Mary Riggans

Mary Riggans (19 July 1935 – 2 December 2013) was a Scottish actress, best known for playing Effie in Take the High Road and Susie Sweet in Balamory. She began her acting career in 1946, when she did a voiceover at the age of 10, and went on to star in TV, radio and theatre productions.

Acting

Riggans was best known for her role as Effie Macinnes on the Scottish television soap opera, Take the High Road from the early 1980s until the last episode in 2003. She appeared as Susie Sweet in Balamory, a children's TV programme (2002–05), and as Sadie in Still Game (2002–07).

Credits

Death

Riggans died in her sleep at her Edinburgh home on 2 December 2013, a year after suffering a stroke. BBC Scotland executive Yvonne Jennings, who worked as a producer on Balamory, paid tribute to the actress.

She said: "As Suzie Sweet in Balamory, Mary was well respected by those who worked with her and much loved by the CBeebies audience. "Like Suzie, Mary was a kind and giving woman who took on the role of nurturing young talent."

I, Lovett

I, Lovett is a BBC television sitcom written by Norman Lovett and Ian Pattison. Seven episodes were broadcast, a pilot in 1989 and a six episode series in 1993.

Plot

The series stars Norman Lovett playing a version of himself who is an inventor living in a world of surrealism with his talking dog, voiced by Geoffrey Hughes; spider, voiced by Mary Riggans; and inanimate objects.

Production

In 1989 a one-off episode was made for the anthology series Comic Asides, the BBC commissioned a full series which was broadcast four years later in 1993. In total seven episodes were made each one was shown on BBC2, directed by Ron Bain and produced by Colin Gilbert.

Episode list

Pilot

Series 1

References

External links

Dear Frankie

Dear Frankie is a 2004 British drama film directed by Shona Auerbach and starring Emily Mortimer, Gerard Butler, and Jack McElhone. The screenplay by Andrea Gibb focuses on a young single mother whose love for her son prompts her to perpetuate a deception designed to protect him from the truth about his father.

Plot

Lizzie Morrison (Emily Mortimer) and nine-year-old deaf son Frankie (Jack McElhone) frequently relocate to keep one step ahead of her abusive ex-husband and his family. They are accompanied by her opinionated, chain-smoking mother Nell. Newly relocated in the Scottish town of Greenock, Lizzie accepts a job at the local fish and chips shop owned by a friendly woman named Marie, and enrolls Frankie in school.

Through a Glasgow post office box, Frankie maintains a regular correspondence with someone he believes to be his father, Davey, who allegedly is a merchant seaman working on the HMS Accra. In reality, the letters he receives are written by his mother, who prefers maintaining this charade instead of telling the boy the reason she fled her marriage.

Norman Lovett

Norman Derrick Lovett (born 31 October 1946) is an English stand-up comedian and actor, best known for the role of Holly in Red Dwarf during the first, second, seventh (as a guest star) and eighth series. His comedy has a quiet, dead-pan surrealism, and in 2000 he made a successful stand up tour, co-headlining with Chris Barrie, who played Rimmer in Red Dwarf. Lovett was born in Windsor, Berkshire. Lovett is divorced and has two daughters, Lily and Kitty. Prior to his performing career, Lovett did office and manual work with the final job at the Whitechapel Art Gallery as an attendant.

In 1989, he appeared in his own surreal BBC2 sitcom called I, Lovett, in which he played a character called Norman. Seven years later, he played Dr. Lovett in the short-lived sitcom Asylum which spawned many other successful careers.

He has made a number of acting appearances such as the Ghost of Christmas Past in a TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol, Mr Follett in The History of Tom Jones, the film The Criminal, as well as the BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, and a cameo appearance in The Young Ones in the episode "Summer Holiday". He has been in The Bill and three episodes of the Scottish sitcom Rab C Nesbitt. In 2006, he appeared in the low-budget British horror film Evil Aliens.

Geoffrey Hughes

Geoffrey Hughes DL (2 February 1944, Wallasey, Cheshire – 27 July 2012, Isle of Wight) was an English television, film and stage actor.

Hughes rose to fame for portraying much-loved binman Eddie Yeats in the popular long-running British soap opera Coronation Street from 1974 to 1983, making a return to the show in 1987. He went on to appear in two popular British television sitcoms during the 1990s, playing loveable slob Onslow in Roy Clarke's Keeping Up Appearances (1990–95) followed by Twiggy in Craig Cash and Caroline Aherne's The Royle Family (1998–2000), the latter of which he reprised his role for specials in 2006 and 2008.

From 2001 to 2005 he played Vernon Scripps, conman and loveable rogue, on the ITV police drama Heartbeat (2001–05), taking over as the show's main loveable rogue from Bill Maynard, and returning to the show briefly in 2007 after the character was thought dead.

In 1996 Hughes was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and in 2010 he suffered a cancer relapse which led him to retire from acting. He died from the illness, aged 68, in 2012