All Above Board

An autobiography

by Wilfrid Brambell

For years Wilfrid Brambell was a leading character man-popping up in countless films and TV shows, a familiar face you couldn't always put the name to. Then he shot to fame as an old rag and bone merchant in BBC TV's Steptoe and Son, and has been a firm favourite ever since. His story is refreshingly different: it is that of a star who is not the least interested in ego-massaging and in outlining the sequence of his own triumphs and disasters. Instead he has concentrated on the hilarious adventures in which he has found himself as a touring actor and as a human being, with an eye for the bizarre and the eccentric.

Green boards / Gold inscribed spine

for the complete Chapter One and Brambell on Hancock

The Greasepaint War

by John Graven Hughes

The Greasepaint War describes the whole entertainment phenomenon of the Second World War: from the first units sent to France before Dunkirk, including Ralph Reader's Gang Show, to the American theatre after Pearl Harbour, to the shows that followed the army after D-Day. It also reveals just how important this 'behind the scenes' aspect of the war effort was, because shows were also provided for service men and women stationed up and down the country. John Graven Hughes has succeeded in presenting a fascinating picture of those tumultuous years, quoting extensively from personal reminiscences, both of established personalities and of stars to be.

Silver Grey boards / Gold inscribed spine

On The Way I Lost It - An Autobiography

by Frankie Howerd

On The Way I Lost It is a fascinatingly different show business autobiography by one of the great comedians of our time - Frankie Howerd. Readers will certainly laugh at his story - but will also gain a deep insight into the man himself. It is a story full of ironies. In fact, everything stems from a basic paradox: that the young Francis Alick Howerd was a nervous, stammering, clumsy and introspective youth, terrified of appearing in public - yet desperately anxious to get on the stage!

While this is certainly an immensely funny book, packed with glorious anecdotes about show business, send-up stories about himself, tales of 'bewildering' successes and often hilarious flops . . . On The Way I Lost It is also an honest and revealing book about the man behind the clown.

Salmon Pink boards / Gold inscribed spine

The Story Of The Goons

An intimate look at the lives of three men who made the world laugh

by Alfred Draper

Millions chuckle as they put the tiger out at night and imitate the idiocies of Bluebottle, Eccles, Neddie Seagoon, Henry Crun, Minnie Bannister, Bloodnok and Moriarty. What of the men behind the voices? India-born Irishman Milligan is a broody genius whose make-believe world brought him to the brink of insanity, suicide and murder. Sellers, an introverted Christian-Jew, is an insecure, mixed-up millionaire, who literally died of a heart attack and came back laughing. Family-man Secombe, roly-poly Welshman, golden-voiced giggler, alone seems untouched by the pressures. Three strangely dissimilar characters, they are linked by a thread of preposterous, hilarious buffoonery. Here for the first time is an intimate, penetrating look at the lives of the men who have etched laugh-lines on the faces of half the world.

It's Been a Lot of Fun

His hilarious bestselling autobiography

by Brian Johnston

To an Englishman's ears, the sound of leather against willow is closely associated with the cheerful tones of Brian Johnston, cricket commentator extraordinaire. His life story preserves a personality the like of which, these days, is sadly rare.

'High-spirited and stuffed with behind-the-scenes gossip. He is clearly a frustrated light comedian, a career to which his bounce, quick-thinking, self-confidence and prodigious gift of the gab might have qualified him if the BBC had not taken the best 27 years of his life.' - Listener

'The Title is beyond question: it undoubtedly was a lot of fun: and it can be read as it was lived - non stop.' - Guardian

The Goon Show Companion - A History and Goonography

by Roger Wilmut - with a personal memoir by Jimmy Grafton

Since its humble beginnings in the dim mists of 1951, the Goon Show has gone from strength to strength and lunacy to lunacy, building up a vast cult following of Goonatics that even the devilish hordes of Bloodnok's old enemy the Mad Mullah couldn't rival.

Alas, the Goon Show's run is ended, but now THE GOON SHOW COMPANION evokes once again those heady days when four young comedians Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine - first went on the air with the crazy brand of humour that was to add a whole new dimension to comedy. As well as tracing the history of the show, Roger Wilmut has compiled a meticulous Goonography, listing every Goon Show with its original transmission date, correct title, and details of writers, cast and producers, together with details of all the Goons' appearances in films and on record. This is the ultimate Goon book - no Goon-addict should be without it!

Desert Island Discs

by Roy Plomley

For over thirty-five years the gentle and evocative sound of 'By the Sleepy Lagoon' has quietly announced that another celebrity has been castaway on another desert island with only a gramophone, eight records, a Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, one luxury and native wit to see him or her through the ordeal.
Since the idea first struck him, on a November night in 1941, Desert Island Discs and Roy Plomley have been inseparable. And now, some 1300 castaways later, he has put together his memories of the programmes, including intimate and revealing portraits of his guests and the stories behind the scenes that the listener never heard.

'It is packed with anecdotes.' The Evening News
'There is humanity here, mixed with a gentle charm and humour.' South Wales Argus
'This is not so much a book as one long, delightful gossip column ... a modest, competent and charming piece of work.' Glasgow Evening Times

Tony Hancock appeared on programme number 346 of Desert Island Discs, on the 5th August 1957. His eight chosen records, and luxury item, can be seen listed with the Hardback copy of this book here

Oh, Yus, It's Arthur Mullard

His own moving, funny life story

by Arthur Mullard

'A seventeen-stone punch-drunk ignoramus'
That's Arthur Mullard's own description of how people see him. And he is an uneducated Cockney ex-prizefighter with a broken nose. But how many boxers become top comedy actors? Yes, there's more to Mullard than a trodden-on face and a bit of rhyming slang.

