Statistics


On This Day (USA) - 26 May



The Green Death: Episode Two premiered on BBC One in 1973 at 5:50pm BST, watched by 7.20 million viewers.

Investigating the old mine workings, Jo and miner Bert become trapped beneath the surface when the lift is sabotaged. Bert touches some green slime and becomes infected.


Human Nature premiered on BBC One in 2007 at 7:11pm BST, watched by 7.74 million viewers.

Alter Ego premiered on BBC Three in 2007 at 7:55pm BST

 Birthdays
Kerry Ingram will be 25 - credited as Singer in Doctor Who Prom (2013)(Music)

Kerry Ingram is singer and actress who comes from Warfield, Berkshire. Having attended Charters School in Sunningdale, she has since attended Redroofs Theatre School. Her career on stage has included portraying a workhouse child in Oliver!, and then went on to play the lead in Matilda, for which she later won a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical. On television she plays Shireen Baratheon in Game of Thrones.

She also had uncredited roles in the films Robin Hood and Burke and Hare, and also had a singing part in Les Miserables, though this was cut from the final edit.



Sheila Steafel (died 2019 aged 84) would be 89 - credited as Young Woman in Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.(Aaru)

Sheila Steafel is a South African-born actress.

Steafel, who was born in Johannesburg, appeared in many classic television series, including: The Frost ReportZ-CarsSykesThe Kenny Everett Television ShowMinderThe Ghosts of Motley HallOh Brother! and The Laughter of a Fool.

Her film appearances include: Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966), Baby Love (1968), Quatermass and the Pit (1967), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Some Will, Some Won't (1970), which co-starred her ex-husband's acting partner Wilfrid BrambellPercy (1971), and Are You Being Served? (1977).

Much of Steafel's work has been on BBC radio. For several years in the 1970s and 1980s she was a cast member of Radio 4's weekly satirical show 'Week Ending', providing the voices for a large number of characters and impersonating real-world figures such as Margaret Thatcher.

Steafel appeared as herself in "The Lost Hitch-Hiker's Sketch" with Simon Jones, a sketch written by Douglas Adams for her 1982 BBC Radio 4 show Steafel Plus. In 1979, she starred in the West End stage production of A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine playing several roles, including Harpo Marx.

Steafel was married to actor Harry H. Corbett from October 1958 until August 1964. In 2008, she was portrayed by Zoe Tapper in the BBC television play The Curse of Steptoe. Sheila also appeared regularly on the BBC One old-timemusic hall programme, The Good Old Days, portraying her comic creation 'Miss Popsy Wopsy' who invariably 'played up' to chairman, Leonard Sachs.

In 1998 She released a CD album of Victorian songs entitled Victoria Plums (Redial/Polygram No. CD 557 209-2).

In 2010 Sheila released her autobiography "When Harry Met Sheila" through Apex Publishing.


Julia Smith (died 1997 aged 70) would be 97 - 2 credits, including Director for The Smugglers

Julia Smith was an English television director and producer. She is best known as a writer and co-creator of the BBC soap opera EastEnders..

London-born Smith became involved in television production when she directed the series Suspense in 1962. Soon, she was directing popular BBC shows such as Z Cars (in 1962); and Doctor Who (in 1966), where she directed the stories "The Smugglers" and "The Underwater Menace". In 1967 she directed an adaptation of The Railway Children with Jenny Agutter that was successful enough for it to lead to the fondly remembered 1970 film in which Agutter reprised her role of Roberta.

Whilst working on Z Cars she had met Tony Holland who was a writer for the show. The two of them became an established producer/script-editor team and went on to work for the BBC's long-running hospital drama, Angels (1975) from 1979 to 1983.

In 1983 the BBC contacted Smith and Holland to create a new popular bi-weekly serial drama. Two ideas were given to them, one about a caravan site, the other about a shopping arcade. Neither of them liked either of the ideas, and demanded to be able to create something about what they knew - in the words of Smith - "London - today!"

