Tonight's contestants try a spot of belly dancing and make some scary faces with giant chocolate eggs before encountering a time warp with Doctor Who memorabilia. With Melanie Stace.

Andrew McCulloch (often credited as Andy McCulloch) is a British television writer and actor. He was born in Ayrshire, Scotland and lived there until he was 18 years old. He then trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, leaving in 1968.

That year saw him act on stage in a performance of Gulliver's Travels at the Mermaid Theatre; this was soon followed by a television appearance in an episode of The Wednesday Play in 1969, followed by a movie version of David Copperfield (as Ham Peggotty). He then appeared in a variety of films and shows during the 1970s, including Cry of the Banshee, The Blood on Satan's Claw, Macbeth, Kidnapped, Dixon of Dock Green, The Land That Time Forgot, Softly Softly, Nicholas Nickleby and Target.

In 1980 he teamed up with John Flanagan to become a writing partnership, with his first credit for the Doctor Who story Meglos - however, a second script for the following season, Project Zeta-Sigma, failed to materialise. Further writing credits together include Coasting, Sleepers (in which he also appeared), Margery and Gladys, The Good Guys, Murder in Suburbia, Heartbeat and The Royal.

During the 1980s and 1990s he continued to act, appearing in shows such as Gulliver in Lilliput, The Baker Street Boys, By The Sword Divided, Father Ted, Tumbledown, Den of Lions, The Chief, Monsignor Renard, Taggart, The Bill, and Casualty. The 2000s included Heartbeat, Roger Roger, Down to Earth and Messiah: The Harrowing, with his last television credit to date being in an episode of Holby City.

Other stage appearances include Electra, Chips with Everthing, Gynt and A View from The Bridge in the 1970s, and then Submariners, Terra Nova and The Crucible in the 1980s. After a lengthy break from acting from 2009, he returned to acting in 2017, appearing on stage as Charlie in When Love Grows Old - The Weatherman with Close Quarter Productions at the Brighton Festival.

McCulloch lived in France for several years and is fluent in the language. He currenty lives in London with his wife.

John Kane (born 27 October 1945) is an actor and writer.

He played Tommy in the 1974 Doctor Who serial Planet of the Spiders. 

An associate actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played Puck in Peter Brook's acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream alongside Ben Kingsley, Alan Howard and Frances de la Tour, before turning to comedy script writing. He began writing for Terry Scott's sketch show Scott On, before taking over the reins on a project for Terry Scott and comic actress June Whitfield, which began asHappy Ever After and later turned into the longer-running series Terry and June, for which he wrote the entire first series and much of the subsequent run

Continuing to work as an actor with the RSC, he also created sitcoms Me and My Girl (1984–88) with Richard O'Sullivan and Tim Brooke-Taylor, All in Good Faith (1985–88) with Richard Briers, and Aztec drama The Feathered Serpent (1976–78). He also wrote for, among others, Never the Twain, Smuggler, Rings on Their Fingers, and wrote the "Six Napoleons" episode of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, with Jeremy Brett in the role.

Turning to the stage, he wrote the RSC's adaptation of Wizard of Oz, West End Cole Porter tribute A Swell Party and the words and music in 2005 for The Canterville Ghost at the Southwark Playhouse. He also wrote the Television Film The Vamp starring Shelley Winters, children's cartoon Britt Allcroft's Magic Adventures of Mumfie, and won a Cable Ace award for his screenplay Daisies in December starring Joss Ackland. He collaborated with composer David Bass on a children's opera Kids Court which was premiered in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2007 by the North Cambridge Family Opera Company. He continues to work as a stage and screen actor.

_{Biography from the Wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA}

John Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s he became a member of Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, The Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.

In the mid 1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. He also starred in Clockwise, and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films as R/Q, two Harry Potter films and three Shrek films.

With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films.

Peter Bryant was the fourth producer of  Doctor Who. 

He was born in London and was originally an actor, appearing in the 1950s soap opera The Grove Family. Later, he became a BBC Radio announcer and wrote radio scripts as a sideline. This led to him becoming a script editor in the Radio Drama Department and eventually the head of the Drama Script Unit.

About seven years later, he transferred from radio to television, where Head of Serials Shaun Sutton put him to work with script editor Gerry Davis on Doctor Who.

Having acted as Associate Producer on The Faceless Ones and The Evil of the Daleks, he was full producer for The Tomb of the Cybermen and then the bulk of the later Patrick Troughton stories from The Web of Fear to The Space Pirates. He was also the script editor on The Evil of the Daleks, The Abominable Snowmen and The Enemy of the World. During this time he was married to actress Shirley Cooklin but they eventually divorced.

He later became a literary agent to writers and a casting agent to actors. One of his clients was Doctor Who writer Eric Pringle.

Bryant died in May 2006, aged 82, after a year-long battle with cancer.

