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Classic Screen Moments, Dinas-Mawddwy, Machynlleth (2026)

31/08/2026

There are some honours that feel overdue; then there are omissions that become almost impossible to explain. Pauline Collins should have been made a Dame long before Britain lost her. By the time the beloved actress died in November 2025, aged 85, she had given more than six decades to British theatre, television and film, yet the highest state recognition she received was an OBE in 2001. For an actress of her achievement, longevity and affection in the public imagination, that somehow never felt enough.

Collins had already become a familiar face years before Shirley Valentine. Her wonderfully spirited Sarah Moffat in Upstairs, Downstairs helped turn her into one of television’s most recognisable performers of the 1970s. She later appeared alongside her husband John Alderton in Thomas & Sarah and No, Honestly, while her wider television career stretched from Emergency Ward 10 and Doctor Who to acclaimed productions such as Bleak House.

But it was W***y Russell’s Shirley Valentine that revealed just how extraordinary she was. Collins first conquered the stage in the one-woman play, carrying an entire evening virtually alone and transforming an ordinary Liverpool housewife’s longing for freedom into something funny, painful and deeply universal. She won both the Laurence Olivier Award and the Tony Award for the role.

Then came the 1989 film. Collins won the BAFTA for Best Actress and received an Academy Award nomination, competing at the Oscars alongside some of the most celebrated actresses in world cinema. Shirley was not glamorous or heroic in the conventional sense; she was middle-aged, lonely, witty and searching for the person she had once been. Collins made millions recognise something of themselves in her.

And Shirley Valentine was hardly the end. City of Joy, Paradise Road, Quartet, Albert Nobbs and many other performances demonstrated a range that could move effortlessly between comedy and considerable emotional weight. Colleagues repeatedly remembered not merely her talent but her generosity: an actress capable of commanding attention without appearing to demand it.

That is why the absence of a damehood now feels particularly glaring. Pauline Collins did not need a title to prove her greatness — the Olivier, Tony, BAFTA, Oscar nomination and generations of viewers had already done that. But honours are also supposed to recognise sustained national contribution. If a career as distinguished, enduring and quintessentially British as hers did not merit “Dame Pauline Collins”, it is difficult to imagine what more she was expected to achieve.

30/08/2026

For more than four decades, Jane Fallon and Ricky Gervais have quietly done something increasingly rare in showbusiness: they have stayed together without turning their relationship into a public performance. Fallon has now offered a revealing glimpse into the partnership that began when they were students, explaining why marriage and children were never essential parts of the life they wanted to build.

The pair met at University College London in 1982, long before Gervais became one of Britain’s most recognisable comedians. They moved in together a couple of years later, sharing a modest flat and navigating years when fame and financial security were still distant prospects. Fallon was the first of the two to establish herself in television, working as a producer on programmes including EastEnders, This Life and Teachers.

Speaking on the Second Act podcast in January 2026, Fallon said she had never grown up imagining a wedding, a bridal gown or the conventional milestones often associated with adulthood. Even as a girl, those dreams simply did not appeal to her. That attitude carried into her relationship with Gervais, and neither felt that marriage was required to prove their commitment.

Their decision not to have children was equally considered. Fallon has previously described herself as a natural worrier and “catastrophist”, admitting she feared she would have become an excessively protective mother. Rather than regretting the decision, she concluded that motherhood was not the role for her and found happiness being an aunt and part of the lives of friends’ children. Crucially, Gervais felt similarly about parenthood.

Fallon also believes their separate ambitions helped the relationship endure. While she built her career behind the scenes in television and later reinvented herself as a bestselling novelist, Gervais eventually found extraordinary success with The Office and the comedy career that followed. Because she already understood how television worked, his sudden rise did not feel like an intimidating new world, and their different professional goals meant there was little reason for rivalry.

Perhaps that is the most striking thing about Fallon’s account: there is no grand formula offered for lasting love. Their story is built on shared humour, independence, mutual support and the freedom to reject expectations that never suited them. More than 40 years after meeting as students, they remain together — proof that commitment does not always need a wedding certificate, children or a conventional script.

