Glen Ponder in Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge.

Beginnings [link]

Fluck and Law had no television experience, but had for several years constructed plasticine caricatures to illustrate articles in the Sunday Times Magazine. They brought in comedy writer and National Lampoon editor Tony Hendra, whom they had met while working in the United States. Hendra brought in John Lloyd, producer of Not The Nine O'Clock News. They were joined by Jon Blair, a documentary producer. They then hired Muppet puppeteer Louise Gold. Development was funded by Clive Sinclair. At the start, in 1984 and 1985, the show was not doing well and was nearly cancelled. Several politicians found their characterisations offensive, although in subsequent interviews many were glad of the attention.^{[citation needed]} Rob Grant and Doug Naylor were brought in as head writers to save the show. By 1986, under their supervision, Spitting Image had become popular, producing a Number 1 hit but the pair left to create Red Dwarf for BBC2.

The show had a short-running dispute with the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) in 1985 over use of subliminal images.

Production [link]

Shows were recorded at Central's studios in Nottingham with last minute additions being recorded at the Limehouse Studios at Canary Wharf, London. It was at these latter facilities that Spitting Image Productions were based.

Evolution [link]

When Margaret Thatcher resigned in November 1990, her successor was John Major. This marked a shift in the show's style with the writers moving from the Punch and Judy style to more subtle and atmospheric sketches, notably a series in which an awkward John and Norma Major ate peas for dinner. The producers dressed Major, skin and all, in shades of grey. They invented an affair between him and Virginia Bottomley. It emerged later that Major had indeed had an affair, but with Edwina Currie (who the writers had considered using).

The show added animated sketches from 1989 and again from 1994 (with short, animated segments before 1989). Most notable was a studio audience for the 1992 Election Special, a format which was revisited for two episodes in late 1993. A spoof Question Time took questions from the audience. The 1992 show was fronted by a puppet Robin Day, a puppet Jeremy Paxman filling the role in the episodes broadcast on 14 November 1993 and 12 December 1993. The 1992 Election Special was the first time Spitting Image had been performed to a studio audience.

(Note: the first episode of Spitting Image, in 1984, aired with a laugh track, apparently at the insistence of Central Television. This episode was shown to a preview audience before transmission.)^[1]

Decline [link]

The writers, Mark Burton, John O'Farrell, Pete Sinclair and Stuart Silver quit the show in 1993 and in 1995, and with viewing figures in decline, production was cancelled. The final series was in January and February 1996. The final episode featured "The Last Prophecies of Spitting Image" in which Labour moved into Number 10.

ITV's plans for a new series were scrapped in 2006 after a dispute over Ant & Dec puppets. The puppets were used to host the reviews "Best Ever Spitting Image" against Roger Law's wishes.^[2]

Broadcast dates [link]

All episodes and specials were broadcast on Sunday, usually at 10pm.

The programme was also picked up overseas. It aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday nights in the late 1980s. The American network NBC aired several prime-time specials in the same period.

Series [link]

Series	Year	Dates	No. episodes	Times
Series 1	1984	26 February - 17 June	12 episodes	Mostly 10pm
Series 2	1985	6 January - 24 March	11 episodes	Mostly 10pm
Series 3	1986	6 January - 2 Nov	18 episodes	Mostly 10pm
Series 4	1987	1 November - 6 December	6 episodes	Mostly 10pm
Series 5	1988	6 November - 11 December	6 episodes	Mostly 10pm
Series 6	1989	11 June - 9 July	5 episodes	Mostly 9.30pm
Series 7	1989	12 November - 17 December	6 episodes	Mostly 10.05pm
Series 8	1990	13 May - 24 June	6 episodes	Mostly 10.05pm
Series 9	1990	11 November - 16 December	6 episodes	Mostly 10.05pm
Series 10	1991	14 April - 19 May	6 episodes	Mostly 10.05pm
Series 11	1991	10 November - 15 December	6 episodes	Mostly 10.05pm
Series 12	1992	12 April - 17 May	6 episodes	Mostly 10.05pm
Series 13	1992	4 October - 8 November	6 episodes	10.05pm
Series 14	1993	16 May - 20 June	6 episodes	10.45pm
Series 15	1993	7 November - 12 December	6 episodes	10pm
Series 16	1994	1 May - 5 June	6 episodes	10pm
Series 17	1994	6 November - 18 December	7 episodes	10pm
Series 18	1996	14 January - 18 February	6 episodes	Mostly 11.15pm