Biography from the Wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA

Roy Stewart originally from Jamaica, began his career as a stuntman and went on to work in film and television, at a time when there were few working black actors.

In 1954 founded Roy Stewart's Gym in Powis Square, North Kensington, and ran the Caribbean club and restaurant the Globe, in Talbot Road until his death. Stewart played Quarrel Jr. in the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die. Other film appearances include:Carry On Up the Jungle, Twins of Evil and Stand Up, Virgin Soldiers. He was also active ontelevision, with credits including: Out of the Unknown, Adam Adamant Lives!, Doctor Who(in the serials The Tomb of the Cybermen and Terror of the Autons), Doomwatch, Up Pompeii!, The Troubleshooters, Space: 1999 andI, Claudius.

Biography from the Wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA 

Paul Erickson was a Welsh screenwriter, most active in the 1950s and 1960s. He contributed generally single episodes to a wide variety of British television shows, most typically of the crime drama genre, although he did occasionally generate science-fiction scripts. In the 1950s, he would have generally been considered a B-film or telemovie writer, offering theatrical audiences such work as Track the Man Down, Secret Venture, and Three Steps to the Gallows. By the 1960s, however, his work was almost exclusively for episodic and anthologic television. He sold three scripts for the third season of The Saint, adapted William Tenn's short story, "Time in Advance", for Out of the Unknown, wrote The Ark for Doctor Who, and contributed to The Inside Man and Paul Temple.

Eric Maschwitz OBE, sometimes credited as Holt Marvell, was an English entertainer, writer, broadcaster and broadcasting executive.

Life and work

Born in Edgbaston, Birmingham, the descendant of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants, Maschwitz was educated at Arden House preparatory school, Henley in Arden, Repton School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

As a lyricist, Maschwitz wrote the screenplays of several successful films in the 1930s and 1940s, but is perhaps best remembered for his lyrics to 1940s popular songs such as "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" (music by Manning Sherwin) and "These Foolish Things" (music by Jack Strachey). Maschwitz was romantically linked to the Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong while working in Hollywood, and the lyrics of "These Foolish Things" are evocative of his longing for her after they parted and he returned to England.

Maschwitz started his stage acting career in the early 1920s, playing Vittoria in the first successful modern production of Webster's The White Devil (Marlowe Society, Cambridge ADC Theatre, 1920). He joined the BBC in 1926. His first radio show was In Town Tonight. While at the BBC he wrote a radio operetta Good Night Vienna with the popular song of the same title. In 1932 it was adapted as a film starring Anna Neagle.

Under contract to MGM in Hollywood from 1937, he co-wrote the adaptation of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, made by MGM-British, for which he shared an Academy Award nomination.

From August 1939, he was a postal censor in Liverpool. From November 1939, he served with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)/MI-6 D Section (sabotage). In 1940, he briefly worked to establish a resistance organization in Beverley, Yorkshire, and for Army Welfare in London before being assigned to the Special Operations Executive (SOE). In 1940 he was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps. He was then sent to New York City to work for the British Security Coordination (BSC). In 1942, he returned to London, briefly supervising radio programmes for the troops. He then transferred to the Political Warfare Executive (PWE). He ended the war as chief broadcasting officer with the 21st Army Group, leaving the army as a Lieutenant-Colonel. Maschwitz, along with Major John Macmillan, (members of "No 1 Field Broadcasting Unit") was responsible for taking over the "Reichssender Hamburg" on May 3, 1945. (See p. 50 "Die Briten in Hamburg", Ahrens, 2011, Döllin und Galitz Verlag).

In 1958, near the start of the BBC/ITV ratings wars, he rejoined the BBC as Head of Television Light Entertainment. About the job he said, "I don't think the BBC is a cultural organisation. We've got to please the people. The job of a man putting on a show is to get an audience." By 1962, he was serving as assistant to the BBC's Controller of Programmes, and it was in this capacity that he requested the recently formed BBC Survey Group to examine possible ideas for a science fiction drama series; the results of the study led to the creation of Doctor Who the next year.

Maschwitz left to join the rival ITV in 1963.

During the course of his varied entertainment career, Maschwitz also adapted French comedies such as Thirteen For Dinner; wrote the book and lyrics for numerous musicals, amongst them Balalaika, Summer Song, which used the music of Dvorak, Happy Holiday (based on Arnold Ridley's play The Ghost Train), and Zip Goes a Million, which was written specially for George Formby; and he was the creator of the radio series Café Collette. He also edited the Radio Times, and even turned his hand to the detective novel: Death at Broadcasting House, co-written with Val Gielgud and published in 1931, revolves around a radio play disrupted by the murder of one of the cast.

Maschwitz was married twice: first to Hermione Gingold, who was granted a divorce in 1945, and then immediately to Phyllis Gordon, who remained his wife until his death.

His autobiography, No Chip On My Shoulder, was published by Herbert Jenkins in 1957.

He was created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1936.

Biography from the wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA