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On This Day (USA) - 29 August



The Reign Of Terror: The Tyrant of France premiered on BBC One in 1964 at 5:15pm BST, watched by 6.40 million viewers.

Susan is now very ill and in desperate need of medical help. The royalist, Leon, arranges for Barbara to take Susan to a physician, but the physician betrays them.


 Birthdays
Adam Burney will be 55 - credited as Harmonica Player for The Happiness Patrol

Adam "Tidy" Burney is a harmonica player.

He currently plays with Keith Turner and the Southern Sound and the Brothers of Mothershovel.

He released Return of Jerome in November 2012 as a limited edition vinyl 7" single by Rollin' Records, and a video has been released by Boxflip Films (images from Facebook).


Doña Croll will be 71 - 2 credits, including Matron Casp in New Earth

Doña Croll is a Jamaican-born British actress. She is best known for her British soap opera roles as Pearl McHugh in Family Affairs and more recently as Vera Corrigan in the BBC soap, Doctors.

Croll was Pearl McHugh in Family Affairs, from 1999 to 2002. She also appeared in the eighth series of Casualty, playing staff nurse Adele Beckford from September 1993 to February 1994. She also appeared in all three series of BBC sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme as Tom's agent, Norma, and in the film Manderlay. Other roles include Catherine Cooper in William and Mary and Matron Casp in the Doctor Who episode "New Earth". She also appeared in the West End production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. In June 2007, Croll appeared as Mary Maudlin in Oladipo Agboluaje's Soho Theatre play, The Christ of Coldharbour Lane. She appeared in two episodes ofEastEnders, playing Joy Lucas. She played Vera Corrigan in the BBC soap opera, Doctors, from 2007-2010. In April 2011, Croll returned to Casualty in the one-episode guest role of nurse Rachel Culley.

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



 Deaths
Terrance Dicks (died 2019 aged 84) - 44 credits, including Script Editor for The Invasion

Terrance Dicks was best known for his work as Script Editor for the third Doctor's era and as the author of many of the Target novelisations of Doctor Who scripts.

He was born in East Ham, Essex, in 1935, the only son of his parents William and Nellie (Ambler). He studied English at Downing College, Cambridge, and did two years of National Service in the British Army. Following his discharge from the armed forces, he worked for five years as an advertising copywriter, and began writing radio play scripts for the BBC in his spare time.

His break in television came when his friend and mentor, Malcolm Hulke, asked for his help with the writing of an episode of the ABC (ITV) action-adventure series The Avengers, on which Dicks received a co-writer's credit on the broadcast. He also wrote for the ATV soap opera Crossroads.

In 1968 he was employed as the assistant script editor on Doctor Who. Dicks went on to become the main script editor on the programme the following year, and earned his first writing credit on the show when he and Hulke co-wrote the epic ten-part story The War Games which closed the sixth season and the era of Second Doctor Patrick Troughton. He had, however, been the uncredited co-writer of The Seeds of Death earlier in the season, after performing extensive work on writer Brian Hayles' original scripts.

Dicks went on to form a highly productive working relationship with incoming Doctor Who producer Barry Letts, working as the script editor on each of Letts' five seasons in charge of the programme from 1970 to 1974. After his departure, Dicks continued to be associated with the programme, writing four scripts for his successor as script editor Robert Holmes: Robot (1975, the opening story of Tom Baker's era as the Fourth Doctor), The Brain of Morbius, Horror of Fang Rock and State of Decay.

Dicks also contributed heavily to Target Books' range of novelisations of Doctor Who television stories, writing more than sixty of the titles published by the company over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, with many of his literary descriptions, such as the "wheezing, groaning" sound of the TARDIS materialising, entering Who lore. He served as unofficial editor of the Target Books line, in this role, he would attempt to enlist the original teleplay author to write the books whenever possible, but if they could not or would not, then Dicks would often end up writing the books himself. 

In 1980 Dicks returned to the Doctor Who fold when he wrote State of Decay for the eighteenth season. State of Decay was in fact a rewritten version of a story entitled The Vampire Mutation which had been due for production during season fifteen, but had been hastily withdrawn and replaced with Horror of Fang Rock when the BBC decided that its vampiric theme would clash with their high-profile adaptation of Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, which was due for transmission at around the same time. Dicks made his final contribution to televised Doctor Who in 1983, when he wrote the ninety-minute twentieth anniversary special episode The Five Doctors.

During the early 1980s he worked again as script editor to Barry Letts' producer, this time on the BBC's esteemed Sunday Classics strand of period dramas and literary adaptations. When Letts departed the staff of the BBC in 1985, Dicks succeeded his colleague as the producer of the strand, overseeing productions such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Vanity Fair, before he himself left in 1988 and the Sunday Classics strand in that form came to an end.

