Statistics


On This Day (USA) - 16 May



The Keys of Marinus premiered on BBC One in 1964 at 5:17pm BST, watched by 6.90 million viewers.

Inferno: Episode 2 premiered on BBC One in 1970 at 5:16pm BST, watched by 5.90 million viewers.

The green slime oozing from the drill head is transforming men into monsters. Stahlman refuses to listen to the warnings and resorts to sabotage so that his project may continue.


Shada (Online): Part Three premiered on BBC Online in 2003 at 12:00pm BST


The Lost Boy: Part One premiered on SyFy (East Coast Feed) in 2008 at 8:30pm EDT

The Sontaran Stratagem premiered on SyFy (East Coast Feed) in 2008 at 9:00pm EDT

Destination Nerva premiered on Radio 4 Extra in 2015 at 6:00pm BST

The Time Lord and Leela respond to an alien distress call direct from Victorian England.


Pointless: 16th May 2016 premiered on BBC One in 2016 at 5:15pm BST

 Birthdays
Thomas Sangster will be 34 - credited as Tim Latimer in Human Nature / The Family of Blood

Thomas Sangster is an English film and television actor, best known for his roles as Jojen Reed in Game of Thrones and the voice of Ferb Fletcher in Phineas and Ferb.

Sangster was born in London. His father, who is also a musician and film editor, starred in the musical adaptation of The Lion King in Germany.

Sangster's first acting job was in a BBC television film, Station Jim. He subsequently appeared in a few more television films, including the lead roles in Bobbie's Girl, The Miracle of the Cards (based on the story of Craig Shergold) and Stig of the Dump. He won the "Golden Nymph" award at the 43rd Annual Monte Carlo Television Festival for his role in the miniseries Entrusted. Love Actually, in which he played Liam Neeson's stepson, was Sangster's first major theatrical film. He was nominated for a "Golden Satellite Award" and a "Young Artist Award" for his role in the film.

Sangster next appeared in a television adaptation of the novel Feather Boy and played a younger version of James Franco's role in the film version of Tristan and Isolde, which was filmed in the Czech Republic. Among other things, Sangster takes part in a (child's) swordfight in the film. Sangster next starred in the commercially successful film Nanny McPhee, as the eldest of seven children.

In 2007 he appeared in a two-part story (Human Nature / The Family of Blood) in the third series of Doctor Who as schoolboy Timothy 'Tim' Latimer, and guest-starred in the Doctor Who audio dramas The Mind's Eye and The Bride of Peladon.

He also starred alongside Love Actually and Nanny McPhee co-star Colin Firth in the film adaptation of Valerio Massimo Manfredi's historical novel The Last Legion, released in 2007.

That same year he voiced the character of Ferb Fletcher in the Disney Channel animated series Phineas and Ferb alongside Love Actually co-star Olivia Olson, a role he continues to voice to this day.

In March 2008 it was announced that Sangster would star in Steven Spielberg's CGI motion capture film The Adventures of Tintin as the title character of Hergé's comic books. Sangster left the project after scheduling difficulties when filming was delayed in October 2008 and the role was instead given to Jamie Bell. At the end of March 2008, he began working with Oscar-winning director Jane Campion on her film Bright Star, a love story with Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish portraying John Keats and his lover Fanny Brawne.

In March 2009 Sangster joined Aaron Johnson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Anne-Marie Duff in Nowhere Boy, a film directed by award-winning artist Sam Taylor-Wood, about the teenage years of John Lennon and the two women who shaped his early life: his mother Julia (Duff) and his aunt Mimi (Scott Thomas).

Sangster established Brodie Films in 2006 with his mother Tasha Bertram "to create opportunities in the film industry for new British talent; innovative writers, actors and directors."

In recent years he has come to prominence as Jojen Reed in Game of Thrones, and has also appeared as Rafe Sadler in Wolf Hall; he is providing the voice of John Tracy in the new animated series Thunderbirds Are Go!

Parts of the biography created from the Wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA


Tom Stourton will be 37 - 2 credits, including Lofty in The Girl Who Died

British actor who started his career as comedian for Totally Tom with Tom Palmer. He his best known for his work on the BBC series Horrible Histories


Liz Barker will be 49 - 13 credits, including Presenter in Totally Doctor Who (#1.1)(Factual)

Liz Barker is a television presenter, best known for her six years on Blue Peter between 2000 and 2006.