Together they came up with the idea of a serial set in the East End of London in a Victorian Square. When casting for the show, Smith had the guideline 'Only genuine Eastenders need apply'; it was this that gave her the idea for the name of the show, which would be called EastEnders after other names were rejected.

After the success of EastEnders, Smith and Holland collaborated again on the ill-fated BBC soap opera Eldorado. Holland created the series � based on an original idea by Verity Lambert � and Smith was producer. Eldorado was produced by Lambert through her own company Cinema Verity Productions

She died of cancer in Kensington and Chelsea, London, in 1997


Leonard Maguire (died 1997 aged 73) would be 100 - credited as Draith in Full Circle

Leonard Maguire was a Scottish actor. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Maguire had a long career, beginning in the 1940s. He died in 1997, aged 73, after a lengthy illness

Maguire was one of the founding members of the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1943. He appeared on stage in numerous plays, including world premieres from Samuel Beckett and Dylan Thomas at the Edinburgh Festival. Maguire won the sought-after Fringe First award three years in a row for solo shows (1976, 1977, 1978); he was the only performer to accomplish this.

Maguire appeared in numerous television shows during his career. He achieved a big TV audience in the Sixties and Seventies as presenter of arts programmes Perspective and Tempo and as the headmaster in school drama serial This Man Craig. Other television credits include: Dixon of Dock Green (1962); Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1963–1970); Z-Cars (1967); The Troubleshooters (1967); The Borderers (1969); Emmerdale Farm (1973); Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (1974); The Pallisers (1974); Doctor Who (1980); Rockliffe's Babies (1987); a recurring character in EastEnders as Lou Beale's friend "Uncle" (1986–1988); Rab C. Nesbitt (1990); Bergerac (1991), and Poirot (1993), among many others.

Film credits included The Awakening (1980); The Honorary ConsulA Dry White Season, and Prospero's Books.

Maguire married radio producer Frances Campbell (1917–2008) in the 1960s.After his retirement, Maguire moved to France, where he died in 1997 from a lengthy illness.


Peter Cushing (died 1994 aged 81) would be 111 - 2 credits, including Dr. Who in Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.(Aaru)

Peter Wilton Cushing, OBE was an English actor and a BAFTA TV Award Best Actor winner in 1956. He is mainly known for his many appearances in Hammer Films, in which he played the sinister scientist Baron Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, among many other roles. He appeared frequently opposite Christopher Lee, and occasionally Vincent Price. A familiar face on both sides of the Atlantic, Cushing's best-known roles outside the Hammer productions include Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars (1977) and Dr. Who in Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966), films based on the Doctor Who television series.

Early life and career

Cushing was born in Kenley, Surrey, the second son of George Edward Cushing and Nellie Maria (née King) Cushing. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Dulwich, South London. After the end of the First World War, they returned close to Kenley; this time to neighbouring Purley, Surrey, where in 1926 his quantity surveyor father built Clearview, an Art Deco house on St James Road. It was here that Cushing remained until early adulthood.

Educated at Shoreham College, Cushing left his first job as a surveyor's assistant to take up a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After working in repertory theatre in Worthing, Sussex, he left for Hollywood in 1939, debuting in The Man in the Iron Mask later that year, before returning to England in 1941 after appearing in several films. In one, A Chump at Oxford (1940), he appeared opposite Laurel and Hardy. His first major film role was that of Osric in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948).

In the 1950s, he worked in television, notably as Winston Smith in the BBC's 1954 adaptation of the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), scripted by Nigel Kneale. Cushing was highly praised for his performance, although he considered his acting in the surviving version of the broadcast — it was performed live twice in one week, then a common practice, and only the second version exists in the archives — to be inferior to the first.

Among other TV appearances, Cushing starred as Fitzwilliam Darcy in the BBC's production of Pride and Prejudice (1952), as King Richard II in Richard of Bordeaux (1955), and as Raan, a Prospero-like character, in "Missing Link" (1975), an episode of Space: 1999. He also appeared in The Avengers and its successor series, The New Avengers. In 1956, he received the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor.