Specials [link]

Title	Year	Date	Times	Duration
Down And Out In The White House	1986	14 September	9.45pm	45 minutes
The Spitting Image 1987 Movie Awards	1987	Saturday 4 April	10.45pm	30 minutes
Election Special	1987	Thursday 11 June	10pm	45 minutes
A Non-Denominational Spitting Image Holiday Special	1987	27 December	10pm	30 minutes
The Ronnie And Nancy Show	1988	17 April	9.30pm	30 minutes
Bumbledown - The Life and Times of Ronald Reagan	1988	Saturday 29 October	10.15pm	45 minutes
The Sound Of Maggie	1989	Saturday 6 May	10.10pm	45 minutes
Election Special	1992	Wednesday 8 April	10.40pm	30 minutes
The Spitting Image Pantomime	1993	26 December	10pm	30 minutes
Ye Olde Spitting Image	1995	1 January	10.45pm	30 minutes

Legacy and repeats [link]

From October 1996 to January 1998, Spitting Image Series 1-11 were on UK GOLD, repeated on UK GOLD from January to September 1998 but shown three times per week. Edited episodes from Series 1-3 and 7 were on Granada Plus from 2001-2003.

Most of the puppets were sold online at an auction hosted by Sotheby's, including a puppet of Osama Bin Laden never used in the series.

On 25 June 2006, ITV transmitted Best Ever Spitting Image. Speculation that a new series would follow was dismissed.^[3]

In February 2008, Comedy Central Extra started showing regular repeats of Spitting Image from 9pm on Tuesday evenings, with a whole weekend's worth of evenings devoted to the first two series.

From 2001 to 2004 the ITV series 2DTV had a similar style, but using computer animation instead of puppets.

Characters [link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Politicians [link]

Many British politicians in parliament during Margaret Thatcher's tenure were parodied. By far the most prominent was Thatcher herself, portrayed as a bullying tyrant and cross-dresser (she wore suits, used the urinals and was portrayed as a cigar-chomper). The Thatcher puppet had a strong dislike of anything French (agreeing with Hitler about 'teaching those Frenchies where to go' and throwing an apple out the window because it was French).

Alongside Thatcher were her Cabinet, which included:

Willie Whitelaw, with fluffy eyebrows and wearing a tartan dressing gown to cabinet meetings.
Nigel Lawson, panicking about some financial crisis he had accidentally caused.
Geoffrey Howe, boring, bland and talked to sheep.
Douglas Hurd, famous for his Dalek-style voice and his hair shaped like a "Mr Whippy" ice cream.^[4]
Norman Tebbit, appearing as a leather-clad skinhead loyal to Thatcher, referring to her as "Leader" and often beating up other politicians.^[5]
Michael Heseltine, growing more manic with every series (and wearing a flak jacket as Defence Secretary).
Leon Brittan, constantly sucking up to Thatcher.
Norman Fowler, portrayed during his time as Health Secretary as a hospital-murdering Jack the Ripper-style lunatic.
Cecil Parkinson, having sexual intercourse with every woman in sight.
Edwina Currie, portrayed as a vampire.
Paul Channon, childish.
Kenneth Baker, transforming into a slug over the series.
Nicholas Ridley, smoking and developing the countryside for houses.
Kenneth Clarke, obese and drunk despite being Minister for Health.
Colin Moynihan, minuscule and childlike, called "miniature for sport"

Thatcher's successor John Major was portrayed as a dull, boring grey character who enjoyed a meal of peas with his wife Norma and was constantly mocked by Humphrey, the Downing Street cat. Before Thatcher's resignation, Major had been portrayed as robotic with a spinning antenna on his head (it was explained in a sketch that Thatcher used it to control Major, standing behind Thatcher in the crowd of sycophantic cabinet members, eager to repeat whatever the Thatcher puppet screeched).

