Nostalgia TV

Nostalgia TV Classic TV programmes from the 70's, 80's & 90's always mixed with a dash of Nostalgia.

He made his film debut in a Russ Meyer cult film that he probably does not mention at dinner parties. He appeared in one...
27/08/2026

He made his film debut in a Russ Meyer cult film that he probably does not mention at dinner parties. He appeared in one of the most notoriously expensive television failures in NBC history. And he spent two seasons being driven into fits of rage by a man who slept with his gun and talked to it. Harrison Page turns eighty-five today and has had one of the most quietly enjoyable careers in American television history.

Harrison Page was born on 27 August 1941 in Atlanta, Georgia, and is an actor and writer, as well as a life member of the Actors Studio. He built a career spanning more than five decades across television and film, appearing in an extraordinary range of productions from Bonanza and Kojak to Ally McBeal and JAG. He was eighty-four years old at the time of this post and has continued working into his eighties.

Page's first film credit was in the 1968 cult film Vixen!, directed by Russ Meyer. Meyer cast him again as law student Emerson Thorne in his 1970 satire Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The two films gave Page an early connection to cult cinema that ran in parallel to his mainstream television career for the rest of his life.

Page was one of the stars of the ill-fated NBC series Supertrain in 1979, an enormously expensive production that became one of the most notorious failures in the history of American network television. The show ran for just nine episodes before disappearing. Page survived the experience with his career entirely intact, which said a great deal about the quality of his individual performance.

His most famous role is that of the ill-tempered Captain Trunk in the ABC police satire Sledge Hammer!, which ran from 1986 to 1988. As the permanently exasperated superior officer of an inspector who talked to his gun and regularly caused chaos in the course of fighting crime, Page had to convey escalating fury in new and inventive ways across forty-one episodes. He did it with complete conviction every single time, and the show developed a cult following that has never entirely faded.

The Mary Whitehouse Experience was a subversive British sketch comedy show that aired on the BBC between 1990 and 1992. ...
27/08/2026

The Mary Whitehouse Experience was a subversive British sketch comedy show that aired on the BBC between 1990 and 1992. Featuring the comedy duos of David Baddiel and Rob Newman alongside Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis, the series blended sharp topical satire with absurd character comedy and became a cultural phenomenon for the "post-alternative" comedy generation.

The show's title was a provocative reference to the real-life moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse, who was famous for her crusades against perceived indecency on television. Although she had absolutely no involvement with the production, the creators used her name to signal that the program would be exactly the kind of irreverent and challenging content she spent her life trying to ban.

The series actually began as a radio program on BBC Radio 1 before it was adapted for television. The transition to the screen was so successful that it sparked a massive surge in popularity for the four performers, leading to the "comedy is the new rock and roll" era where the stars sold out stadium-sized venues like Wembley Arena.

Rob Newman and David Baddiel became the show's breakout heartthrobs, attracting a level of fan hysteria that was previously unheard of for British comedians. During filming, the BBC had to hire extra security guards to manage the crowds of screaming teenage fans who gathered outside the studios, a phenomenon the production team dubbed "Newman-mania."

One of the show's most enduring legacy items was the catchphrase "That’s you, that is," used during the sarcastic "History Today" sketches featuring two bickering professors. These characters were based on real academics the writers had observed, and the sketches became so popular that the catchphrase entered the common British lexicon for years after the show ended.

The four performers famously operated as two distinct teams who rarely wrote material together, leading to a palpable sense of creative tension on screen. This rivalry eventually contributed to the show's demise, as the two duos decided to split up and pursue their own separate projects immediately after the second television series concluded.

The show was notable for its very fast-paced editing style and the use of a live, highly energetic audience that was encouraged to heckle and interact with the performers. This gave the program a gritty, club-like atmosphere that felt significantly more modern and dangerous than the more polished and traditional sketch shows of the 1980s.

Kizzy was a poignant British children's drama produced by the BBC in 1976. Based on the novel The Diddakoi by Rumer Godd...
27/08/2026

Kizzy was a poignant British children's drama produced by the BBC in 1976. Based on the novel The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden, the story followed a young Traveller girl who struggled to fit into a hostile village community after the death of her grandmother. The series was celebrated for its realistic and often brutal depiction of prejudice and social isolation.

The lead actress, Vanessa Furse, was not a professional performer and was discovered during a talent search at a local school. The director chose her because he wanted a child who could project a genuine sense of wildness and independence, rather than the polished performance of a traditional stage-school student.

