Peter Fincham (born 26 July 1956) is a British television producer and executive, currently the Director of Television for the ITV network. He was also formerly the Controller of BBC One, the primary television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation, until his resignation on 5 October 2007, following criticism over the handling of the A Year with the Queen debacle.
Educated at the independent Tonbridge School, Fincham studied at Churchill College, Cambridge. He joined the Cambridge Footlights production team as musical director, alongside a committee which included Griff Rhys Jones, Jimmy Mulville, Rory McGrath and Clive Anderson. After leaving Footlights, Fincham composed songs, none of which were picked up for recording, and then worked on the touring version of Godspell. During a period of increasingly common unemployment, Fincham was walking on Wandsworth Common in the rain and thinking to himself: "Oh my God. What have I done? I have made the wrong decision?" Fincham applied for a job at the BBC in 1984, a position as a researcher on The Late, Late Breakfast Show that had recently been vacated by his friend Helen Fielding — later author of the Bridget Jones novels — when she left to concentrate on her writing career. However, Fincham was unsuccessful in this application.
Coordinates: 52°37′48″N 0°29′18″E / 52.63010°N 0.48826°E / 52.63010; 0.48826
Fincham is a civil parish in North West Norfolk, England, with a population of approximately 500. Located on the A1122, it is 12 miles (19 km) south of King's Lynn. It neighbours the villages of Shouldham, Boughton, and Barton Bendish and is part of the King's Lynn and West Norfolk local governing district. The main road of the village, the A1122, is a Roman road connecting Swaffham and Downham Market. To this extent it is often used by trucks transporting sugarbeet and is used by RAF personnel travelling to the nearby airbase at RAF Marham.
Fincham has a single pub, The Swan, and a single church, St. Martin's church. The church was built during the Middle Ages and renovated by the Victorians. The village used to have two churches, though one became derelict and was destroyed by royal bequest. The village, at one time, hosted 5 public houses.
The Fincham Memorial Hall has twice suffered damage, once after an illegal rave and again after flooding caused by the cold snap of winter 2010. It holds a monthly car boot sale and with the opposite Old Rectory often hold the village's annual féte. The village green, now planted with a memorial flowerbed, used to be a large pond, but was filled in in the early 20th century. There are two manors of note, Fairswell and Talbot, the latter of which previously hosted an impressive collection of orchids, which have since been given to Kew Botanical Gardens for safekeeping.
Ricky Dene Gervais (/dʒərˈveɪz/; born 25 June 1961) is an English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter.
Gervais achieved mainstream fame with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with frequent collaborator Stephen Merchant. In addition to writing and directing the shows, Gervais played the lead roles of David Brent in The Office and Andy Millman in Extras. Gervais has also starred in a number of Hollywood films, assuming leading roles in Ghost Town and The Invention of Lying. He has performed on four sell-out stand-up comedy tours, written the best-selling Flanimals book series and starred with Merchant and Karl Pilkington in the most downloaded podcast in the world as of March 2009,The Ricky Gervais Show.
He has won multiple awards and honours, including seven BAFTA Awards, five British Comedy Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and the 2006 Rose d'Or, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. In 2007 he was voted the 11th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and again in the updated 2010 list as the 3rd greatest stand-up comic. In 2010 he was named on the TIME 100 list of the world's most influential people.
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.