The Opposition (Labour Party) politicians included:

Neil Kinnock, the 'Welsh Windbag', talking for hours about anything other than policies.
Roy Hattersley, spitting with every word because of his lisp (on 'Best Ever Spitting Image', Hattersley praised his puppet for 'putting the spit into Spitting Image').
Michael Foot, aged and senile, ending sentences with "Yes! Argh!".
Tony Benn, a rampant socialist with eyes that never looked in the same direction.
Ken Livingstone, whose living room was filled with salamanders and snakes.
Denis Healey, with giant eyebrows, always helping Kinnock to look a fool.
Gerald Kaufman, portrayed as a Hannibal Lecter-style maniac.

Arthur Scargill, who was a member of the Labour Party until 1997, appeared as head of the National Union of Mineworkers, and was portrayed as a big-nosed egotist ignorant about mining.

In 1994, a puppet of Tony Blair made his appearance. He was originally a public school boy, wearing grey shorts, blazer and cap. His catchphrase was "I'M THE LEADER" in reference to his attempt to lead the Labour Party. When Blair did become Labour leader, the puppet changed and he was portrayed with his grin replaced with an even bigger smile if he said something of importance. The deputy leader, John Prescott, was portrayed as a fat bumbling assistant, along with a squeaky voiced Robin Cook, and an enormous glasses-wearing Jack Straw.

The SDP-Liberal Alliance was portrayed by the election-losing, populist, arrogant and undecided David Owen, with whining, bedwetting David Steel in his pocket. They were soon replaced by Paddy Ashdown, whose "equidistance" from the larger parties was satirised by his frequent appearance at the side of the screen during unrelated sketches, saying: "I am neither in this sketch nor not in it, but somewhere in-between". This running gag was used when Ashdown's extramarital affair was revealed, and his puppet commented that "I didn't touch her on the left leg, or the right leg, but somewhere in-between."

Royal Family [link]

The main characters were:

The Queen, wears a CND badge, always seemed slightly mad and picked clothes from rubbish bins
The Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen's husband, was a blunderbuss-toting Greek-obsessed buffoon in naval uniform
Charles, Prince of Wales was a pseudo-hippie then a taxi driver in later episodes
Diana, Princess of Wales was a publicity-hungry Sloane Ranger

Other members who were parodied include:

Prince Andrew, Duke of York
The Duchess of York ("Fergie"), who was always snuffling for truffles
The Princess Royal
Prince Edward, a petulant teenager
Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, who was always tipsy
Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, who was generally seen with a bottle of Gordon's Gin, a copy of the Racing Post, a Beryl Reid voice; this was a running joke from a sketch in which the Royal Family's desire to conceal her Birmingham accent was the reason she was very seldom heard speaking on television. In the series she is seen with jockey Lester Piggott with whom she has an affair.

International politicians [link]

Spitting Image lampooned US President Ronald Reagan as a bumbling, nuke-obsessed fool in comparison with his advisors Edwin Meese and Caspar Weinberger. Next to his bed were red buttons labelled 'Nuke' and 'Nurse'. His wife Nancy was the butt of cosmetic surgery jokes.

Mikhail Gorbachev had his forehead birthmark in the shape of hammer and sickle. All other Russians looked like Leonid Brezhnev, often said "da" ("yes") and talked about potatoes. In Russia it was snowing even indoors and the Soviet television had extremely low-tech visual effects.

François Mitterrand was wearing a beret and a garlic wreath. P. W. Botha was shown as a racist cleverly disguising his views (once he had a badge "anti-anti-apartheid"). Adolf Hitler incognito had a house at 9 Downing Street. Some appearances were also made by Idi Amin, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, Ruhollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

Other international caricatures included Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger; George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle; Konstantin Chernenko, Raisa Gorbachova and Boris Yeltsin.

Sport [link]

England manager Bobby Robson was a senile worrier nicknamed 'Rubbisho'. Player Paul Gascoigne appeared, frequently crying - a parody of the World Cup semi-final against West Germany in which he famously cried after being booked, which would have ruled him out of the final had England won the game. Ian Botham was a violent drug addict, while Mike Gatting spoke with a high voice. Lester Piggott had to be subtitled. Boxing characters included Frank Bruno with his trademark laugh and catchphrase "where's 'Arry?", and Chris Eubank, with his lisp. Steve Davis was boring, upset because he had no nickname, but thought himself interesting.