Rebecca Front will be 60 - 3 credits, including Walsh in The Zygon Invasion / The Zygon Inversion

Rebecca Front was born in London, and studied at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she first became involved in comedy with with Oxford Theatre Group. After several tours and work on radio and television shows, she became one of the main actors in The Day Today, forging friendships with people such as Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan, and subsequently involved in many of their projects, including Alan Partridge and later the role she is probably best known for, Nicola Murray in The Thick Of It alongside Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker.

Other appearances have included being a guest presenter on Have I Got News For You, and dramas such as Kavanagh QC, Lewis, and Jonathan Creek. She played a psychiatrist in Psychobitches, Alison Crabbe in The Spa, Cox in The Wrong Mans, Mrs Bennet in Death Comes to Pemberley, and current features as Fiona in BBC Radio 4's Love in Recovery and Helen Bute in Up The Women.

In 2014 she published a collection of autobiographical stories, Curious: True Stories and Loose Connections. She often collaborates with her writer/comic actor Jeremy Front, including Incredible Women for BBC Radio 4. She is married with two children.


Mare Winningham will be 65 - credited as Ellis Hartley Monro in Escape to L.A.(TW)

Mare Winningham  is an American actress and singer-songwriter. She has been nominated once for anAcademy AwardGolden Globe and Drama Desk, 7 times for Emmy Awards (winning two), and has also won an Independent Spirit Award and two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

She is known for her role as Georgia Flood in the film Georgia, which earned her an Academy Award nomination. She has also starred in films such as St. Elmo's FireMiracle MileTurner & HoochThe WarGeorge WallaceDandelionBrothers and Swing Vote.W

Winningham began her career as a singer-songwriter. In 1976, she got her break singing The Beatles song "Here, There and Everywhere" on The Gong Show. Though Winningham received no record contracts as result of the appearance, she was signed to an acting contract by Hollywood agent Meyer Mishkin, and received her Screen Actor's Guild card for doing three lines in an episode of James at 15. That year she was offered a role on Young Pioneers and Young Pioneers Christmas, pilots for the short-lived 1978 drama The Young Pioneers. Though the series ended with just three episodes being broadcast, a number of television projects followed, including parts on Police Woman in 1978 and Starsky and Hutch in 1979. Later that same year, she played the role of teenage outcast Jenny Flowers in the made-for-TV movie of the week called, The Death of Ocean View Park.

In 1980, Winningham starred in Off the Minnesota Strip playing a young prostitute. She then won an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress In A Miniseries Or A Movie for her role in the critically acclaimedAmber Waves, a made-for-TV movie about a rough farmer (Dennis Weaver) who finds he is dying of cancer. In that year, she also broke into film in One Trick Pony, starring Paul Simon. In 1983, Winningham was nominated for a Canadian Genie Award for her work in the futuristic 1981 drama Threshold, and appeared in the 1983 epic miniseries The Thorn Birds, in which she played Justine O'Neill. In 1984, she starred as Helen Keller in Helen Keller: The Miracle Continues.

Winningham achieved greater fame in St. Elmo's Fire (1985) as one of the original "brat pack" alumni. Despite the film's success, she failed to cash in on her teen idol status, and returned to television in theHallmark Hall of Fame movie, Love Is Never Silent, for which she received an Emmy nomination. Another well-known and well-received performance was as a homeless young mother in the television movieGod Bless the Child. Winningham finished the '80s with two Hollywood films: the nuclear disaster drama, Miracle Mile (1988), for which she received an Independent Spirit Award nomination in 1989, and theTom Hanks vehicle Turner & Hooch in 1989. In 1988, Winningham also starred in the Los Angeles stage production of Hurlyburly with Sean Penn and Danny Aiello.

In the early 1990s, she returned to film for 1994's all-star Wyatt Earp and the family drama The War, both starring Kevin Costner. 1995 brought Georgia, a thoughtful character study of two sisters (Winningham and Jennifer Jason Leigh), which earned Winningham Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award nominations. Two years later, she starred opposite Gary Sinise in George Wallace, for which she garnered her first Golden Globe Award nomination and won an Emmy Award.