During the 1990s, Dicks contributed to Virgin Publishing's line of full-length, officially-licensed original Doctor Who novels, the New Adventures, which carried on the story of the series following its cancellation as an ongoing television programme in 1989. Dicks wrote three Doctor Who novels for Virgin, and continued to write occasionally for the franchise following the take-over of the books licence by BBC Books in 1997. He wrote the first of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, The Eight Doctors, which was for a time the best-selling original Doctor Who novel. His book World Game, featuring the Second Doctor is set during "Season 6B", a period derived from fan theories. His most recent contributions to the range are the "Quick Reads" books Made of Steel and Revenge of the Judoon, both featuring the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones.

Other work has included two Doctor Who stage plays (Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday (1974) and Doctor Who - The Ultimate Adventure (1989)); co-creating and writing for the short-lived BBC science-fiction series Moonbase 3 (1973) and contributing to the ITV science-fiction series Space: 1999. He also wrote an audio drama for Big Finish Productions called "Comeback", which was the first to predominantly feature former companion Sarah Jane Smith. That story was released in August 2002.

In 1976, Dicks wrote a trilogy of books published by Target Books called "The Mounties" about a recruit in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. These were followed in 1979-1983 by another Target trilogy "Star Quest", which were later reprinted by Big Finish Productions.

Starting in 1978, Dicks began a series called "The Baker Street Irregulars" which eventually ran to ten books, the last being published in 1987. In 1981, Dicks also began a series of six children's horror novels with "Cry Vampire", coinciding with his novelisation of the Doctor Who serial State of Decay in which vampires also featured heavily.

1987 saw Dicks start a new series of books for very young children called "T. R. Bear", amounting to a further seven books. These were followed by the "Sally Ann" series about a determined ragdoll, "Magnificent Max" about a cat and "The Adventures of Goliath" about a golden retriever. The Goliath series is Dicks' largest amounting to eighteen books. Another five books about a St. Bernard dog made up the "Harvey" series.

"Jonathan's Ghost" and three sequels were published in 1988, and the three book "MacMagic" series followed in 1990. "The Littlest Dinosaur" was published in 1993 and "The Littlest on Guard" in 1994. Other works published in 1994 include "Woof! the Never Ending Tale", the "Cold Blood" series (four books), the "Chronicles of a Computer Game Addict" (four books).

Between 1998 and 2000 Dicks produced the three novel "Changing Universe" series. Since then, Dicks has been engaged in the ongoing "The Unexplained" series with twelve books so far.

As well as the vast number of fictional works, Dicks has also written several non-fiction books for children including "Europe United", "A Riot of Writers", "Uproar in the House", "A Right Royal History" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ghastly".

He married his wife Elsa in 1963 and they lived in Hampstead; they have three children, Stephen, Jonathan and and Oliver.

For a generation of fans growing up with his 'narration' of the Doctor's adventures, he will always be remembered fondly as "Uncle Terrance".

 

Note: many Internet sites (including ourselves) had his birthday originally listed as 10th May 1935 - Terrance has confirmed that it is indeed the 14th April. (with thanks to Andy Frankham-Allen)


Bill Kerr (died 2014 aged 92) - credited as Giles Kent in The Enemy of the World

Bill Kerr was a South African-born Australian actor, comedian and vaudevillian. Beginning as a child performer in Australia, he moved to Britain after World War II and developed a career as a performer in comedy, especially gaining notice in the radio version of Hancock's Half Hour. In 1979 Kerr returned to Australia and developed a second career as a character actor.

Early life in Australia

Kerr was born William Henry Kerr in Cape Town, South Africa, on 10 June 1922 to an Australian performing arts family, growing up in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia. His career in show business began when he was very young. Wilton, his son, recalled: "His mum used him instead of using a prop, a baby prop, she actually used her son, her newborn son, so he was literally kind of born to do it."

Kerr began to work in radio for ABC in 1932, and continued performing child parts for about 8 years. His first screen appearance was in The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934) as a blind child. He saw service in the Australian army during the Second World War, and performed in theatrical shows at home and abroad and toured with his friend, the actor Peter Finch.

Career in Britain

After the war, Kerr moved to Britain in 1947. During the next few years he was regularly featured in the BBC radio series Variety Bandbox. Retaining his accent, an unusual choice for performers moving to Britain at this time, he was billed as "the boy from Wagga-Wagga." A spokesman for the Australian town's museum said that this "struck an instant chord with the post-war British audience, who thought of 'Wagga Wagga' as a comically surreal, end of the earth, magical place somewhere left of Narnia." Harry Secombe described Kerr as having a "very laconic act" on the show, beginning his spots with the catchphrase "I'm only here for four minutes."

From 1954 to 1959, he had a regular role as an Australian lodger in the BBC radio comedy series Hancock's Half Hour. The series, with comedian Tony Hancock as the eponymous lead and also featuring Sid James, ran for six series. Initially sharper than Hancock's characterisation, Kerr's portrayal eventually developed into a more dim-witted character who became the butt of Hancock's jokes. Unlike James, Kerr did not feature in the television version of the Hancock series. Later, after Hancock had ended his professional partnership with Sid James, Kerr briefly resumed working with him in the first series of the television comedy Citizen James (1960). Kerr's other television appearances in Britain include a Doctor Who serial called The Enemy of the World (1968), with Patrick Troughton, and a long-running part in the early 1960s BBC-TV soap, Compact.