Celebrities [link]

News reporters were also depicted. Alastair Burnet was sycophantic towards the Royal Family and with a nose that inflated. Sandy Gall was effeminate, always worrying what coat he would wear. John Cole was incomprehensible and had to be dragged off-screen when he talked too long. Nicholas Witchell was always turning up during a strike to work rather than report. Kate Adie was a thrill-seeker, BBC Head of Bravery. Jeremy Paxman appeared as uninterested and self-loving. David Coleman had a very loud ear prompter and sometimes didn't know what he was commenting. Frank Bough was portrayed as stoned, while Selina Scott was thick. Terry Wogan was all-Irish ("top o' the ratings to y'!"). Bruce Forsyth, who spoke every sentence as though it was a catchphrase. Melvin Bragg sniffed milk from a baby bottle and had a nasal voice. Film critic Barry Norman was not a fan of his puppet, because it had a wart on its forehead.^[5] Paul Daniels did not mind jokes about his toupée but took offense to a sketch depicting him nuzzling his assistant Debbie McGee's breasts.^[5]

Comedian Billy Connolly was portrayed as a jester, and Jimmy Tarbuck was said to use old jokes and always take part in Royal Variety Performance. Bernard Manning was an obese racist, Ben Elton was always shown with a microphone. John Cleese and Stephen Fry appeared from time to time with no added peculiarities of character.

Writer Jeffrey Archer appeared as a very annoying self-commenting writer whose books weren't read by anyone. Ray Cooney was criticized for strikingly similar and far-fetched farces. Alan Bennett was shown at home as watching Spitting Image on TV.

A Mick Jagger character seemed perpetually high, and Keith Richards so old and haggard that he thought he was dead. Ringo Starr was a drunkard, and Paul McCartney was always releasing albums and films that flopped. Madonna changed her hair and clothes with every episode, and Michael Jackson's skin turned lighter. Luciano Pavarotti was hugely overweight and ate everything he saw. Andrew Lloyd Webber was said to have his face inside out.

Actor Dustin Hoffman spoke nasally and was parodied for his method acting. John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier were lamenting their friends, even their own death. Roger Moore was shown as an actor "with a wooden delivery" – only his eyebrows moved. Sylvester Stallone was all-brawn but no-brain, and Arnold Schwarzenegger muscle-bound but insecure about the size of his genitals.

Archbishop Robert Runcie, Mary Whitehouse and Cliff Richard were portrayed as Christian censors. Ian Paisley was always dressed black and shouting. Pope John Paul II was a banjo-playing womaniser who spoke with a Texan accent.

Media moguls Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch were also on the show, the latter depicted as an extremely flatulent individual encouraging obscenity in his mass media.

Rubber News [link]

Main article: Rubber News

Rubber News was a recurring short news feature screened as one of the sketches during the programme. Rubber News first appeared on episode 7 of series 1, which aired on 13 May 1984.

The songs [link]

The first single from Spitting Image, released in 1984, was a rework of the Crystals' Da Do Ron Ron. The Spitting Image version, Da Do Run Ron, was a spoof election campaign song for Ronald Reagan, featuring Nancy Reagan listing reasons why "you gotta re-elect him", with lyrics like "Yeah! He can really act, Yeah! He lowered income tax, Yeah! He hates the Warsaw Pact". The cover of the single featured Reagan as a biker with Nancy riding pillion.

The B-side of this single was another rework of an existing song, namely Just A Girl Who Can't Say No from the musical Oklahoma. The Spitting Image team's version was entitled Just A Prince Who Can't Say No and poked fun at the sexual indiscretions of The Prince Andrew.^[6]

In 1986, the Spitting Image puppets had a number one hit in the UK charts with "The Chicken Song", parodying "Agadoo" by Black Lace – one of several parodies to have featured in the programme, mimicking moronic holiday songs with an annoyingly unforgettable tune and completely nonsensical lyrics. The Chicken Song hit number 1 in the charts for 3 weeks from 17 May 1986 – 3 June 1986 and VH1 US named it as one of the worst number 1 nominations.

The other songs released by Spitting Image were "I've Never Met a Nice South African" (which was on the B-Side of "The Chicken Song" and was a savage indictment of the apartheid-ridden country), "We're Scared Of Bob" and "Hello You Must Be Going" (on the 12" release of The Chicken Song), "Santa Claus Is On The Dole" (backed with "The Atheist Tabernacle Choir"), "The Christmas Singles" and "Cry Gazza Cry". "The Chicken Song" was by far the most successful of all of their music and not-so-subtle references were made to it in subsequent sketches in the show itself. In 1986, a compilation LP "Spit In Your Ear" was produced, featuring some of their sketches over time along with a few of their songs, followed in 1990 by "20 Great Golden Gobs", a songs-only collection from the 1986-1990 series.