The production used a real horse-drawn Traveller wagon, known as a vardo, which became a central symbol of the show. To ensure authenticity, the production team consulted with members of the Traveller community to make sure the interior details and the way Kizzy handled the horse were historically and culturally accurate.

One of the most distressing scenes involved the deliberate burning of Kizzy's wagon by local vandals. This was filmed in a single take using a decommissioned vardo, and the actress’s reaction was so intense that the crew had to pause filming to reassure her that the fire was a controlled stunt.

The show featured a notable performance by the veteran actor Patrick Troughton, who was famous for playing the Second Doctor in Doctor Who. He played the role of Admiral Twiss, a lonely and eccentric man who eventually offered Kizzy a home and became her unlikely protector against the village bullies.

The series was filmed on location in the Gloucestershire countryside to capture the rugged beauty and isolation described in the original book. The crew faced significant challenges with the unpredictable British weather, which often delayed filming for days and forced the actors to perform in freezing, muddy conditions.

The program was considered very controversial for children's television at the time because it depicted intense physical and verbal bullying. The BBC received many letters from parents who were shocked by the show's realism, but the series was eventually praised for educating young viewers about the consequences of racism and intolerance.

History Today was a recurring sketch within the comedy series The Mary Whitehouse Experience that featured two elderly, ...
27/08/2026

History Today was a recurring sketch within the comedy series The Mary Whitehouse Experience that featured two elderly, bickering academics. Played by Rob Newman and David Baddiel, the characters portrayed distinguished professors who abandoned their intellectual discussion to trade increasingly immature and schoolboyish insults.

The characters were directly inspired by the real-life television appearances of the eminent historian A.J.P. Taylor. The actors observed how certain academics would speak with great authority while subtly trying to undermine their colleagues, which led to the creation of the show’s most famous catchphrase, "That’s you, that is."

Rob Newman and David Baddiel wore highly realistic prosthetic make-up and heavy tweed suits to transform into the elderly professors. The process took several hours before each recording, and the actors stayed in character between takes to amuse the crew, often using their fragile "old man" voices to complain about the modern world.

The insults used in the sketches were intentionally designed to be as childish and pathetic as possible to contrast with the professors' high status. Phrases like "See your house? See it? It’s a rubbish house" became national playground crazes across Britain, as the writers tapped into the universal language of schoolyard bullying.

The two performers rarely used a complete script for these segments and relied heavily on spontaneous improvisation during the studio recordings. They would often try to make each other laugh or "break" character on camera, and the directors chose to keep these moments of genuine giggling in the final broadcast to enhance the chaotic feel.

The sketches achieved such a high level of cult popularity that the characters were used to promote real educational initiatives in the 1990s. Despite the professors' constant claims that history was "rubbish," the segments were credited with making the subject feel more accessible and humorous to a younger generation of viewers.

The physical mannerisms of the professors, such as the aggressive pointing and the way they leaned into the camera, were designed to mimic the filming style of 1960s educational broadcasts. The production team used specific lenses and lighting techniques to wash out the colours, making the sketches look like genuine archive footage from a bygone era of television.

Tim Curry died at his home in Los Angeles on the night of Tuesday 25 August 2026. He was eighty years old. His death has...
26/08/2026

Tim Curry died at his home in Los Angeles on the night of Tuesday 25 August 2026. He was eighty years old. His death has been confirmed by his manager, although the cause has not yet been announced. He had suffered serious health problems since a major stroke in 2012.

He was born in Cheshire, became a boy soprano, lost his father at twelve and spent the rest of his life making the world considerably more interesting. He was a sweet transvestite, a murderous clown, a Shakespearean villain, a chef, a detective, a pirate and a devil, often in the same decade. Tim Curry was one of the most extraordinary performers Britain ever produced, and today we lost him at eighty years old.

Timothy James Curry was born on 19 April 1946 in Grappenhall, Cheshire, the son of a Royal Navy chaplain. His father died of pneumonia in 1958, when Curry was twelve years old. He attended Kingswood School in Bath before graduating from the University of Birmingham with a combined degree in English and drama in 1968. His first professional stage role came in the original London production of Hair that year, where he met Richard O'Brien, a meeting that would change everything.

Curry originated the role of Dr Frank-N-Furter in Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show on stage in London in 1973, brought it to Los Angeles and New York, and then took it to the screen in the 1975 film. The film initially struggled to find an audience before becoming one of the most celebrated cult films in the history of cinema, playing at midnight screenings around the world for the following fifty years. The role defined him and liberated him simultaneously, and he spent the rest of his career proving it was only the beginning.

