Great people in comedy who are still alive and over 80? Page 2

And, of course, there's the one and only Leslie Phillips - still here at 95.

Quote: Rood Eye @ 4th January 2020, 8:47 PM

And, of course, there's the one and only Leslie Phillips - still here at 95.

Blimey.

This is so much better than the RIP threads. :D

GLENDA JACKSON, 83.

While thinking about Leslie Phillips, I suddenly remembered another comedic Leslie - Leslie Randall who, together with his wife Joan Reynolds, starred in one of Britain's first-ever sitcoms "Joan and Leslie" way back in the 1950s.

He is still with us at 95.

Quote: Rood Eye @ 4th January 2020, 8:56 PM

While thinking about Leslie Phillips, I suddenly remembered another comedic Leslie - Leslie Randall who, together with his wife Joan Reynolds, starred in one of Britain's first-ever sitcoms "Joan and Leslie" way back in the 1950s.

He is still with us at 95.

Have you seen it?

I haven't.

I will check it out.

Quote: john tregorran @ 4th January 2020, 8:47 PM

Tom Baker ...... who?
He was in Little Britain and a Blackadder.

85.

Penny Keith is 79 so close.

Jean Boht is 87.

Myra Taylor who jointly created The Liver Birds with Carla Lane is 82.

Roger McGough is 82.

I don't whether you consider Vicious a comedy but the two stars of that are over 80.
Jacobi and McKellen.

Quote: john tregorran @ 4th January 2020, 9:06 PM

I don't whether you consider Vicious a comedy but the two stars of that are over 80.
Jacobi and McKellen.

Well, I guess so. The Ac-tor. I bet if I googled them it would be comedic overflowing so thanks for those and I will. I've got to walk round the block, This is what happens at my age when you get great gusts and burn out. I have already had to wade through loads of early deaths to bring you this stuff which once again proves my point. Find a way at which everyone lives to the same long age and personally I couldn't give a toss if I am a scarecrow with no heating and only eating bread and dripping. As always with my posts, the key message is the message which is unspoken until it is spoken. Young Hairon. Markus and Zooey - drive out quickly to get your interviews of these people for all of our sakes and times from here to eternity in all its damn fire. You will deeply regret it if you don't and you will only have yourselves and us to blame you. And yes I do realise there is a thing called climate change but it hasn't happened yet so just fill your tanks.

Talking of ac-tors, I guess Dame Maggie Smith, 85.

Quote: A Horseradish @ 4th January 2020, 9:04 PM

Have you seen it?

Yes, I've seen "Joan and Leslie": it was quite funny husband-and-wife stuff, for its day.

I know they went to Australia a few years later and made a sitcom there with the same title - and possibly the same scripts, who knows?

At the peak of their British show's success, they were paid £125 per week each - and that was serious money in the Britain of 1958!

I do have an interesting bit of trivia about the sitcom "Joan and Leslie".

In the mid-late 50s in Britain, television was a relatively new phenomenon and the sitcom "Joan and Leslie" caused considerable alarm in the star couples' real-life household when their young son watched it and immediately became frightened by the prospect that carbon copies of his mum and dad existed. He was deeply worried because he had no idea how to be sure which of all these identical people were his real parents.

Joan and Leslie reassured him that the people he saw on TV were actually his real mum and dad and were not two different people.

In order to convince him, they had a photograph of the boy on the set in subsequent episodes and, at some point during recording, one of them would wander over to the photograph and stand next to it while delivering a line or two of dialogue.

In that way, they were able to convince the child that they really were the people in the TV programme.

Quote: Rood Eye @ 4th January 2020, 9:21 PM

Yes, I've seen "Joan and Leslie": it was quite funny husband-and-wife stuff, for its day.

I know they went to Australia a few years later and made a sitcom there with the same title - and possibly the same scripts, who knows?

At the peak of their British show's success, they were paid £125 per week each - and that was serious money in the Britain of 1958!

Yes indeed. I wasn't born at the time but that was essentially the basis of my pre existence conversation with Vivian Teed and Nat Lofthouse. It was weird the way it occurred. Teed was sent off to the gallows under the 1957 Homicide Act for striking postmaster Williams 27 times to his death at the Fforestfach Post Office whereas Lofthouse double secured a 2-0 win for Bolton as they triumphed over local rivals Manchester United in front of a 100,000-strong Wembley crowd.

Wanda Ventham, 84.

Anna Karen, born Ana Caren Krege, not a lot of people know that but many wondered about the surname, 83.

Rowena Cooper, 84.

Mel Brooks, 93 (honorary Brit). :)

David Jason will qualify in a few weeks. Can people who are no longer alive but lived beyond 80 years be included? If so I would like to throw Gene Wilder in to the cooking pot.

I thought about that, eg:Arthur Askey and Norman Wisdom

BUT the title is "still alive".........:)

I like the last couple of contributions a lot. Tarby - I'm not a rule setter when it comes to interaction : I just have my many views on how I prefer the world to be - so it can go whichever way people wish. The best thing for me is that people contribute. I guess, though, that the list of the 80 pluses, deceased, would be very long. Obviously that is a good thing.

I'm in a very weird mood, just as I have been for a while now. It's like I have turned a page in these recent weeks and the past with its many different forms has become my partner. I don't know what to make of it. It feels confusing. John T might be interested to hear the following. I won't put it to RIP. To my surprise - I was always a fan but not a massive fan - I have found of all the people we lost in 2019 the death of Clive James, who just failed to overtake 80, to have been among the most moving. A lot of tribute programmes currently in the UK. And I'm thinking genius to be frank. On a par with Alistair Cooke and the few others of that standard, although each distinctive. I just wish he had had another ten years.

Amazingly Jimmy Cricket doesn't qualify. He's only 74.

Arnold Brown, 84.

Still active:

https://www.theskinny.co.uk/festivals/edinburgh-fringe/comedy/account-me-in-arnold-brown-interview

I saw him once do a solo show at the King's Head in Islington. Fantastic.