In 1986, the Spitting Image team experienced some "real" musical success when they created the video for "Land of Confusion" by Genesis, a song which implied that Thatcher and Reagan were about to bring the world to a nuclear war. Phil Collins saw a disfigured version of himself on the show and contacted the show's producers with the idea to produce the video. The video was depicted as a nightmare Reagan was having, which left him completely immersed in sweat from worrying.

The end of the 1987 election featured a young boy, dressed as a city banker, singing "Tomorrow Belongs To Me", a parody of the film Cabaret, when a member of the Hitler Youth starts singing the same song. In a season 5 episode, Labour leader Neil Kinnock is portrayed singing a self-parody to the tune "My eyes are fully open" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore, supported by members of his shadow cabinet.^[7]

In one instance Sting was persuaded to sing a re-worded version of "Every Breath You Take", titled "Every Bomb You Make" (series 1, episode 12), to accompany a video showing the Spitting Image puppets of world leaders and political figures of the day, usually with the figure matching the altered lyrics "Every wall you build, Every one you've killed, Every grave you've filled, all the blood you've spilled, I'll be watching you." The video ended with the grim reaper appearing in front of a sunset. This version was due to be resurrected by Sting at the Live8 concert, and the parody lyrics were cleared with their writers Quentin Reynolds and James Glen, but plans were abandoned at the last minute.

Other musical parodies featured Michael Jackson, Kylie Minogue, The Monkees, Pulp, Brett Anderson of Suede, Pet Shop Boys, Elvis Presley, Oasis, ZZ Top, Prince and Barbra Streisand.

Video and DVD releases [link]

The programme was first released on video in 1986 in a series of three collections, each a compilation of material from the first two series: Spit - With Polish!, A Floppy Mass Of Blubber & Rubber Thingies. All carried a 15 certificate and were reissued in 1988, also as a box set. 1989 saw the release by Central Video of two complete specials, Bumbledown: The Life & Times Of Ronald Reagan and The Sound Of Maggie. Next was a video containing a collection of the music videos from the programme, titled "The Klassik Music Video Vol 1", released in 1991 by Central Video under The Video Collection Ltd (VCI or 2entertain); there was never a Volume 2.

"Is Nothing Sacred?" was released in 1992 by Surprise Video, compiling material from 1990-1991. The free booklet was written by Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. Havin' It Off: The Bonker's Guide was released in 1993. In 1996 FA to Fairplay was released on VHS, later reissued on DVD in 2005. Made specially for video, it provided an alternative look at the 1996 European football championship held in England.

The Ronald Reagan song "Da Do Ron Ron" featured in a straight to video release called Rockin' Ronnie (1986), an otherwise unrelated compilation of movie clips released by ATI Video.

The first eight series including An 11-disc set (containing the first 7 series broadcast 1984-89) have been released by Network, so far.^[8] DVD releases do not included any of the specials made. Series 9 is due to be the next release in 2012.

DVD release dates [link]

DVD		Discs	Year	Ep. #	Release Date
DVD		Discs	Year	Ep. #	Region 2
	Complete Series 1	2	1984	12	28 January 2008
	Complete Series 2	2	1985	11	28 July 2008
	Complete Series 3	3	1986	18	29 September 2008
	Complete Series 4	1	1987	6	3 November 2008
	Complete Series 5	1	1988	6	23 March 2009
	Complete Series 6	1	1989	5	11 May 2009
	Complete Series 7	1	1989	6	17 August 2009
	Complete Series 8	1	1990	6	19 October 2009
	Complete Series 1–7	11	1984–1989	64	2 November 2009

Staff [link]

Spitting Image launched the careers of and featured many then-unknown British comedians and actors, most notably Hugh Dennis, Steve Coogan and Harry Enfield.^[9]

Creators [link]

Peter Fluck and Roger Law spoonerised as Luck and Flaw
Martin Lambie-Nairn (On the credits, his credit was "Based on the original lunch with Martin Lambie-Nairn")

