Reginald Maudling PC (7 March 1917 – 14 February 1979) was a British politician who held several Cabinet posts, including Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had been spoken of as a prospective Conservative leader since 1955, and was twice seriously considered for the post; he was Edward Heath's chief rival in 1965. He also held many directorships in the British financial world.

As Home Secretary, he was responsible for the British Government's Northern Irish policy during the period that included Bloody Sunday in 1972; shortly thereafter, he left office because of an unrelated scandal in one of the companies of which he was director.

Reginald Maudling was born in Woodside Park, North Finchley, and was named after his father, Reginald George Maudling, an actuary, who contracted to do actuarial and financial calculations as the Commercial Calculating Company Ltd. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Bexhill, to escape German air raids; he won scholarships to the Merchant Taylors' School and Merton College, Oxford. At Oxford, Maudling stayed out of undergraduate politics and studied the works of Georg Wilhelm Hegel; he was to formulate his conclusions later as the inseparability of economic and political freedom: "the purpose of State control and the guiding principle of its application is the achievement of true freedom". He obtained his degree in Classics with first class honours.

Francis Alick "Frankie" Howerd OBE (6 March 1917, York – 19 April 1992) was an English comedian and comic actor whose career, described by fellow comedian Barry Cryer as "a series of comebacks", spanned six decades.

Howerd was born the son of a soldier, Francis Alfred William (1887–1935) and Edith Florence Howard (née Morrison, 1888–1962) at the City Hospital in York, England, in 1917 (not 1922 as he later claimed). He was educated at Shooters Hill Grammar School in Woolwich, London. His first stage appearance was at age 13 but his early hopes of becoming a serious actor were dashed when he failed an audition for RADA. He began to entertain during World War II service in the British Army. It was at this time that he adapted his surname to Howerd "to be different". Despite suffering from stage fright, he continued to work after the war, beginning his professional career in the summer of 1946 in a touring show called For the Fun of It.

His act was soon heard on radio, making his debut in early December 1946 on the BBC's Variety Bandbox programme with a number of other ex-servicemen. His profile rose in the immediate postwar period (aided by material written by Eric Sykes, Galton and Simpson and Johnny Speight). In 1954, he made his screen début opposite Petula Clark in The Runaway Bus, which had been written for his specific comic talents, but he never became a major film presence. The film was so low-budget that they could not afford scenery; instead they used a fog generator so that little was visible behind the action. Even so, the film was an immediate hit.

Monty Python (sometimes known as The Pythons) was a British surreal comedy group who created Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series. The Python phenomenon developed from the television series into something larger in scope and impact, spawning touring stage shows, films, numerous albums, several books and a stage musical as well as launching the members to individual stardom. The group's influence on comedy has been compared to The Beatles' influence on music.

The television series, broadcast by the BBC from 1969 to 1974, was conceived, written and performed by members Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Loosely structured as a sketch show, but with an innovative stream-of-consciousness approach (aided by Gilliam's animation), it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in style and content. A self-contained comedy team responsible for both writing and performing their work, the Pythons' creative control allowed them to experiment with form and content, discarding rules of television comedy. Their influence on British comedy has been apparent for years, while in North America it has coloured the work of cult performers from the early editions of Saturday Night Live through to more recent absurdist trends in television comedy. "Pythonesque" has entered the English lexicon as a result.