Art & Hue Presents 1970s Cops!

Now this isn't strictly Carry On related, even if it does feature a pre-Carry On England Patrick Mower, but I just had to share this new range of pop art from the brilliant Art & Hue. I have a massive soft spot for the very best of British television from the golden age - the 1970s. Two of my favourite shows are The Professionals, starring Martin Shaw, Gordon Jackson and Lewis Collins and The Sweeney, which featured John Thaw and Dennis Waterman.

I don't think they make telly like that any more which is a great shame, however you can own your own piece of classic TV nostalgia with this great new range of art work.

Art & Hue presents 1970s Cops, stylish pop art illustrations of iconic Seventies police detectives, available in three sizes and 25 colour options.

Fast talking, thinking, and driving, 1970s cops leapt into action at a moment’s notice, catching bad guys unawares and foiling plots with skidding cars and a cocky swagger.

“The Sweeney”, “The Professionals”, “Special Branch”, and “Target” hooked British viewers with a captivating mix of rule-breaking and action. 

Capturing the spirit of the 1970s, Lewis Collins, Martin Shaw, Gordon Jackson, Patrick Mower, John Thaw, and Dennis Waterman have been given the Art & Hue treatment in this group of six stylish graphic illustrations.

Exclusively by Art & Hue, all pop art prints are printed on museum-quality archival card of 310gsm, made from 100% cotton, using fine art pigment inks for longevity.

2018 marks 40 years since the final episodes of The Sweeney & Target and 35 years since the final episode of The Professionals.

Visit artandhue.com/cops to see the full collection.

You can read my blog on the Carry On connections with The Sweeney here 

And you can read my blog on the Carry On connections with The Professionals here

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram

My Five Favourite Liz Fraser Performances

We lost a great talent this week with Liz Fraser passing away. I know my Twitter feed has been pretty focussed on this the last couple of days but I think Liz's contribution to the best of British film and television warrants this coverage. A big thank you to everyone out there who commented positively on my tribute to Liz, posted after I heard the sad news. It wasn't easy to write but I'm glad it was well received.

I thought, after the sad news, I would take some time to write a blog on my favourite Liz performances. As she was on our screens for seven decades and worked with just about everyone this is no easy feat. So what I've come up with is a purely personal list of favourites. Some are from the cinema, some the small screen. Some are starring roles, some are small yet important cameos. 

I hope you like my choices.


Cynthia Kite in I'm All Right Jack (1959)

I couldn't do this without including Liz's breakthrough role in this Boulting Brothers classic. Despite being almost sixty years old, I caught this film again recently and it made me laugh and kept me fully engaged throughout. Not only that, it also made my husband laugh and he has a very un-British, very American sense of humour. The tale of trouble at the works boasts a stellar cast, headed by Ian Carmichael and Peter Sellers. Liz shines as Peter's sexy young daughter Cynthia who flutters her false eyelashes at Ian's Stanley Windrush and dons many a tight sweater. This role saw Liz nominated for a BAFTA and her career as a British comedy icon and glamorous sex symbol began. In an interview with The Art Desk in 2015 Liz was still immensely proud of this film and rightly so. Her seduction of Ian Carmichael in his bubble car is a highlight with that knock out line: "Is them your own teeth?" Brilliant.

Delia King in Carry On Regardless (1961)

Liz joined the Carry On team for three adventures in the early 1960s followed up by a supporting turn in Carry On Behind in 1975. She brought a breath of fresh air to the established cast and although labelled another 'Carry On Blonde' she was always much more than that. Yes, she was blonde, busty and beautiful but she was also a damn fine comic actress. She brought something different to the films from other 'Carry On Blondes' such as Shirley Eaton or Barbara Windsor. I think my favourite of Liz's Carry On roles is her very first, as an eager member of the newly established Helping Hands Agency. Although a late addition to the cast following the withdrawal of Hattie Jacques due to illness, Liz fitted like a glove. She was acting with her Hancock co-star Sid James and alongside lifelong friend Joan Sims and everything just clicked. In a cast bursting with talent, Liz holds her own.  And in my eyes, she never looked lovelier. 