Voices [link]

The voices were provided by British impressionists including:

Chris Barrie (1984–1991) (Arnold Rimmer in Red Dwarf)
Roger Blake (1990–1996) (plays Duke of Edinburgh/Jim Royle in Big Impression)
Rory Bremner (1987) (Bremner, Bird and Fortune)
Phil Cornwell (1986, 1993–1996) (Dead Ringers)
Steve Coogan (1988–1993) (Alan Partridge)
Jon Culshaw (1994–1996) (Dead Ringers, 2DTV, The Impressionable Jon Culshaw, Headcases, The Impressions Show.)
Hugh Dennis (1989–1991) (The Mary Whitehouse Experience, My Hero, Mock The Week, Outnumbered)
Harry Enfield (1985–1989) ("Harry Enfield's Television Programme", "Harry Enfield and Chums", "Kevin and Perry Go Large"
Chris Emmett (1984, 1990)
Michael Fenton Stevens (KYTV)
Fogwell Flax (1984–1985) (Tiswas)
Jon Glover (1984–1989)
Louise Gold (1984–1986) (The Muppet Show)
Alistair McGowan (1991–1996)
Jessica Martin (1985–1988)
Steve Nallon (1984–1996) (best known as voice of Margaret Thatcher)
Philip Pope (1984–1991, singing voices only) (KYTV)
Jan Ravens (1984–1993) (Dead Ringers)
Enn Reitel (1985–1990, 1996) (Mog)
Kate Robbins (1986–1996)
John Sessions (1986–1988)
John Thomson (1990–1996) (Cold Feet)

Performers [link]

The puppets were operated by popular British performers, including:

Writers [link]

Geoff Atkinson (1984–1993)
David Austin
Debbie Barham
Alistair Beaton
Colin Bostock-Smith
Jo Brand
Mark Burton (1985–1993)
Kevin Cecil (1993–1996) (The Armando Ianucci Shows)
Paul John Clark, journalist and writer (Rory Bremner, Kate and Ted's Show, The New Politics: The May Revolution, Week Ending, Hale and Pace)
Richard Curtis (1984–1985) (Blackadder, Four Weddings and a Funeral etc.)
Terence Dackombe (1984–1989) (Week Ending, News Huddlines, Friday Night Live, etc.)
Paul B. Davies
(John) Jack Docherty and Moray Hunter (Absolutely, Mr. Don & Mr. George)
Chris Edge
Ben Elton (1984–1985) (Blackadder, The Young Ones)
Stevie Fowler
Patrick Gallagher (co-creator, co-writer and graphic designer on Round the Bend, a children's puppet show produced by Hat Trick Productions with puppets made by the Spitting Image Workshop)
Dan Gaster
Rob Grant (1984–1986) (Red Dwarf)
Sean Hardie
Ray Harris (1987–1993) (Babyblair)
Ian Hislop (1984–1989) (Private Eye, Have I Got News For You, My Dad's the Prime Minister)
Will Ing (The Now Show)
Donnie Kerr
David Kind (Hale and Pace)
Wayne Kline
Paul Lewis^{[disambiguation needed ]}
Victor Lewis-Smith (only one episode: Series 5 ep.5)
Doug Naylor (1984–1986) (Red Dwarf)
Henry Naylor (1984–1986)
Nick Newman (1984–1989) (Private Eye)
John O'Farrell (1984–1993) (author of Things Can Only Get Better, etc.)
Andy Parsons (1993–1996)
Paul Powell^{[disambiguation needed ]}
Georgia Pritchett (1986–1992)
Steve Punt (1989–1993) (The Now Show)
Neil Raphael (1984–1987)
Keith Rees
Andy Riley (1993–1996) (The Armando Ianucci Shows)
Laurie Rowley
Tony Sarchet
Stuart Silver
Paul Simpkin
Pete Sinclair
Andrea Solomons
Guy Jenkin
Johnny Mack (The Dave Allen Show)

Producers [link]

Jon Blair, John Lloyd, Tony Hendra (1984)
John Lloyd (1984–1986) (Blackadder, Not the Nine O'Clock News)
Geoffrey Perkins (1986–1988) (KYTV, later Head of BBC comedy)
David Tyler (UK)
Bill Dare (1990–1993) (Dead Ringers)
Giles Pilbrow (1994–1996) (2DTV)

