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

04/09/2026

Rosie Jones has built much of her comedy career on refusing to let other people define what disability should look or sound like. The Yorkshire-born comedian, who has cerebral palsy, moved from working behind the scenes in television to becoming a familiar face on British panel shows and fronting her own travel programme. Yet greater visibility brought a darker consequence: a stream of ableist abuse, including slurs and threats, both online and in public. In 2023, Jones turned that experience into a Channel 4 documentary with a deliberately confrontational title, Rosie Jones: Am I a R*tard?, broadcast on 20 July.

The film was not primarily about Jones’s cerebral palsy, but about the hostility directed at disabled people and the way social media can amplify it. She examined abusive messages sent to her, spoke to researchers about online hate, met parents whose disabled child had also been targeted, and challenged the apparent failure of platforms to remove degrading content. The title, however, became controversial before transmission. Several disabled contributors withdrew, saying the slur was harmful and could normalise language long used against people with learning disabilities. Mencap also objected, arguing that the word had caused deep offence and should disappear from everyday use. Jones defended her decision by saying the term was repeatedly used against her and that confronting it openly was intended to expose, rather than excuse, ableism.

That disagreement revealed something more complicated than an argument over who was “allowed” to use a particular insult. Disabled people are not a single community with one view on language, reclamation or representation, and the criticism of Jones was not a demand that she substitute one degrading term for another. At its strongest, the documentary asked viewers to look beyond the dispute over its title and consider why disabled people are still mocked, dehumanised and threatened for being visible in public life. Whatever one thinks of Jones’s provocative choice of words, the programme remains worth remembering because it forced a national conversation about the prejudice that made such a title possible in the first place.

04/09/2026

For an actress whose public image seemed built on fearless flirtation, Fenella Fielding guarded her real romantic life with remarkable determination. Audiences knew the dark hair, extravagant lashes and velvet voice, particularly from Carry On Screaming! in 1966, when her vampire-like Valeria delivered the immortal “Do you mind if I smoke?” as vapour curled around her. Yet the woman behind that comic persona was far more private. Fielding never married or had children, and for years speculation filled the gaps she chose not to explain. Only late in life did she reveal that, during one 20-year period, she had maintained relationships with two men at the same time, neither apparently knowing about the other.

Fielding described the arrangement without apology or melodrama. She kept the men’s identities private, although she later indicated that one had died and the other was still alive when her memoir appeared in 2017. Contemporary accounts also record that at least one was married. What is less well supported is the idea that Fielding had made a lifelong vow against marriage. Asked directly why she had never wed, she said she believed in love and recalled a man she would have married, but who died before that could happen. Her independence, then, was not necessarily a rejection of commitment; it was part of a life in which she resisted being neatly defined by family expectations, gossip or the roles that made her famous.

That independence had been hard won. Born Fenella Feldman in London in 1927, she grew up in a troubled household and fought to pursue acting despite strong parental opposition. She became a gifted stage performer as well as a distinctive screen presence, appearing in West End revues, classical drama, television and two Carry On films. Her career later faltered and financial difficulties followed, but she enjoyed a striking late-life revival, performing memoir readings and new work into her nineties. Appointed OBE in 2018, she died that September aged 90. Fielding remains worth remembering not merely for one smoky punchline, but for the wit, resilience and stubborn self-possession behind it.

04/09/2026

For millions of viewers, Annette Crosbie became unforgettable not by playing the loudest character in the room, but by giving quiet intelligence, dry wit and steel to women who might otherwise have been overlooked. Born in Gorebridge, Midlothian, in 1934, she trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and built her craft through repertory and stage work before television made her nationally known. Her breakthrough came as Catherine of Aragon in the BBC’s The Six Wives of Henry VIII, a performance that won her the 1971 BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress. Five years later she won the same award again for portraying Queen Victoria in Edward the Seventh, confirming that she could bring formidable historical figures to life without reducing them to costume-drama stereotypes.

Crosbie’s range, however, has always stretched well beyond royal roles. In the 1976 musical film The Slipper and the Rose she played the Fairy Godmother, while later screen work included Calendar Girls, Doctor Who, Little Dorrit, C***r with Rosie, Dad’s Army and What We Did on Our Holiday. Yet her most enduring part arrived in 1990 with David Renwick’s One Foot in the Grave. As Margaret Meldrew, opposite Richard Wilson’s perpetually exasperated Victor, Crosbie supplied much of the programme’s emotional balance. Margaret could be patient, cutting, weary and fiercely independent, and the role helped the sitcom move beyond comic mishaps into something richer: a portrait of marriage, ageing and the frustrations of ordinary life. The series ran until 2000, and Crosbie received further BAFTA recognition for her comic performance.