Sandra in Double Bunk (1961)

By all accounts, Liz's own personal favourite from all the films she made, Double Bunk is just a delight from start to finish. In many ways it's Genevieve by boat and that's not a bad thing. It's charming, innocent black and white fun with a touch of sauce. Starring alongside Sid James, Ian Carmichael and Janette Scott, Liz joins a rather unexpected voyage on a rusty old houseboat. Liz is again working closely with Sid and the pair share tremendous chemistry. She also provides the silver screen with one of the sexiest and yet most innocent strip teases in order to pinch some petrol from fiendish cad Dennis Price. Double Bunk is light and frothy and fairly inconsequential but it wins through on bright, breezy charm and the cosy familiarity of a bunch of actors who get on well in real life having a hoot together in the studio.

Margery Harper in The Professionals: Backtrack (1979)

With the British film industry in severe decline by the late 1970s, actors like Liz were appearing more often on television. The Professionals, an action adventure crime fighting series featuring heightened violence and focussing on the negative aspects of Britain in the 1970s, may not immediately feel like the right home for an actress like Liz but her appearance is an utter joy. The Professionals, starring Gordon Jackson, Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins as leading members of CI5, although a hard-hitting drama, also featured many moments of surreal humour. As blowsy antiques dealer cum fence Margery Harper, Liz shines in an over the top performance of high camp, tight flared trousers and buckets of green chartreuse. Helping out agents Bodie and Doyle, Liz's Marge takes more than a shine to Shaw's Ray Doyle while making several hilariously snide asides to the brutish Bodie (Collins). It's camp, knowing and Fraser is obviously having a whale of a time. Where else can you find Liz Fraser screeching around Kensington in the middle of the night, dressed in furs in the back of a big American car? Wonderful stuff.

Mrs Brent in Miss Marple: Nemesis (1987)

Joan Hickson was the definitive Miss Marple. Her BBC adaptations from the 1980s and early 1990s are just the best. For me, they'll never be surpassed. They always boasted a superb cast of supporting actors and Nemesis is one of the best. Liz appears in just one scene in this feature length drama, playing a grief-stricken mother fond of a tipple. As Mrs Brent, Liz shares one small but powerful scene with actor John Horsley's Professor Wanstead. Mrs Brent's daughter Nora has disappeared and is presumed dead. Although initially bright and cheerful in her respectable 1950s semi, as Wanstead starts to ask questions, Mrs Brent's face slowly cracks and the emotion is palpable. Liz achieves this excellent emotion by completely underplaying it and the tears she sheds are very real. As her character sips her orange squash laced liberally with gin, the facade slips. This role remained a favourite of Liz's and you could tell she was very proud of it, even though it was the subject of two frequent quips. The first, that she loved it as it provided regular royalty cheques from the BBC and the second that the day after it was first broadcast a woman stopped her in the street to commend her saying, "I didn't know you could act!" 

That was Liz though. There was a spiky bluster to her but you could tell she had a heart of gold. She was proud of some of the roles she played, less so of others. She was a realist and took jobs because she both enjoyed the work and needed to work. I hope she would approve of my choices here and I hope you'll agree she was right to be proud of each and every one of them.

You can read my tribute to Liz Fraser here



You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and on Instagram

Carrying On with The Professionals!

 

One of my all-time favourite British television series has to be The Professionals. It had it all - action, humour, social comment, daft 1970s fashions and three cracking leading actors in Martin Shaw, Lewis Collins and Gordon Jackson. Over the course of 57 episodes, screened between 1977 and 1983, CI5 agents Doyle and Bodie tackled an endless crime wave (and no, I don't mean Shaw's perm) across London with Jackson as their slightly fearsome yet very wry and human boss, George Cowley. 

The series fell out of favour in the 1980s due the amount of violence on display let alone some other aspects which did still portray life as it was in the Britain of that time. I love it in the same way I love The Sweeney - strong characters, great actors and a unique time capsule back in the slightly grim recent past. The series also featured the usual delightful cavalcade of guesting British character actors and several of these were also familiar Carry On faces. So what are the links between these two great British institutions? 

 

Probably one of my very favourite Professionals cameos came in the 1979 episode "Backtrack" and in the shapely shape of Liz Fraser. Liz, the face of many classic British comedy films from the 1950s, 60s and 70, gladly hammed it up shamelessly as "fence" Margery Harper. Margery was a rather colourful character who took a bit of a shine to Ray Doyle! The scenes featuring Shaw, Fraser and Lewis Collins are full of wonderful comedy and are deliciously knowing. The strength of Liz's performance once again proves why we should have seen much more of her in British television drama over the years.