Hammer Horror and Doctor Who

Cushing is well known for playing Baron Victor Frankenstein and Professor Van Helsing in a long series of horror films produced by Hammer Film Productions in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He was often cast alongside Christopher Lee, who became his best friend. His first appearances in his two most famous roles were in Terence Fisher's films The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958). He later said that his career decisions entailed selecting roles where he knew that he would be accepted by the audience. "Who wants to see me as Hamlet? Very few. But millions want to see me as Frankenstein, so that's the one I do."

Cushing also played Sherlock Holmes many times, originally in Hammer's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), the first Holmes adaptation to be filmed in colour. This was followed by a performance in 16 episodes of the BBC series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (1968), of which only six episodes survive. Cushing reprised the role, now playing the detective in old age, in The Masks of Death (1984) for Channel 4.

In the mid-1960s, Cushing played Dr. Who in two films (Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.) based on the BBC science-fiction TV series Doctor Who. He decided to play the part as a lovable and avuncular figure to counter the public's image of him as a horror actor.

In an interview published in ABC Film Review in November 1964, Cushing stated, "People look at me as if I were some sort of monster, but I can't think why. In my macabre pictures, I have either been a monster-maker or a monster-destroyer, but never a monster. Actually, I'm a gentle fellow. Never harmed a fly. I love animals, and when I'm in the country I'm a keen bird-watcher." In an interview published in 1966, he added, "I do get terribly tired with the neighbourhood kids telling me 'My mum says she wouldn't want to meet you in a dark alley'."

Personal life

In 1971, Cushing withdrew from the filming of Blood from the Mummy's Tomb following the death of his wife, actress Violet Helene Beck (8 February 1905 – 14 January 1971), to whom he had been married since 1943. The following year, he was quoted in the Radio Times as having said, "Since Helen passed on I can't find anything; the heart, quite simply, has gone out of everything. Time is interminable, the loneliness is almost unbearable and the only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that my dear Helen and I will be reunited again some day. To join Helen is my only ambition. You have my permission to publish that ... really, you know, dear boy, it's all just killing time. Please say that."

In his autobiography, Cushing implies that he attempted suicide on the night of his wife's death by running up and down stairs in the vain hope that it would induce a heart attack. He later stated that this had simply been a hysterical response borne out of grief, and that he had not purposely attempted to end his life; a poem left by Helen had implored him not to die until he had lived his life to the full, and he had resolved that to commit suicide would have meant letting her down. Although not conventionally religious, Cushing maintained a belief both in God and an afterlife.

The effects of his wife's death proved to be as much physical as mental. For his role in Dracula A.D. 1972, Cushing had originally been cast as the father of Stephanie Beacham's character, but had aged so visibly and lost so much weight that the script was hastily re-written to make him her grandfather: it was done again in the last Dracula film from Hammer, The Satanic Rites of Dracula. In a silent tribute to Helen, a shot of Van Helsing's desk includes a photograph of her. He repeated the role of the man who lost family in other horror films, including Asylum (1972), The Creeping Flesh (1973), and The Ghoul (1975). In 1986, Cushing appeared on the BBC TV show Jim'll Fix It, his wish being to have a strain of rose named after Helen; the "Helen Cushing Rose" was the result. As the 1970s ended, Cushing did two final Hammer films, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires.

Later career

Star Wars

In 1976, Cushing was cast in Star Wars in the part of Grand Moff Tarkin. He was presented with ill-fitting riding boots, which pinched his feet so much that he was given permission by director George Lucas to play the role wearing his slippers. The camera operators filmed him only from the knees up, or else standing behind the table of the Death Star conference room set.

Morecambe and Wise

Following Star Wars, Cushing continued to appear sporadically in film and television, as his health permitted. In 1969, he had appeared in a comedy play by Ernie Wise on The Morecambe and Wise Show on BBC2. Throughout the BBC era of the show, he would regularly join Wise and his comic partner, Eric Morecambe, on stage; he would constantly seek payment for his first appearance, wearily asking "Have you got my five pounds yet?"