In 2012, Curry suffered a major stroke that left him using a wheelchair. He later recalled that he initially resisted the suggestion that an ambulance should be called, but fortunately those around him thought otherwise. He continued working afterwards, particularly as a voice actor, and continued making public appearances and attending fan events. In 2025 he published his memoir, Vagabond, looking back over his extraordinary life and career.

He was Frank-N-Furter. He was Pennywise. He was Long John Silver, Hexxus, Cardinal Richelieu, Wadsworth the butler, Darkness and King Arthur in Spamalot. He received three Tony Award nominations, Olivier Award nominations and a Daytime Emmy. He was eighty years old, and the world he leaves behind is considerably less colourful for his going.

Daniel Day-Lewis spent months preparing to live and move like an eighteenth-century frontiersman before filming began. T...
26/08/2026

Daniel Day-Lewis spent months preparing to live and move like an eighteenth-century frontiersman before filming began. The studio became so concerned about Michael Mann's relentless shooting schedule that it sent someone to the set to encourage him to move on. And some of the Native American actors quietly delivered dialogue in their own languages rather than the ones their characters were supposed to be speaking. The Last of the Mohicans was one of the most meticulously crafted historical epics of its era — and one of the more delightfully chaotic productions behind the scenes.

The Last of the Mohicans was released in September 1992, directed by Michael Mann and starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the frontiersman Hawkeye and Madeleine Stowe as Cora Munro. Set during the French and Indian War in 1757, it followed Hawkeye and his Mohican companions guiding a British officer's daughters through the perilous forests of colonial New York while war raged between Britain, France and their respective Native American allies. Made on a budget of around forty million dollars, it grossed more than one hundred and forty million dollars worldwide and became one of the most admired historical adventure films of the decade.

Daniel Day-Lewis prepared extensively for the role, undergoing wilderness and survival training and learning to hunt, skin game, build fires and use period weapons. He famously immersed himself in the physical life of Hawkeye and carried his flintlock rifle with him throughout much of his preparation. By the time filming began, he had acquired many of the practical skills his character would have needed.

Michael Mann's perfectionism became legendary during the production, with accounts of scenes requiring take after take as costs and the schedule mounted. Twentieth Century Fox became sufficiently concerned to send a representative to the set to encourage Mann to move on rather than continue shooting. Mann's insistence on getting what he wanted contributed to a difficult production, but much of that painstaking attention to detail is visible in the finished film.

One night after many hours of filming the siege sequences, with loudspeakers installed across the set to relay directions to hundreds of cast and crew, Mann reportedly shouted over the speakers asking what the orange light was and demanding that it be turned off. After a pause, a voice came back informing him that the orange light was the sun. Filming continued regardless.

Wes Studi later recalled that some of the Native American performers sometimes spoke their own languages rather than the language their characters were ostensibly using. Studi, a Cherokee, spoke Cherokee as Magua in some exchanges, while Russell Means, an Oglala Lakota, spoke Lakota to Eric Schweig, who was of Inuit and First Nations ancestry. The result was that actors supposedly conversing in the same language were sometimes speaking languages that were not mutually intelligible. Most audiences, naturally enough, never noticed.

He barely said a word on screen. He did not need to. The enormous, quietly spoken presence gliding through Live and Let ...
26/08/2026

He barely said a word on screen. He did not need to. The enormous, quietly spoken presence gliding through Live and Let Die in 1973 was one of the most memorable henchmen in the history of the James Bond franchise. Earl Jolly Brown was sixty-six years old when he died, and considerably more than a footnote in a single film.

Edwin Earl Brown was born on 18 October 1939 in Houston, Texas, and became known professionally as Earl Jolly Brown. He built a career as a character actor across the 1970s and 1980s, appearing in television and films including Black Belt Jones, Truck Turner and Beverly Hills Cop. He died on 26 August 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was sixty-six years old.

Brown's best-known role was as Whisper, the softly spoken henchman of Mr Big in the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die, the first Bond film to star Roger Moore. The character was named Whisper because he spoke so quietly that people could barely hear him. Brown brought a stillness and physical authority to the role that made him immediately memorable despite his limited dialogue and screen time.

The casting of Brown as Whisper was one of several decisions in Live and Let Die that gave the film a distinctively different texture from the Connery era. The film drew heavily on the contemporary popularity and imagery of blaxploitation cinema, and Brown's imposing presence fitted that world naturally. He did exactly what the role required, did it with complete conviction and left a lasting impression on audiences.

He was sixty-six years old when he died. The cause of his death does not appear to have been widely reported. He left behind a modest but genuine body of screen work and a character that anyone who watched Live and Let Die can still picture clearly more than fifty years later. That is not nothing. For most character actors, it is rather a lot.

She worked as a nursery school assistant before anyone put her on a stage. She came close to getting married twice and n...
26/08/2026

She worked as a nursery school assistant before anyone put her on a stage. She came close to getting married twice and never quite managed it. She moved into Denville Hall, where her great friend Peggy Mount was also living, and died six months after her. Pat Coombs was one of the most warmly loved women in British comedy, and she deserved to be remembered for considerably more than her eternal expression of bewildered suffering.

Patricia Doreen Coombs was born on 27 August 1926 in Camberwell, London. She worked as a nursery school assistant and trained as a kindergarten teacher before winning a scholarship to study acting at LAMDA, where she later taught dialect. She made her name in radio and variety alongside performers including Irene Handl, Dick Emery, Arthur Askey and Ted Ray before television claimed her, and spent decades as one of the most reliably employed character actresses in British broadcasting. She died at Denville Hall in Northwood, London, on 25 May 2002, from emphysema. She was seventy-five years old.

Coombs specialised throughout her career in playing the eternal downtrodden female, comically under the thumb of stronger personalities. One of her best-loved television roles was Cissie Lupin in You're Only Young Twice, the retirement-home sitcom she made alongside Peggy Mount. The two women played off each other brilliantly. Before that she had co-starred with Reg Varney and June Whitfield in Beggar My Neighbour, appeared regularly alongside Dick Emery and joined EastEnders in the late 1980s as Brown Owl Marge Green. She also had a small appearance in W***y Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in 1971, which many people who loved her never knew about.

Coombs once achieved an unenviable distinction for requiring an extraordinary number of takes while filming a television commercial because she had difficulty remembering the name of the product. It is, somehow, the perfect Pat Coombs story, and entirely in keeping with the slightly flustered screen persona audiences adored.

Coombs was diagnosed with osteoporosis in the 1990s and became an active campaigner for the National Osteoporosis Society. A Christmas appeal she wrote raised around one hundred thousand pounds for the charity. The woman whose career had been built on playing the helpless and put-upon spent her later years using her public profile to fight for a cause that affected millions of women, doing it quietly and without fuss.

Coombs spent her final years at Denville Hall, where her long-time friend Peggy Mount had also lived. Mount died in November 2001, six months before Coombs. Pat had continued working late into her life, including radio work with her old friend June Whitfield. She was seventy-five when she died, leaving behind one of those faces that could make an audience laugh before she had even said a word.

He was in Brookside at twelve, second on The X Factor at eighteen, number one in the album charts without releasing a si...
25/08/2026

He was in Brookside at twelve, second on The X Factor at eighteen, number one in the album charts without releasing a single at nineteen and laying carpets for a living in his early thirties. Ray Quinn has had one of the more eventful careers in British entertainment, and he turns thirty-eight today.

Raymond Arthur Quinn was born on 25 August 1988 in Knowsley, Merseyside, the youngest of three boys. He began dancing as a child and trained in singing, dancing and acting. At twelve he was cast as Anthony Murray in Brookside, appearing on the show from 2000 to 2003 and winning a British Soap Award for his performance. He was thirty-seven years old at the time of this post and has continued working across music and theatre.

When Ray Quinn released his debut album Doing It My Way in March 2007, it went straight to number one in the UK album chart. He became the youngest male artist at the time to have a number-one UK album without previously releasing a single. He recorded the swing album at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. Despite its success, his record deal with Sony BMG subsequently came to an end.

Quinn threw himself into musical theatre, appearing in productions including Grease, Dirty Dancing and Legally Blonde, among others. He won the fourth series of Dancing on Ice in 2009 and returned to win the All-Stars series in 2014. During the Covid pandemic, when entertainment work disappeared, it was reported that he had begun working as a carpet fitter alongside his brothers. He discussed it openly and without apparent embarrassment, which said rather a lot about him.

Quinn also had a small uncredited appearance in the James Bond film Spectre in 2015. One of the most successful film franchises in cinema history had briefly added another unexpected line to an already remarkably varied CV.

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