'I said I want to be an actor... my old man went potty'
It took him thirty years to work his way up from stunt-man and film extra to a television show of his own.

'No one can play the idiot like I can'
He has seen unemployed men fighting in the streets in the desperate Twenties. He has starved in the hungry Thirties. And the story of his love for his neurotic wife is compelling and tragic.

On The Way I Lost It - An Autobiography

by Frankie Howerd

The story of Baby-Face Howerd, Con Man, amateur actor and would-be saint, and how he made it to the top. As a boy he dreamed of acting to the extent of even practicing his own autographs. Then, after failing to get into RADA and six inevitably zany years in the Army, he finally became a professional comedian. A compulsive worrier with a nagging fear of being afraid, Frankie Howerd has survived a nerve-wracking showbusiness career which plummeted in the 1950s, resulting in his decision to quit altogether and open a pub. But he didn't: an extraordinary, freakish combination of events reminded the world of his exceptional talents, led to a star role in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and then to TV's enormous hit Up Pompeii!

'Very funny ... and also very moving ... A must for Howerd fans.' Sunday Mirror

Facing the Nation

Television & Politics 1936 - 76

by Grace Wyndham Goldie

Grace Wyndham Goldie was a major influence in British television for more than twenty years, latterly as Head of B B C Television Talks and Current Affairs. She was closely involved in the - usually agonising - birth of programmes which were to become household names, including Tonight, Panorama and the controversial That Was the Week that Was - achievements which tested again and again the delicate relationship between a public corporation and politicians, from Prime Ministers downwards.

Red boards / Gold inscribed spine

Bring Me Sunshine

A Harvest of Morecambe and Wise

by Morecambe & Wise

A bumper crop of articles from Britain's best-loved comedy partnership. Ernie Wise is already famed for his play-writing abilities second (in his opinion) only to Shakespeare at his best. But few have hitherto known that Eric too wields a pretty pen. Now admirers everywhere have an opportunity to read the combined works of Morecambe and Wise, writing sometimes as a partnership, sometimes as individuals. They have views on everything from soccer to sausages and impart them with their inimitable humour.

Red boards / Gold inscribed spine

The 50s (Fifties)

by Peter Lewis

It seems unbelievable that as recently as the Fifties few people were familiar with such words as teenager, automation, computer or transistor. Although the Fifties are near enough to be remembered by more than half the population today, that decade now seems strangely remote . . . The Fifties were a major watershed in modern history, which changed the facts of life for all to see - an era of fear and iconoclasm, novelty and confusion, Suez and sputniks, Pop Art and James Bond, Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot, new ideas, new dilemmas, new faces, new sounds. Peter Lewis, who grew up in the Fifties, and has since become well known as a book and drama critic and a brilliant feature writer, has vividly and searchingly recaptured in this book the essence of the decade in which the world as we know it today came into being.

Blue boards / Gold inscribed spine

Fighting For A Laugh

Entertaining the British and American Armed Forces 1939-1946

by Richard Fawkes

This is the story of British and American troop entertainment during World War Two; of Hollywood stars; stars of stage and radio; and the unknown entertainers who took their talents to war. It is a funny, moving and at times sad account of artists trying to perform under difficult and often impossible conditions, in sandstorms, rainstorms, snowstorms, on beaches and under enemy fire. Based on official records, personal reminiscences and contemporary accounts and photographs, this book is a tribute to those many men and women who took part in that other unsung but vital "theatre of war."

Maroon boards / Maroon inscribed spine

A Hard Act To Follow

by Peter Leslie

Which Victorian pinup girl sported emerald rings on all her toes - but only when she was in bed? Who spent $5,000 a month, in gold, on sets of silk underclothes she wore only once? Who charged clients $160 each time they danced with her at her own club? Whose songs were so sexy that they were booed off the London stage? Who danced on a high wire in a ballgown loaded with fifty pounds of ostrich feathers - and then turned out to be a man?
The answer to each of these intriguing questions is the name of a famous music hall star. And each of those stars, along with dozens more like them, formed part of the vanished universe of talent brilliantly re-created in this magnificent book.
Peter Leslie makes a fascinating distinction between music hall, vaudeville, variety, burlesque and revue. His theme - that the true music hall reached its glittering zenith soon after World War I and died with the Wall Street crash - is provocative. But the plot is subordinate to the players, and Mr. Leslie's all-star cast is directed with consummate skill...

Orangey brown boards / Gold inscribed spine

Good Morning Boys - Will Hay - Master of Comedy

by Ray Seaton & Roy Martin

Up to now there has never been a book about Will Hay, one of the most successful British music hall stars to enter films. Born in 1888 in Stockton-on-Tees, Will Hay's music hall acts - particularly his schoolroom sketches in which he played a tyrannical vet hopeless schoolmaster - soon caught the attention of the impresarios. By the time of the First World War he was, along with Chaplin and Stan Laurel, a Karno artist and later a favourite of the Royal family whom he entertained at Royal Variety Shows and private functions.
In their research for this book the authors (both experienced cinema and arts writers) spoke to relatives and associates of Hay's. They included Max Wall, Arthur Askey, Wee Georgie Wood, the late Sir Michael Balcon, the late Ted Ray, as well as Charles Hawtrey, Patrick Moore and Val Guest. Val Guest scripted Hay's major films and sees the comedian as forerunner to Tony Hancock, specialising in outraged dignity. Ronnie Barker has described Hay as the best straight man who ever was.
To illustrate the book the authors have had access not only to the British Film Institute and film companies' archives but also to the private albums of Will Hay's family and to an album kept by Hay himself. Most of the material has never been published before.

Brown boards / Gold inscribed spine