Statistics


On This Day (USA) - 8 December



Nightmare of Eden: Part Three premiered on BBC One in 1979 at 6:03pm GMT, watched by 9.60 million viewers.

Love & Monsters premiered on SyFy (East Coast Feed) in 2006 at 8:00pm EST

Enemy of the Bane: Episode Two premiered on CBBC in 2008 at 5:15pm GMT

 Birthdays
Corey Taylor will be 51 - credited as Roar of the Fisher King in Under the Lake / Before The Flood

Corey Todd Taylor is an American musician, author, and actor, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of Slipknot and Stone Sour.

Taylor is a founding member of Stone Sour, and has released five studio albums with that band.

Taylor joined Slipknot in 1997 to replace their original vocalist, Anders Colsefni. He has released five studio albums with them. He has worked with several bands, including Junk Beer Kidnap Band, Apocalyptica,Anthrax, Aaron Lewis of Staind, and Soulfly.

Taylor was ranked number 86 in Hit Parader's Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time.

He was also named 7th greatest heavy metal frontman by NME. Taylor was also found, by VVN Music, to possess the second-highest vocal range of any known singer in popular music with a range of 5 and a half octaves. 


David Harewood will be 59 - 2 credits, including Joshua Naismith in The End of Time

David HarewoodMBE is a British actor.

Harewood was born and grew up in the Small Heath area of BirminghamEngland, where he attended St. Benedict's Junior School and Washwood Heath Comprehensive School. As a schoolboy, he excelled at all sports, from sprinting through basketball to rugby and especially football. He was the goal-keeper for the Washwood Heath side that won the Under-16 All-England Championship. If it were not for acting, it is likely that he would have followed a career as a professional goal-keeper. In his youth, he worked in a wine bar, Albert's in Dale End, in Birmingham City Centre.

At 18, Harewood gained a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He began a career in 1990 and appeared in The HawkGreat Moments in AviationHarnessing PeacocksMad Dogs and EnglishmenMacbeth on the Estate,Strings and Ballykissangel. He is very well known for his television appearances on The Vice and Fat Friends and for his movie roles in Blood Diamond and The Merchant of Venice. He played Don Coleman in Hustle series 7 The Fall of Railton FC (2011).

In 2007, David visited Harewood House in Yorkshire and spoke with Viscount Lascelles (a cousin of the Queen). David's surname "Harewood" comes from the time when his ancestors were captured in Africa, transported to the Caribbean, and "owned" by the Lascelles family (the Earls of Harewood). Lord Lascelles explained that his wish was for the Harewood name to stand for positive things in the future, as nothing could be done about what happened 250 years ago.

In 2008, David Harewood played Major Simon Brooks in The Palace; he also appeared (that December) on Celebrity Mastermind, with specialist subject Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials — and he appeared in the BBC film adaptation of the Philip Pullman novels The Ruby in the Smoke and The Shadow in the North, both of which are titles from the Sally Lockhart Mysteries.

In 2009, David appeared in the BBC single drama Mrs Mandela, playing Nelson Mandela. He also portrayed Brother Tuck in the third series of Robin Hood. He appeared in the Doctor Who story The End of Time. He played Martin Luther King in the premiere of the play The Mountaintop, by the American playwright Katori Hall, directed by James Dacre, which opened at Theatre503 in London on 9 June 2009.

David Harewood next appeared in two episodes of Chris Ryan's Strike Back as Colonel Tshuma. From June to September 2010, he played Theseus in the premiere of Moira Buffini's play Welcome to Thebes at the National Theatre in London. He played the character Martin Viner in an episode of New Tricks. He narrates Welcome to Lagos, a BBC documentary about Lagos. And in October 2010, Harewood commenced filming for a new British independent film,The Hot Potato.


Jennie Linden will be 85 - 2 credits, including Barbara in Dr Who and the Daleks(Aaru)

Jennie Linden is an English film and television actress. She is best known for her role in the film, Women in Love.

She played Dr. Who's granddaughter Barbara in the 1965 feature film Dr. Who and the Daleks.

Her highest profile film role was as Ursula in Women in Love (1969) for which she received a BAFTA nomination.

Linden toured in Trevor Nunn's Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hedda Gabler for two years (as Thea Elvsted) with Glenda Jackson in the title role; they appeared together in the film version in 1975.

Jennie Linden's television work has included appearances in Sherlock Holmes (1965) with Douglas Wilmer and Nigel Stock, The Saint (1966), The Rivals (1970), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1976), Lillie (1978) as Patsy Cornwallis-West, Chancer (1990), and Trainer (1991).


 Deaths
Michael Craze (died 1998 aged 56) - 11 credits, including Ben in The War Machines

Michael Craze was a British actor noted for his role of Ben Jackson alongside both William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton.

Craze was born in Newquay, Cornwall. He got into acting by chance as, at the age of twelve, he discovered through Boy Scout Gang Shows that he had a perfect boy soprano voice. This led him to win parts in The King and I and Plain and Fancy, both at Drury Lane, and Damn Yankees at the Coliseum. Once he had left school, he went into repertory and got into TV through his agent. His first television was a show called Family Solicitor for Granada which was followed, amongst others, by a part in ABC TV's 1960 series Target Luna (written by Malcolm Hulke and Eric Price and produced by Sydney Newman).

At the age of twenty Craze wrote, directed and acted in a film called The Golden Head which won an award at the Commonwealth Film Festival in Cardiff. Following Doctor Who, Craze worked on several ITV productions, including one episode (The Last Visitor) of Hammer Films' first TV series Journey to the Unknown in 1968. Other television roles include parts in Dixon of Dock Green and Z-Cars. 

In 1974, Michael left full-time acting and devoted his time to managing a pub in Shepperton. He continued to take on occasional acting roles, however. In 1994, he appeared in the BBC television playThe Healer as well as doing several day's work on Kenneth Branagh's 1994 movie adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

He was originally meant to play the role of Krelper in the 1984 Doctor Who story The Caves of Androzani, However this was vetoed by the then producer John Nathan-Turner and the part was recast.

Craze died of a heart attack on 8 December 1998. He had fallen down some steps the previous day while picking up his neighbour's paper for her, and owing to a heart condition, they were unable to operate.

He met his wife Edwina Verner through Doctor Who, where she had been a production assistant on shows he appeared in.

Michael Craze's brother is actor Peter Craze. Coincidentally Peter Craze has also appeared in Doctor Who in a number of guest roles but never worked with his brother on the series.

He is played by the actor Robin Varley in the 50th Anniversary drama An Adventure In Space And Time.


John Lennon (died 1980 aged 40) - credited as Himself in The Chase

John Lennon was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Along with fellow Beatle Paul McCartney, he formed one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century.