30/08/2026

There are comedy lines that make you laugh, and then there are lines so perfectly timed that they become part of the language. More than half a century after it was first broadcast, Captain Mainwaring’s wonderfully disastrous warning — “Don’t tell him, Pike!” — remains one of those rare television moments where writing, performance and timing came together almost impossibly well.

The scene appeared in Dad’s Army episode “The Deadly Attachment”, first shown on 31 October 1973. Walmington-on-Sea’s Home Guard are ordered to guard the surviving crew of a German U-boat, bringing Captain Mainwaring face-to-face with the enemy he has spent years preparing to resist. Their commander was played by Welsh actor Philip Madoc, whose cold stare, clipped delivery and air of genuine menace made him a wonderfully unusual presence in the normally cosy world of the programme.

Madoc was particularly convincing because he was an accomplished linguist who had studied modern languages and trained as an interpreter in Vienna. Co-writer Jimmy Perry wanted the German officer to feel authentic rather than like a broad comic caricature. Madoc therefore played the part almost completely straight, behaving as though he had wandered in from a serious wartime drama while everyone around him belonged to a sitcom. That contrast became the episode’s secret weapon.

The immortal exchange comes after Private Pike cheekily sings a version of Whistle While You Work insulting Hi**er. Madoc’s furious captain announces that Pike’s name will be added to his notebook and demands to know it. Mainwaring instinctively tries to protect his young soldier and blurts out: “Don’t tell him, Pike!” Madoc pauses only long enough to reply, “Pike”, before calmly writing it down. Arthur Lowe’s expression afterwards completes the joke.

Keeping a straight face was apparently far harder than the finished scene suggests. Ian Lavender, perched on the ladder as Pike, knew the punchline was coming and feared he would ruin the take by laughing. He reportedly bit the inside of his cheek so hard while trying to control himself that it bled, and asked director David Croft to avoid cutting to him immediately after Lowe delivered the line.

Madoc was not immune either. Later, while his terrifying U-boat commander solemnly demands that his fish-and-chip supper contain no “nasty, soggy chips” but instead be crisp and light brown, viewers can see him appearing perilously close to breaking character. That tiny struggle somehow makes the scene even funnier. Madoc’s brilliance was that he never deliberately played the N**i captain for laughs — and because he treated every ridiculous demand with deadly seriousness, everyone around him, including the audience, found it almost impossible not to collapse.

30/08/2026

Brian Murphy came within a whisker of swapping the stage for an insurance office — and British comedy very nearly lost one of its most familiar faces. Long before viewers knew him as the perpetually put-upon George Roper, Murphy had spent years as a hardworking theatre actor, only to reach a bleak spell just before turning 40 when steady work became harder to find.

Born in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight in 1932, Murphy served in the RAF during National Service, where he crossed paths with another future sitcom favourite, Richard Briers. He later trained at RADA and joined Joan Littlewood’s influential Theatre Workshop at Stratford East, appearing in productions including Oh! What a Lovely War and working alongside Yootha Joyce, who would later become inseparable from his television legacy.

By the early 1970s, however, Murphy had a young family and financial pressures were mounting. He later recalled telling his agent that he was ready to leave acting and start selling insurance. Then came the extraordinary reversal: around his 40th birthday he secured the role of George Roper in Man About the House. Writers Brian Cooke and Johnnie Mortimer had already noticed him in their earlier sitcom Alcock and Gander and helped put him forward for the part.

Man About the House became a major ITV success, but Murphy’s wonderfully shabby, crafty and henpecked George soon proved too good to remain a supporting character. His long-standing friendship and effortless comic chemistry with Yootha Joyce as Mildred led to the spin-off George and Mildred in 1976. At its height, the programme drew audiences of around 20 million, turning the pair into household names far beyond Britain.

Joyce’s death in 1980 brought their celebrated partnership to a painful end, but Murphy never became merely a relic of 1970s television. He continued working across stage and screen, later appearing in One Foot in the Grave, Mrs Merton and Malcolm, The Catherine Tate Show, Benidorm and, memorably, as Alvin Smedley in Last of the Summer Wine from 2003 to 2010.

Murphy died in February 2025 aged 92, after a career stretching across more than six decades. The remarkable part of his story is the timing: just when he thought acting had failed him, George Roper arrived and changed everything. The man who nearly sold insurance instead ended up giving millions of viewers something far more lasting — laughter.

30/08/2026

Britain knew Yootha Joyce as the gloriously sharp, frustrated and unforgettable Mildred Roper. Yet behind the extravagant clothes, killer expressions and impeccable comic timing was a woman whose private life became far sadder than anything audiences could have imagined. At the height of her fame, millions adored her; away from the cameras, Joyce was increasingly struggling with alcohol, anxiety and the extraordinary pressures that accompanied becoming one of television’s most recognisable faces.

Born Yootha Joyce Needham in Wandsworth in 1927, she pursued acting despite little encouragement and briefly studied at RADA before building her craft through repertory theatre. Her great artistic turning point came when she joined Joan Littlewood’s celebrated Theatre Workshop at Stratford East, performing alongside talents including Brian Murphy. She appeared in Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be and later made her film debut in Littlewood’s Sparrows Can’t Sing in 1963.

Her personal life was less settled. Joyce married actor Glynn Edwards in 1956, but their marriage eventually ended, although they remained close afterwards. Friends recalled a woman plagued by professional insecurity, apparently fearing that every acting job might be her last. Ironically, when lasting fame finally arrived, it created pressures of its own.

In 1973 she became Mildred Roper in Man About the House, opposite Brian Murphy’s scruffy, reluctant George. The Ropers became so popular that they received their own sitcom, George and Mildred, in 1976. Their squabbling marriage, Mildred’s social aspirations and George’s resistance turned them into television royalty. At its peak, their programmes attracted audiences of around 20 million, making Joyce an enormously recognisable public figure.

But success concealed a worsening dependence on alcohol. Accounts given after her death revealed prolonged heavy drinking, while colleagues remembered her becoming thinner, more withdrawn and increasingly frail. Remarkably, much of the true severity of her condition remained hidden from those working around her. Even as her health deteriorated, another series of George and Mildred had already been written.

On 24 August 1980, just four days after her 53rd birthday, Yootha Joyce died from liver disease, with her friend and screen husband Brian Murphy at her bedside. Her funeral took place on 3 September — the very day rehearsals for the next series were expected to begin. Mildred Roper made Britain laugh at frustration, loneliness and disappointment; the tragedy is that the woman playing her appears to have carried burdens of her own that applause could never silence.

30/08/2026

Long before the knighthood, Comic Relief and decades of television success, Lenny Henry was simply a lanky teenager from Dudley who had discovered that doing funny voices could make a room stop and listen. In an entertainment world where young Black British performers were rarely seen on mainstream television, his arrival was anything but ordinary.

Henry had been entertaining friends with impressions from an early age, and even at school his instinct for mimicry was difficult to suppress. By his mid-teens he was getting up at local discos and clubs, impersonating familiar television and entertainment figures. One of the people who noticed him was local DJ Oscar Michael, who recognised that the teenager’s confidence and comic timing might amount to more than a party trick.

Michael contacted two of Britain’s biggest television talent programmes, Opportunity Knocks and ATV’s New Faces, telling them about the 16-year-old Black comedian he had discovered. Opportunity Knocks did not respond, but Henry later remembered the reaction from New Faces rather memorably: “A 16-year-old black comedian from Dudley? We’ll have some of that!” An audition followed, giving a schoolboy from the Black Country an extraordinary doorway into professional entertainment.

Henry did not simply walk into television unprepared. He later recalled testing and polishing his material before live audiences around Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsall and West Bromwich. When he finally appeared on New Faces in January 1975, aged just 16, director John Pullen suggested that he begin his routine with his back to the audience while performing his Frank Spencer impression.

The effect was remarkable. When Henry turned around, revealing that the voice belonged to a young Black teenager, the unexpected sight reportedly produced an audible reaction before the laughter followed. His impressions and infectious confidence won his heat, and he eventually reached the programme’s grand final at the London Palladium that July.

It was an astonishing beginning: a teenager who had been performing at local discos suddenly found himself inside the machinery of British showbusiness. Henry’s early material and some of the choices that followed would later become things he examined critically, but the moment Oscar Michael spotted that raw talent changed everything. One letter, one audition and one fearless 16-year-old from Dudley had opened a door that British television would never quite close again.

30/08/2026

Some television families merely act close for the cameras; The Royle Family became something much nearer to the real thing. Few relationships captured that warmth better than the friendship between Ricky Tomlinson and Liz Smith, whose wonderfully combative on-screen exchanges as Jim Royle and his mother-in-law Nana concealed enormous affection when the cameras stopped rolling.

Following Smith’s death on Christmas Eve 2016, aged 95, Tomlinson spoke with unmistakable tenderness about his former colleague. “She was wonderful,” he remembered, adding: “I really, really loved her.” He even described Nana as his favourite character in The Royle Family. Their fictional relationship might have consisted largely of Jim grumbling about his mother-in-law, but Tomlinson remembered Smith as an endlessly fascinating woman who could reduce him to laughter with her stories.

One detail particularly amused him. Away from Nana’s broad, familiar manner of speaking, Smith was surprisingly eloquent. Tomlinson recalled that she “spoke really nicely” and sounded nothing like her character. Smith, meanwhile, delighted in teasing Tomlinson about his own unmistakably working-class Scouse delivery, regularly taking the mickey out of him for being “a little bit rough”. He clearly enjoyed giving as good as he got.

Their mischief continued around the studio. Smith sometimes visited the set even when she was not required to work, frequently arriving around lunchtime. Tomlinson would jokingly accuse her of appearing only for the free food, telling her she was becoming just like Nana. He also hinted that the pair produced some hilarious out-takes which were far too outrageous to repeat publicly.

That affection extended throughout the cast. Tomlinson later remembered how Ralf Little, who played Antony, continued visiting Smith after she moved into sheltered accommodation, taking her flowers, fruit and magazines. It supported Tomlinson’s belief that years of working closely together had turned the company into a genuine family.

Smith’s journey had itself been remarkable. She found professional success relatively late, breaking through with Mike Leigh’s Bleak Moments, before becoming one of Britain’s most recognisable character actresses. She won a BAFTA for A Private Function, received an MBE in 2009, and made Nana unforgettable. Yet perhaps the loveliest tribute is the simplest: behind all Jim Royle’s complaints and insults was Ricky Tomlinson, laughing with Liz Smith and loving “the bloody bones” off her.

29/08/2026

There is a particular kind of strength in making the joke before anybody else can — and few British comedians have understood that better than Dawn French. The line often attributed to her, “If you can laugh at yourself then you have essentially removed the most powerful weapon that your enemies can use,” captures an idea that has run through much of her life and career: humour can turn vulnerability into something you control rather than something used against you.

French has spoken openly about discovering that power while growing up. As the daughter of an RAF officer, she moved schools several times and learnt early that making people laugh could help her connect with strangers and defuse hostility. Years later, she explained that comedy allowed her to decide what audiences were laughing at. Instead of simply becoming the target of a joke, she could shape it, exaggerate it and ultimately own it.

That philosophy became central to French and Saunders, the hugely influential partnership she formed with Jennifer Saunders. From their breakthrough with The Comic Strip Presents… to their BBC sketch series beginning in 1987, the pair regularly made themselves the fools. Hollywood films, pop stars and television conventions were mercilessly parodied, but French and Saunders were usually willing to look ridiculous themselves first.

French’s attitude towards her appearance also became part of this complicated relationship with comedy. For decades she confronted public comments about her weight with confidence and wit rather than embarrassment. Yet she has also made an important distinction between choosing to laugh at yourself and being humiliated by somebody else. Recalling a French and Saunders sketch involving singer Anastacia, she later said she felt unusually powerless because, for once, she believed the joke was being made at her expense rather than being controlled by her.

That distinction makes the philosophy behind the quotation more meaningful. Laughing at yourself does not mean accepting cruelty or pretending that insults cannot hurt. For French, humour seems to work best when it comes from self-knowledge rather than self-contempt.

Perhaps that is why her comedy has endured. Whether playing Geraldine Granger in The Vicar of Dibley, performing beside Saunders or recounting her own embarrassing mistakes, Dawn French has repeatedly shown that imperfection can be wonderfully funny. When you are comfortable enough to acknowledge your own absurdities, other people have far less ammunition — because you have already turned the supposed weakness into the punchline.