She made acclaimed appearances on the series ER and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as well as appearances in the 2001 television project Sally Hemmings opposite Sam Neill and the short-lived David E. Kelley series The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire. Also in 2001, she appeared in the made for TV movie Snap Decision with Felicity Huffman. She also appeared in the independent film Dandelion, which was a staple of film festivals worldwide between 2003 and 2004 and had a limited American release in October 2005.

In 2006, she landed the role of Susan Grey on the ABC drama Grey's Anatomy where she played the stepmother of one of the main characters, Dr. Meredith Grey. Her character was killed off in May 2007. In 2006, Winningham voiced the audio version of Stephen King's Lisey's Story. In 2007, she voiced Alice Hoffman's Skylight Confessions. In 2010, Winningham starred in an episode of Cold Case as main character Lilly Rush's stepmother, Celeste Cooper. In 2011 she appeared in the fourth episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day as character Ellis Hartley Monroe.

Winningham has recorded three albums: What Might Be (1992) on the Bay Cities label, Lonesomers (1998) produced by Carla Olson on the Razor and Tie label, and Refuge Rock Sublime (2007) on the Craig & Co. label. Lonesomers is a folksy album dealing with relationship issues. The country/bluegrass/Jewish/folk songs on Refuge Rock Sublime deal mostly with her recent conversion to Judaism, and include the tracks, "What Would David Do," "A Convert Jig" and the Israeli national anthem "Hatikva". She also sings on the soundtrack of Georgia.

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


Larry Barnes (died 2011 aged 85) would be 98 - credited as Magic Advisor for The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Larry Barnes was a magician, an escapologist, a balloon sculptor and most famously a paper tearer.

He made his stage debut at the Adelphi in 1941/42 playing a pirate in Peter Pan. He also worked as a stunt man in films, including The Colditz Story (1955). 

After contracting arthritis following an accident on stage, he furthered his interest in magic. He recreated the escapology act of Houdini, releasing himself from a range of ancient handcuffs and a straitjacket in less than a minute.

He was a Pearly King


Andrew Downie (died 2009 aged 86) would be 102 - credited as Willie Mackay in The Highlanders

Scottish Actor who appeared in the 1966 story The Highlanders.

Also appeared in Monarch of the Glen, Doctors, Soft Top Hard Shoulder, Grange Hill, Crown Court, Sink or Swim, High Road, The Dick Francis Thriller: The Racing Game, Bless Me Father, The Sweeney, The Thirty Nine Steps, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, BBC2 Play of the Week, The Professionals, Sykes, Play for Today, Spy Story, Wodehouse Playhouse, Coronation Street, Churchill's People, Sutherland's Law, Upstairs, Downstairs, Comedy Playhouse, The Borderers, Dr. Finlay's Casebook, Armchair Theatre, Detective, Orlando, Miss Mactaggart Won't Lie Down, Spaceflight IC-1: An Adventure in Space, HMS Paradise, Man of the World, Danger Man, Emergency-Ward 10, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Tunes of Glory, The Bridal Path, The Nightwatchman's Stories, David Copperfield, Steve Hunter, Trouble Merchant, The Maggie, The Princess and the Woodcutter 


Hugh Cecil (died 2004 aged 90) would be 111 - 4 credits, including Technix Operator in The Daleks' Master Plan

Priest in the 1966 story The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve


 Deaths
Derek Crewe (died 2011 aged 65) - credited as Synge in The Sun Makers

A very proud Welshman, Derek Crewe's first ventures into showbusiness were with North Walian-based group The Renegades, which had some success in the sixties playing many venues in Wales and the north-west, including the Iron Door Club in Liverpool.

He went to study at the Northern School of Speech and Drama in Manchester. His theatre work included Henry V, Hamlet, The Golden Girls and Red Noses for the RSC, an unforgettable Monsieur Loyal in Tartuffe at the Almeida, London, Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream and a very beautiful and touching Uncle Jack in Just Remember Two Things by Terence Frisby at Queen's Theatre, Barnstaple. He also did seasons at Colchester, Watford, Leatherhead, Nottingham Playhouse, English Theatre Frankfurt and Clwyd Theatr Cymru.

His film and TV work included appearances in Secret Army, Z Cars, All Creatures Great and Small, Holby City, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, the Citadel, Drovers Gold, Van Der Valk, nine episodes of the Tomorrow People, We Are Seven and Daisies in December, with Joss Ackland and Jean Simmons.