Her career has endured because she has never seemed confined to one type of acting. Serious drama, broad comedy, period television, film and character roles have all benefited from the same precision and understated authority. Appointed OBE in the 1998 New Year Honours for services to drama, Crosbie belongs to a generation of performers whose careers were built steadily across stage and screen rather than around celebrity alone. Her best work remains memorable because she could make dignity funny, irritation sympathetic and apparently ordinary women impossible to ignore.

04/09/2026

Few actors became so woven into British popular culture while appearing to make so little fuss about it. Peter Sallis possessed a voice that could turn hesitation, mild alarm or a simple observation into comedy, and it carried him through two remarkably enduring roles. For 37 years he played Norman “Cleggy” Clegg in Roy Clarke’s Last of the Summer W**e, from its first appearance in 1973 until the series ended in 2010. Amid the scrapes of Compo, Foggy and their successors, Clegg was usually the cautious observer: dry, wary and quietly amused by the chaos around him. Sallis was the only performer to appear in all 295 episodes, an extraordinary connection with a programme that became one of British television’s longest-running sitcoms.

His career, however, had begun far from the Yorkshire hills. Born in Twickenham in 1921, Sallis worked in banking before serving in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, becoming a radio instructor at RAF Cranwell. Acting entered his life through service productions, including Noël Coward’s Hay Fever, and after demobilisation he trained at RADA. He built a substantial stage and screen career, working in the West End and appearing in films and television ranging from Hammer horror to Doctor Who. Long before Clegg made him a household face, he had already developed the precision and understatement of an accomplished character actor, qualities that allowed him to make even small roles memorable.

Then, unexpectedly, the voice itself became an international star. In the early 1980s, film student Nick Park asked Sallis to record the part of an eccentric inventor called Wallace for what became A Grand Day Out. Sallis later returned for The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, helping give Wallace his genial, unmistakably British character. Park regarded him as the natural choice from the beginning, and Sallis continued voicing Wallace into old age before retiring around 2010. Appointed OBE in 2007, he died in 2017 aged 96. His legacy rests not on theatrical showiness, but on something rarer: the ability to make gentleness, timing and an unmistakable voice unforgettable.

04/09/2026

Long before Peter Sellers became internationally famous as Inspector Clouseau, he and Spike Milligan had already developed a friendship in which ordinary life could become a private comedy sketch without warning. Milligan later recalled being woken at about three in the morning while living opposite Sellers. At the door stood Sellers wearing little more than a bowler hat, socks and shoes, asking whether Milligan knew a good tailor. The story has often acquired different details in retelling, including a trilby, but Milligan’s recollection gives the hat as a bowler. Another celebrated prank involved Milligan sending Sellers a deliberately bewildering telegram containing only the instruction, “Ignore first telegram”, although reliable accounts do not establish that it was sent the next day as revenge for the doorstep joke.

Their appetite for nonsense had already helped reshape British radio. Milligan, Sellers, Harry Secombe and, initially, Michael Bentine emerged from the post-war entertainment world and gathered around Jimmy Grafton’s London pub before taking their anarchic humour to the BBC. The programme that became The Goon Show began in 1951 and continued until 1960, with Milligan as its principal creative force and one of its performers. Sellers supplied a remarkable range of voices, while Milligan created characters including Eccles and Count Moriarty and pushed scripts towards surreal plots, eccentric sound effects and deliberate attacks on conventional storytelling. The work proved enormously influential, but the relentless pressure of producing scripts also took a serious toll on Milligan’s health.

That contrast helps explain why stories about the pair still resonate. Their friendship was more than a succession of practical jokes: it formed part of a creative partnership that widened the possibilities of British comedy. Milligan later wrote poetry, television comedy and celebrated war memoirs, while Sellers became an international film star, yet their shared comic instinct remained rooted in surprise, impersonation and cheerful disruption. The image of Sellers appearing at a neighbour’s door dressed for no sensible occasion feels almost like an unwritten Goon Show scene, and it remains memorable because the private absurdity of two friends helped feed a much larger comic revolution.

03/09/2026

Harry Enfield has spent much of his career finding comedy in people who refuse to fade quietly from public life, so it was perhaps fitting that one of his oldest characters produced an unexpectedly topical moment on live television. Appearing on BBC One’s The One Show on 10 February 2026, the 64-year-old comedian was discussing Harry Enfield and No Chums!, his stage show revisiting characters from four decades in comedy. When presenter Alex Jones asked which creation he most enjoyed performing, Enfield chose Nicey, the ageing disc jockey from the celebrated Smashie and Nicey sketches. Then came the comparison that instantly changed the atmosphere: Nicey, he joked, was the “Peter Mandelson of pop” because he “keeps on coming back at you”.

Roman Kemp could be heard laughing as Jones swiftly brought the exchange to an end with, “Gosh, we’ll leave that there,” before steering the conversation back towards Enfield’s tour as the programme approached its close. The joke worked partly because Nicey himself belongs to another era. Played by Enfield alongside Paul Whitehouse’s Mike Smash, the character emerged on Harry Enfield’s Television Programme as a parody of veteran radio personalities whose tastes and broadcasting manner seemed increasingly out of step with changing times. Smashie and Nicey became among Enfield’s most recognisable creations, alongside Loadsamoney, Kevin the Teenager and Tim Nice-But-Dim, helping establish his reputation for turning familiar British social types into sharply observed comic characters.

The Mandelson reference carried considerably more weight in February 2026 than a simple joke about political longevity. A central figure in New Labour who had repeatedly returned to senior public life after earlier ministerial resignations, Peter Mandelson had later served as European Trade Commissioner, returned to Gordon Brown’s Cabinet and, decades afterwards, became Britain’s ambassador to Washington. By the week of Enfield’s appearance, however, Mandelson had resigned from the Labour Party and retired from the House of Lords amid renewed scrutiny surrounding his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. That uncomfortable collision between an old comedy character and a very current political controversy lasted only seconds, but it showed why Enfield’s humour can still produce memorable live television: familiar characters remain useful when the world unexpectedly gives them something new to say.

03/09/2026

Long before Judi Dench became one of the most recognisable faces in British cinema, someone in the film business decided that her face was the reason she would fail. Dench has recalled an early meeting with a director who told her she did not have the right appearance for films, a judgement that discouraged her from pursuing screen work enthusiastically. Her strongest foundations were already being laid elsewhere. After training at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, she made her professional stage debut as Ophelia with the Old Vic in 1957 and soon built a formidable reputation in Shakespeare. Theatre remained her first love, but cinema would eventually prove that early prediction spectacularly wrong.

Her screen career developed gradually rather than through a single Hollywood breakthrough. Dench made her film debut in The Third Secret in 1964 and later received a BAFTA award as Most Promising Newcomer for Four in the Morning. For years, however, her greatest fame rested on British theatre and television. That changed decisively in the 1990s. GoldenEye in 1995 introduced her as M, James Bond’s formidable superior, beginning a seven-film run through Skyfall. Then came John Madden’s Mrs Brown in 1997, with Dench playing Queen Victoria opposite Billy Connolly. The performance brought her international acclaim and her first Academy Award nomination.

The face once judged unsuitable for cinema became one of Dench’s greatest instruments: a glance, a pause or a raised eyebrow could carry remarkable weight. In 1999, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her brief but commanding performance as Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. Further Oscar-nominated roles followed in Chocolat, Iris, Mrs Henderson Presents, Notes on a Scandal, Philomena and Belfast, revealing a range far beyond any single type of character. Dench never had to abandon the stage to conquer film; she brought decades of theatrical discipline into the intimacy of the camera. Her story remains worth remembering because it shows how little an early professional judgement can mean beside talent, persistence and a career allowed to unfold on its own terms.

02/09/2026

For a woman who could turn almost any humiliation into a perfectly timed punchline, Victoria Wood kept one of the deepest heartbreaks of her life largely away from the stage. Behind the warmth, wit and extraordinary success was the collapse of a marriage that had shaped not only her private world, but the beginnings of her remarkable career.

Wood met magician Geoffrey Durham, later famous as The Great Soprendo, in 1976, when both were still trying to establish themselves as performers. They married in March 1980 and had two children, Grace and Henry. Durham became far more than simply her husband: Wood repeatedly acknowledged the confidence and encouragement he gave her when she doubted whether she could succeed. In their early years, he listened to routines, discussed performances and helped her develop the stage persona that would eventually make her one of Britain's most loved comedians.

But success brought pressures of its own. Wood later reflected that she had tried to be an attentive mother, run a household and maintain an enormous career simultaneously. She was frequently exhausted and anxious about doing everything properly. By the time of her final major stand-up period, following serious health problems including a hysterectomy, cracks in the marriage had become increasingly difficult to ignore.

In October 2002, after 22 years of marriage, Wood and Durham announced their separation. Their statement stressed that it was amicable and that no third party was involved, yet Wood later revealed how devastating it had been. She described the sensation as being like a cartoon character who had stepped off a cliff and suddenly discovered there was nothing beneath her. She underwent therapy and admitted feeling guilt over her own part in the marriage's failure.

The separation also affected her professionally. Although audiences still saw the assured performer capable of filling the Royal Albert Hall, Wood acknowledged that stand-up became particularly difficult while her private life was falling apart. Importantly, however, the relationship did not simply descend into hostility; later accounts portray something far more complicated — a marriage that had contained enormous affection and loyalty alongside difficulties neither could ultimately resolve.