Directors [link]

Production assistants [link]

Archive researchers [link]

Costumes [link]

Similar shows elsewhere [link]

Argentina

A political satire programme called Kanal K was aired by Canal 13 during the early 1990s. The show was (theoretically) cancelled after a serious row with the Catholic Church over Kanal K's puppet of Pope John Paul II saying "vaffanculo" (meaning "fuck you" in Italian). Unofficial rumors say that Kanal K was cancelled on behalf of former President Carlos Saúl Menem because the programme depicted him in a derisive manner. However, this version was never officially confirmed. Besides, the former president is known as a person with an ample sense of humour.

Australia

Rubbery Figures (Fast Forward Series 1&2 (1989–1990))

Azerbaijan

Kuklalar was a short-life week-end show on Lider TV, similar to Russian NTV's Kukly. Only Azerbaijan opposition leaders and celebrities' puppets were presented in the program. Puppets-making and filming were both made in Kukly's base in Moscow, while script, voicing, and editing were made in Baku.

Bulgaria

Talking Heads (TV7)

Brazil

Agildo no País das Maravilhas (Rede Bandeirantes, 1987–1989)
Cabaré do Barata (Rede Manchete, 1989–1990)

Canada (Quebec)

Et Dieu créa… Laflaque[1]

Catalonia

Polònia[2]

Chile

During the 1990s, an imitation of the Spitting Image show, called Los Toppins, was aired on the television network Megavision. More successful, although oriented to a younger audience was the 31 Minutos show, which aired on TVN.

Colombia

Los reencauchados (Cenpro Televisión, 1995)

Czech Republic

Gumaci (TV NOVA)

France

Le Bébête Show (TF1)
Les Guignols de l'info (Canal Plus)

Finland

The Autocrats

Germany

Hurra Deutschland (ARD, RTL 2), Zak (WDR, ARD)

Greece

ΦΤΥΣΤΟΥΣ with George Mitsikostas, (SKAI TV)

Hungary

Uborka (MTV 1)

Ireland

Bull Island (RTÉ)

India

Double Take^{[disambiguation needed ]} (NDTV)

Israel

Chartzufim (Channel 2)

Italy

Japan

Spitting Image Japan (Fuji Television) - aired in the program Raster Tunnels 94 in 1994 and followed the same format as Spitting Image but satirised Japanese politicians instead.

Malta

Teletubi (One TV) A puppet show that poked fun at local politicians and celebrities. Was banned but the puppets still make the odd appearance on TV.

Mexico

Hechos de Peluche (TV Azteca)

New Zealand

Public Eye - aired in the 1980s and followed the same format as Spitting Image but satirised NZ politicians instead. Facelift (tv show)

Poland

Polskie ZOO (Telewizja Polska)

Portugal

Contra Informação (Rádio e Televisão de Portugal)

Romania

Animat Planet (Antena 1)

Russia

Kukly

Serbia

Nikad izvini (RTV Pink)
Parobrod (RTS)

South Africa

Za News (Web only; rejected by SABC

Spain

Las noticias del guiñol (Canal Plus)
Txokolatex (Euskal Telebista)

Sweden

Riksorganet aired on SVT in 1998 right before the general election the same year. The show mocked the party leaders along with people working in the media. The voices were provided by Sissela Kyle, Claes Ljungmark, Anders Mårtensson, Johan Wahlström and Katarina Ewerlöf.

Switzerland

Les Bouffons de la Confédération (Léman Bleu) & (La Télé)

In the United States [link]

In an attempt to crack the American market, there were some attempts to produce a US version of the show. A 45-minute 'made for market' show by the original Spitting Image team, entitled Spitting Image: Down And Out In The White House was produced in 1986 by Central for the NBC network.

Introduced by David Frost, it departed from the sketch-based format in favour of an overall storyline involving the upcoming (at that time) Presidential election. The plot involved a conspiracy to replace Ronald Reagan with a double (actually actor Dustin Hoffman in disguise). This plan was hatched by the Famous Corporation, a cabal of the ultra-rich headed by Johnny Carson's foil Ed McMahon (in the show, Carson was his ineffectual left-hand man) who met in a secret cavern hollowed out behind the façade of Mount Rushmore. Eventually, their plot foiled, the famous corporation activated their escape pod - Abraham Lincoln's nose - and left Earth for another planet, but (in a homage to the beginning of the Star Wars movies) were destroyed during a collision with 'a nonsensical prologue in gigantic lettering'.