29/08/2026

There was something almost familial about Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques. For years, viewers watched them squabble, fuss and forgive one another like genuine siblings, never suspecting that behind one of British television’s warmest partnerships lay a far more complicated story of admiration, loyalty and, eventually, painful estrangement. Sykes had admired Jacques since seeing her perform at the Players’ Theatre, and their partnership became firmly established when Sykes and a... began in 1960, later returning as Sykes in 1972.

Perhaps the greatest sign of Sykes’s respect was what he refused to write. Jacques’s weight was frequently used by other comedians and filmmakers as an easy punchline, but Sykes deliberately avoided making her appearance the joke. In a 1974 interview he described her as an outstanding comic actress and explained that references to her size were unnecessary. Jacques, in turn, reportedly had immense respect for him because he wrote to her timing, dignity and comic intelligence instead.

Yet their closeness gradually deteriorated. During the touring production A Hatful of Sykes in the late 1970s, Jacques was struggling with arthritis and painful ulcerated legs. Accounts based on her authorised biography describe growing tensions over dressing-room arrangements, changes to the act and the amount of applause each performer received. Jacques was reportedly deeply hurt by Sykes’s behaviour, although the pair continued appearing together and completed the final series of Sykes in 1979.

Jacques died on 6 October 1980, aged only 58, after suffering a heart attack while also affected by kidney failure. Her death left their long partnership without any real opportunity for reconciliation.

The most dramatic part of the story concerns her funeral. Jacques’s authorised biographer Andy Merriman reported that her sons refused to allow Sykes to attend because they resented his treatment of their mother during those difficult stage tours. That version has since become widely repeated. However, Sykes’s family disputed the claim, maintaining that he had been invited but was working in Australia and that members of his family attended in his absence. The supposed “funeral ban”, therefore, is better treated as a disputed account rather than unquestioned fact.

What remains undeniable is the extraordinary work they left behind. Whatever sadness clouded their final years, Eric and “Hat” created a partnership built on genuine comic understanding. On screen, the bitterness disappears completely: they remain affectionate, exasperating and inseparable — which perhaps makes the unresolved ending of their real friendship all the more heartbreaking.

29/08/2026

For millions of viewers, Victoria Wood was the woman who could turn a cup of tea, a badly fitted bra or an awkward family conversation into comedy gold. Yet behind that brilliantly observed humour lay a private life far more complicated than her public warmth suggested — including the painful collapse of a marriage that had once provided her with stability when her career was still uncertain.

Wood met actor and future comedy magician Geoffrey Durham, later famous as the Great Soprendo, in 1976. She would later acknowledge how important his encouragement had been during the difficult early years of her career. They married in March 1980 and had two children, Grace and Henry. But as Wood became one of Britain’s most successful comedians, writers and performers, the pressures of work and family life became increasingly difficult to balance. Her authorised biography later revealed that she regarded the marriage as imperfect but believed a powerful bond had always existed between them.

By 2002 that bond was no longer enough. Durham left the marriage after 22 years, and Wood was reportedly devastated by the separation. Rather than publicly attacking him, she tended to blame herself, later speaking about exhaustion, resentment and the enormous pressure she had placed upon herself to be both a successful performer and a completely present mother. Their divorce was finalised in 2005.

Wood never remarried. Although newspaper accounts sometimes portray the break-up as bitter, the reality appears more complicated. Durham remained geographically close to the family for a period, and years later he cooperated extensively with Jasper Rees for Wood’s authorised biography. Her heartbreak therefore seems to have been less about hatred than about the painful recognition that an important relationship had failed.

When Wood died from cancer in April 2016, aged just 62, the extent of her financial success became apparent. Her estate was reported to be worth approximately £9.3 million. Her children inherited her valuable Highgate home and Lake District property, while her siblings received substantial individual bequests and friends and godchildren were also remembered. A large portion of her wealth was directed towards charitable purposes through what became the Victoria Wood Foundation.

One name, however, was absent from the inheritance: Geoffrey Durham. He received nothing under Wood’s will. Yet there is no reliable evidence that this was intended as a final act of revenge. They had been divorced for more than a decade, and Wood’s decisions appear instead to have centred upon her children, wider family and charitable legacy. Perhaps that is what makes the story so poignant: beneath the laughter was a woman who carried the sadness of a broken marriage quietly, while ensuring that what she had built would ultimately benefit the people — and causes — she cared about most.

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