When Wood died from cancer in April 2016, aged just 62, reports of her will revealed an estate worth approximately £9.3 million. Her children inherited significant property and personal material, while millions were directed towards charitable purposes through the Victoria Wood Charitable Trust. Durham was not named as a beneficiary. Yet describing this simply as revenge would miss the deeper story. Nearly fourteen years had passed since their separation, and Wood's final arrangements appear to have centred on her children, family, friends and charitable legacy — the people and causes she wished to support after she was gone.

01/09/2026

Few British comedians could turn diabetes, golf, environmentalism and Ringo Starr into punchlines and somehow make them all sound like part of the same conversation. Jasper Carrott has spent more than five decades finding comedy in the ordinary things people say, do and worry about, usually delivered in that unmistakable Birmingham accent and with the expression of a man who has only just noticed how ridiculous everyday life can be.

Born Robert Norman Davis in Birmingham in 1945, Carrott did not originally set out to become one of Britain’s best-known comedians. His performing career grew out of the folk-club circuit, particularly the Boggery Folk Club in the Midlands, where he sang, played guitar and acted as compère. Gradually, audiences became more interested in his stories between the songs than the songs themselves. By the mid-1970s comedy had taken over, and his novelty record “Funky Moped” reached the UK Top Five in 1975, helping turn him into a national name.

His humour was rarely dependent on elaborate setups. A wonderfully typical Carrott observation declares that laughter may be the best medicine, “unless you’re diabetic”, in which case insulin deserves rather more consideration. His remarks about being an environmentalist are similarly self-mocking: he has described himself as a “tree hugger” and “eco-warrior”, while immediately poking fun at the stereotypes attached to those labels.

Golf has provided another rich source of material. Carrott has played extensively and even wrote about the game, joking that although he is enthusiastic, he is not obsessive enough to play in the dark — before adding that perhaps darkness need not be a problem because Stevie Wonder also plays golf. It is precisely that unexpected final turn that made his observational comedy so effective.

One famous gag frequently connected with Carrott deserves a correction. The line claiming that Ringo Starr was not even the best drummer in The Beatles has often been attributed first to John Lennon and later to Carrott. More detailed research has traced the joke to the BBC Radio 4 series Radio Active in 1981, meaning neither Lennon nor Carrott originated it.

From An Audience with Jasper Carrott and the BAFTA-winning Carrott’s Lib to The Detectives, Carrott’s Commercial Breakdown and later Golden Balls, Carrott became part of the furniture of British entertainment. His greatest trick was making audiences feel that they were not simply watching a comedian perform; they were listening to a very funny bloke from Birmingham explaining just how absurd the world really was.

01/09/2026

There was something wonderfully contradictory about Graham Chapman. He looked like the respectable English professional who might ask you to lower your voice in a railway carriage, yet behind the pipe, tweed and beautifully controlled manner was one of the most unpredictable comic minds Britain ever produced. Monty Python needed that contradiction. Chapman could play authority with complete seriousness while quietly helping to destroy every convention around it.

His partnership with John Cleese had begun at Cambridge and developed into one of Python’s most important writing combinations. Cleese supplied structure, argument and precision; Chapman had an extraordinary gift for introducing the one absurd idea that transformed everything. Douglas Adams later recalled the famous story of Cleese working on a sketch about returning a faulty toaster. Chapman’s devastatingly simple suggestion was essentially: make it a parrot instead. Out of that change grew the legendary Dead Parrot sketch.

Yet the disciplined world behind Python could be very different from the apparent madness on screen. Eric Idle remembered that the group generally worked ordinary office hours, roughly nine to five. Chapman’s worsening alcoholism increasingly collided with that routine. On one occasion, Michael Palin reportedly opened Chapman’s briefcase shortly after ten in the morning and discovered that a bottle which had been full earlier was already half empty. Cleese later remembered that moment as the point when he realised Chapman’s drinking had become genuinely serious.

For Cleese, who wrote closely with him, the problem became exhausting. He recalled periods when Chapman could no longer remember in the afternoon what they had written that morning. Terry Jones remembered filming becoming equally difficult: Chapman sometimes struggled so badly with his lines that a scene required repeated takes, and on one occasion the studio audience actually cheered when he finally delivered the troublesome line correctly.

The situation reached a frightening point during Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Chapman, playing King Arthur, suffered severe withdrawal symptoms while filming in Scotland. The irony was extraordinary: an experienced mountaineer was suddenly shaking so badly beside a gorge that his colleagues initially could not understand what was happening.

But Chapman’s story was not simply one of decline. Before Life of Brian, he stopped drinking and remained sober throughout filming. Michael Palin remembered that Chapman brought a decency and steadiness to Brian that anchored the film. That perhaps captures his genius best: beneath all the chaos was a remarkably intelligent, courageous performer who could stand perfectly still at the centre of Python’s madness — and somehow make the madness even funnier.

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