The show was not very successful with its target audience, possibly because its humour was still very British and it was so irreverent about Ronald Reagan at a time when he was enormously popular with the American public. It did, however, receive great praise from critics and it was followed by several more television specials: The Ronnie & Nancy Show (also satirising the Reagans), The 1987 Movie Awards (sending up the Academy Awards), Bumbledown: The Life and Times of Ronald Reagan (a quasi-documentary about the President), and The Sound of Maggie (a musical based very loosely on West Side Story).

The Canadian puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft later had a degree of success with a vaguely satirical show called D.C. Follies which ran from 1987 to 1989, was clearly inspired by Spitting Image, but was far less acerbic in its humour.

While less prone to political themes and using stop-motion animation rather than puppets, the present (as of 2012) Adult Swim program "Robot Chicken" bears some resemblances in format.

References [link]

^ http://broken-tv.blogspot.com/2009/11/latex-lampoonery-spitting-image.html
^ http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/a39486/ant-and-dec-stunt-ends-spitting-image-return.html
^ "Entertainment | Spitting Image back in spotlight". BBC (BBC News). 2006-02-20. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4732384.stm. Retrieved 2009-03-16.
^ Comedy Connections: Spitting Image
^ ^a ^b ^c Best Ever Spitting Image: TV Documentary. Released 25 June 2006 (UK).
^ Da Do Run Ron on http://www.qsulis.demon.co.uk/Website_Louise_Gold/
^ "Neil Kinnock in Spitting Image - Series 5", 1988, YouTube, uploaded 26 March 2009, accessed 16 January 2012
^ "Spitting Image: The Complete Series 1". Network DVD. http://www.networkdvd.net/product_info.php?products_id=539. Retrieved 2007-12-07.
^ "Impressions are back in fashion: The great pretenders". guardian.co.uk. 30 September 2003. http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2003/sep/30/comedy?INTCMP=SRCH.

Chester, Lewis. Tooth & Claw - The Inside Story of Spitting Image, Faber and Faber, 1986 ISBN 0-571-14557-4

External links [link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Spitting Image

Walker, John. "Spitting Image". Glossary of Art, Architecture & Design since 1945, 3rd. ed.
Spitting Image at the Internet Movie Database
Spitting Image at the BFI's Screenonline
Spitting Image at the British Film Institute
Spitting Image v. Headcases
Encyclopedia of Television

v t e Grant Naylor

Rob Grant Doug Naylor

Television	Red Dwarf Spitting Image The 10%ers Carrott's Lib

Radio	Son of Cliché Wrinkles Dave Hollins: Space Cadet

Novels	Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers Better Than Life

Script Books	Red Dwarf: Primordial Soup Red Dwarf: Son of Soup

Rob Grant (Solo)	Dark Ages (TV series) The Strangerers (TV series) Stressed Eric (TV series) Backwards (novel) Colony (novel) Incompetence (novel) Fat (novel)

Doug Naylor (Solo)	Red Dwarf VII (TV series) Red Dwarf VIII (TV series) Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (TV series) Last Human (novel)

v t e Richard Curtis

Screenplays	The Tall Guy (1989) Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Bean (1997) Notting Hill (1999) Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) Love Actually (2003) Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) The Boat That Rocked (2009) War Horse (2011)

Director	Love Actually (2003) The Boat That Rocked (2009)

Producer	Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Bean (1997) Notting Hill (1999) Sixty Six (2006) Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007) The Boat That Rocked (2009)

Television	Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979–1982) The Black Adder (1983) Spitting Image (1984–1985) Blackadder II (1986) Blackadder the Third (1987) Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) Mr. Bean (1990–1995) Bernard and the Genie (1991) The Vicar of Dibley (1994–2007) Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death (1999) Blackadder: Back & Forth (1999) The Girl in the Café (2005) Casualty (2007) The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (2008) Doctor Who: "Vincent and the Doctor" (2010)

Other works	Comic Relief The Atkinson People (1979) Dead on Time (1983) No Pressure (2010)

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitting_Image

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

Spitting Image

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