Double act

A double act, also known as a comedy duo, is a comic pairing in which humor is derived from the uneven relationship between two partners, usually of the same gender, age, ethnic origin and profession but drastically different in terms of personality or behavior. Often one of the members of the duo—the straight man, feed, dead wood, or stooge—is portrayed as reasonable and serious, while the other one—the funny man, banana man or comic—is portrayed as funny, less educated or less intelligent, silly, or unorthodox. If the audience identifies primarily with one character, the other will often be referred to as a comic foil. The term "feed" comes from the way a straight man is wont to set up jokes and "feed" them to his partner.

Despite the names often given to the roles, the "straight man" need not be humorless and it is not always the comic who provides the act's humor. Sometimes it is the straight man who gets the laughs through his or her sarcastic reactions to the comic's antics, as was often the case with Stewart Lee's deadpan, reasoned reactions to Richard Herring's more ridiculous antics in their pairing. Where the "straight man" serves no personal comic purpose but acts as a device to make the "comic" look good, he is known as a "stooge". This is sometimes considered a derogatory term. Most often, however, the humor in a double act comes from the way the two personalities play off each other, rather than from the individuals themselves. In many successful acts the roles are interchangeable.

Got Talent

Got Talent is a talent show television format conceived and owned by Simon Cowell's SYCOtv company. A pilot was made in the United Kingdom in 2005, hosted by Paul O'Grady, but after O'Grady's split with ITV, the series was postponed, resulting in America's Got Talent – the first full series of the format.

It has spawned spin-offs in over 58 countries (as of April 2014), in what is now referred to as the Got Talent format, similar to that described by FremantleMedia of the Idol and The X Factor formats. In April 2014, the format was named the world's most successful reality TV format ever by the Guinness World Records.

History

Got Talent was an invention by The X Factor creator Simon Cowell, with comedian and talk show host Paul O'Grady producing a pilot for ITV in 2005 under the provisional title Paul O'Grady's Got Talent. O'Grady left the network after disputes with ITV, resulting in Cowell moving the concept to the United States while he and ITV searched for a new show host.

Due to these issues, the Got Talent franchise ended up debuting first as America's Got Talent on NBC on 21 June 2006, with judges David Hasselhoff, Brandy Norwood, and Piers Morgan. The show's original series was hosted by Regis Philbin. In 2016, the judging panel consisted of Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum, Melanie Brown, and Simon Cowell, and hosted by Nick Cannon, who has been the presenter since 2009. The grand prize on America's Got Talent is $1 million, and, since season 3, a chance to headline a show on the Las Vegas Strip. America's Got Talent proved extremely successful for NBC, pulling in high ratings in both total viewers and the younger 18-49 demographic. The show's initial success in America is credited with the eventual launch of the British series, and the overall global launch of the Got Talent franchise.

Double

Double may refer to:

People

Mathematics and computing

Catherine Zeta-Jones

Catherine Zeta-Jones, CBE (/ˈziːtə/; born Catherine Zeta Jones; 25 September 1969) is a Welsh actress. She has received critical acclaim and numerous accolades throughout her career, including one Academy Award, one BAFTA Award, and three Screen Actor Guild Awards. She was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year in 2005, and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours.

Zeta-Jones began her acting career at age 12, with the lead role in the stage musical Annie, and subsequently pursued a career on theatre with appearances in productions, such as West End's 42nd Street. She made her movie debut in the 1991 French fantasy feature Les 1001 nuits and continued her film work with supporting roles in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) and Splitting Heirs (1993), while starring in the ITV series The Darling Buds of May from 1991 until 1993. She established her early film career in the United Kingdom and eventually transitioned into Hollywood mainstream movies, appearing in the action western The Mask of Zorro (1998) and the crime thriller Entrapment (1999), both of which were international commercial successes. Her performance in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000) earned her significant critical praise and her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture.

Jacqueline Wilson

Dame Jacqueline Wilson, DBE, FRSL (born 17 December 1945) is an English writer of children's literature. Because her novels commonly deal with themes as adoption, divorce and mental illness, her work has been called controversial because her readers are young. For her lifetime contribution as a children's writer, Wilson was a UK nominee for the international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2014.

Wilson is the author of many book series. Her Tracy Beaker series, inaugurated in 1991 with The Story of Tracy Beaker, includes three sequels and has been adapted into four CBBC television series: The Story of Tracy Beaker, Tracy Beaker Returns, The Dumping Ground and The Tracy Beaker Files.

Life and career

Jacqueline Wilson was born in Bath, Somerset, in 1945. Her father was a civil servant; her mother was an antiques dealer. Jacqueline spent most of her childhood in Kingston upon Thames, where she went to Latchmere Primary School. She was an imaginative child who enjoyed both reading and inventing stories. She particularly enjoyed books by Noel Streatfeild, as well as American classics like Little Women and What Katy Did. As early as aged seven, she filled Woolworths notebooks with stories of her imaginary games. At the age of nine she wrote her first "novel" which was 18 sides long. That story, Meet the Maggots, was about a family with seven children. Although she was good at English, she had no interest in mathematics; she would often stare out the window and imagine rather than pay attention to the class, leading her final-year teacher at Latchmere to nickname her "Jacky Daydream". Jacqueline Wilson later used the nickname as the title of the first stage of her autobiography.