This running joke continued when the duo left the BBC and moved to Thames Television in 1978. Cushing appeared in their first special for Thames Television on 18 October, still asking to be paid, with the hosts repeatedly trying to get rid of him; at the end of the show, Morecambe placed some money in a wallet wired up to a bomb, in an attempt to blow Cushing up in exaggerated comedic style. In the duo's Christmas special, Cushing pretended to be the Prime Minister while Morecambe and Wise caroled outside 10 Downing Street; he made the comedians give him money and finally came out to declare "paid, at last!"

Wise was a guest for Cushing's appearance on This Is Your Life in 1990. He promptly presented Cushing with a five-pound note, only to extort it back from him. Cushing was delighted and exclaimed "All these years and I still haven't got my fiver!"

Later life and death

Cushing was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1982, but managed to survive for 12 years without surgery,[12] although his health remained fragile. In 1989, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, although his friend Christopher Lee publicly opined that the honour was "too little, too late". Cushing retired to Whitstable, on the Kent coast, where he had bought a seafront home in 1959, and continued his hobby of birdwatching while writing two autobiographies. He also worked as a painter, specialising in watercolours, and wrote and illustrated a children's book of Lewis Carroll-style humour, The Bois Saga. He was the patron of the Vegetarian Society from 1987 until his death.

Cushing's final professional commitment was the co-narration of the TV documentary Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror, produced by American writer and director Ted Newsom. His contribution was recorded in Canterbury, near his home. The programme was broadcast only a few days before his death on 11 August 1994, aged 81.[citation needed]

In an interview included on the DVD release of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), Lee said of his friend's death: "I don't want to sound gloomy, but, at some point of your lives, every one of you will notice that you have in your life one person, one friend whom you love and care for very much. That person is so close to you that you are able to share some things only with him. For example, you can call that friend, and from the very first maniacal laugh or some other joke you will know who is at the other end of that line. We used to do that with him so often. And then when that person is gone, there will be nothing like that in your life ever again."

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


 Deaths
Stephen Thorne (died 2019 aged 84) - 9 credits, including Omega in The Three Doctors

Stephen Thorne was a British actor of radio, film, stage and television.

He trained at the RADA (where he also met his future wife Barbara Sykes) and after a time in weekly rep. he played several seasons with the Old Vic Company and the RSC in Stratford and London including a tour to Russia. He has worked extensively in radio with over 2000 broadcasts for the BBC including Uncle Mort in theRadio 4 comedy series by Peter Tinniswood. His television credits include Z CarsCrossroads and Doctor Who

In Doctor Who he has played three major villains (Omega, Azal and Eldrad), as well as an Ogron. On radio he appeared in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of The Lord of the Rings playing the voice of Treebeard, and also in their adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards! in which he portrayed Fred Colon (and also Death). He is also renowned for audio book narration.

Other television work included Death of an Expert WitnessDavid Copperfield and Last of the Summer Wine. His was the voice of Aslan in the animated version of The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe IMDB. (Thorne reprised the character on the BBC radio adaptation of the same name.) He has given many poetry readings on radio, television and tape and in venues from Westminster Abbey to various pubs.

He recorded over 300 un-abridged audiobooks which have earned critical acclaim in both the UK and the USA. Awards include a Talkies Award 1996 for Enigma by Robert Harris and several Golden Earphones Awards from Audiofile Magazine

He is survived by his wife Barbara and their two sons, Simon and Crispian.


Bob Hornery (died 2015 aged 83) - credited as Pilot in The Horns of Nimon

Bob Hornery is an Australian actor.

He appeared in the 1979 story Horns of Nimon.

As well as other stage roles, Bob Hornery appeared in the stage production of "The Importance of Being Earnest" as the "Rev. Canon Chasuble". The production was so popular that it was an ongoing stage production between 1988 and 1992, and was televised by the ABC.

He also appeared in the Australian television production of Thunderstone and guested in Neighbours as Tom Kennedy. He has also appeared in cult television series Sapphire and Steel.