Kerr had much theatrical success in Britain, playing the Devil disguised as Mr Applegate in the first West End production of Damn Yankees, directed by Bob Fosse and first performed in March 1957. He appeared in a touring production of the play The Teahouse of the August Moon in 1956. He also worked with Spike Milligan and appeared in Milligan and John Antrobus's stage play The Bed-Sitting Room, which opened at the Mermaid Theatre on 31 January 1963. A subsequent production opened on 3 May 1967 at the Saville Theatre, and "a cast containing an unusually high proportion of Australian actors including Bill Kerr and David Nettheim." In the 1969 London production of Play It Again, Sam at the Globe Theatre, Kerr played Humphrey Bogart.

In 1972 he co-starred with Anthony Newley in the Newley/Bricusse musical, The Good Old Bad Old Days, which enjoyed a run lasting 309 performances. Later he had a role (with Julia McKenzie and Una Stubbs) in the musical play Cole, dedicated to the work of Cole Porter and first staged at the Mermaid Theatre, London in July 1974. Kerr took the part of Bluey Notts, described as "an Australian bookie's clerk, a crude racialist", in The Melting Pot (1975). This was a sitcom written by Spike Milligan and Neil Shand, which was cancelled by the BBC after just one episode had been broadcast. He also appeared in several British films, such as The Dam Busters (1955) and The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963).

Return to Australia and later life

In 1979, Kerr returned to Australia and settled in Perth, Western Australia. Now concentrating on character roles, he played serious roles in Australian films, including Peter Weir's films Gallipoli (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). He also worked on the Australian stage during the 1980s, in musicals such as My Fair Lady, where he received excellent reviews as Alfred Doolittle. Kerr played real-life Australian military personalities on three occasions, appearing as bomber pilot Micky Martin in The Dam Busters (1955), as General John Monash in the TV mini-series Anzacs (1985) and as General Harry Chauvel in the film The Lighthorsemen (1986). In addition to his serious roles, he also continued to appear in comedies including the film The Coca-Cola Kid (1985) and Let's Get Skase (2001).

Kerr also appeared in Glenview High (1978-79) and the television comedy series Minty (1998) and played the part of Douglas Kennedy in the soap opera The Young Doctors (1980). He was seen as Dave Welles in the Australian mini-series Return To Eden (1983) where he helped Stephanie Harper after she was attacked by a crocodile. Kerr providing the narration for the documentaries No Survivor - The Mysterious Loss of HMAS Sydney Nine Network Australia (1995), Malice or Mutiny for the ABC Australia 2003 and a series for Discovery, released in the USA as Animal X (originally Animal X Natural Mystery Unit).

On 26 January 2011, Kerr received the 2011 Walk of Honour in Wagga Wagga, which was unveiled on 17 May 2011. Kerr died in his family home in Perth, Western Australia, on 28 August 2014 at the age of 92. He had been married three times.

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


Dallas Adams (died 1991 aged 44) - credited as Kamelion in Planet of Fire

Dallas Adams played Professor Howard Foster in the Doctor Who serial Planet of Fire.


Patrick Barr (died 1985 aged 77) - credited as Hobson in The Moonbase

Patrick Barr was a British film and television actor.

He appeared in the 1967 story The Moonbase

Born in AkolaIndia, Patrick Barr went from stage to screen with The Merry Men of Sherwood(1932). He spent the 1930s playing various beneficent authority figures and "reliable friend" types. As a conscientious objector during the Second World War, Barr helped people in the Blitz in London's East End before serving with the Friends Ambulance Unit in Africa. There he met his wife Anne "Jean" Williams, marrying her after ten days; it would have been sooner, but they had to get permission from London. They stayed together ever afterwards.

In 1946, he picked up where he left off, and in the early 1950s, he began working in British television, attaining popularity that had undeservedly eluded him while playing supporting parts in such films as The Case of the Frightened Lady (1940) and The Blue Lagoon (1949).

This latter-day fame enabled Barr to insist upon better roles and command a higher salary for his films of the 1950s and 1960s: among the films in which he appeared during this period were The Dam Busters (1955),Room in the House Randall & Hopkirk Deceased 1968 episode "You can always find a fallguy"(1955), Saint Joan (1957), Next to Next Time (1960),Billy Liar (1963), The First Great Train Robbery (1979) and Octopussy(1983). In the 1981 BBC4 radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, Barr voiced the role of Gamling.

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


Henry Montsash (died 1974 aged 68) - credited as Hairdresser for Dr Who and the Daleks(Aaru)

Henry Montsash was the hairdresser for the 1965 feature film Dr. Who and the Daleks.