Julian Holloway, an actor who appeared in countless classic British series at the time, also played the guest role of policeman Harvey in The Professionals episode "First Night", first broadcast in 1978. This episode saw Julian work most closely with Gordon Jackson in several scenes at CI5 HQ and also on the South Bank by the River Thames. Fellow character actor Derek Francis, well known to Carry On fans for his brilliant roles in the likes of Carry On Matron and Abroad, appeared in not one but two episodes of The Professionals, in different roles. In the first series episode "Look After Annie" he played the rather unpleasant John Howard and four years later he was back, playing Len Hatch, a member of the criminal underworld in the story "You'll Be All Right".

 

Another actor to appear twice in the series was the late Llewellyn Rees, first as Sir Arden French in the first series episode "Everest Was Also Conquered" and then three years later he cropped again as Dr Philip Hedley in the 1980 story "Wild Justice". In between these two episodes, Rees played the Lord Chief Justice in the 1978 film Carry On Emmannuelle. Patrick Durkin, who played small parts in Carry On Sergeant, Nurse, Cabby, Spying, Cowboy and Dick, first joined The Professionals in the rather bizarre part of a Russian hitman, Terkof, in the 1977 episode "The Female Factor". To me it looks like his performance is very obviously dubbed. In 1980 Patrick was back for the cameo role of truck driver Wally in "Hijack". 

The familiar Australian actor Ed Devereaux, who had small roles in the films Carry On Nurse, Regardless, Cruising, Jack and Bless This House, grabbed a major guest starring role in the 1979 episode "Runner" seeing him work opposite well-known actors Michael Kitchen and James Cosmo. Ed played the rather fierce gangster Albie. Reliable character actor Harry Towb popped up for a brief cameo as small time rogue Harry Spence in the 1980 Professionals episode "Blood Sports". Harry played the dubious Doctor in the film Richard O'Callaghan takes Jacki Piper to see in Carry On At Your Convenience.

 

The glamorous Penny Irving (I wonder what happened to her?) played the character Pam in the very first episode of The Professionals ever broadcast, "Private Madness, Public Danger" in 1977. Penny, who went on to appear in many episodes of Are You Being Served? was one of Joan Sims' Birds of Paradise in the 1974 film Carry On Dick. Fellow "Bird" Laraine Humphrys, who also appeared in Carry On Girls and the 1973 Carry On Christmas television special, played the uncredited role of Doyle's girlfriend in the 1977 story " When The Heat Cools Off". 

Another Carry On actress, the lovely Suzanne Danielle, played one of her earliest acting roles in the first series episode "Killer with a Long Arm" in 1977. Playing the role of Pretty Girl, Danielle would find herself playing the leading lady in the last of the original Carry Ons following year in Carry On Emmannuelle. 

 

Finally, no blog on The Professionals can go without mentioning one final link to the Carry Ons. In Gordon Jackson, the series found one of it's most bankable and talented stars. Gordon was also one of Kenneth Williams' closest and most loyal friends. Despite this Kenneth didn't pull any punches when watching Jackson in the series in early 1978. Let's just say that although Kenneth thought Gordon one of the best actors in the country, he did not think the role of George Cowley suited him at all!

Anyway, to finish, here's a reminder of the brilliant intro theme from The Professionals:

 
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Carry On Blogging Interview: Judy Matheson

 

Another wonderful interview for Carry On Blogging today. I was thrilled when Judy Matheson agreed to answer my questions on her career in television, film and on stage. I also took the opportunity to ask her about my comedy heroine, Joan Sims and of course, her favourite Carry On. So read on to find out more about what it was like to work for Hammer, Betty Box and appear in iconic shows like The Sweeney and The Professionals...


First of all, I'd love to know how you got into acting and how you got started in the profession.


I was encouraged at school to continue professionally with Drama, although coming from Essex, I could only get the County Major Scholarship if it was combined with a teaching degree. My friends Helen Mirren & Paul Freeman were at the same college at the same time for the same reason.

 

In 1971 you appeared in the horror film Lust for a Vampire. What are your memories of that film and working for the legendary Hammer Horror team?

I have such happy memories of working on Lust For A Vampire. We had some beautiful costumes, & hairstyles, and the location was lovely. I always found working with lots of other young women huge fun. And we did have some big fun on that film; in fact my alternative title for it is ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’!

I did hear much later that there had been some tension in the making of the film but I was blithely unaware at the time.


In 1974 you played Maria in the film Percy's Progress. That film was produced by Betty Box, wife of Carry On producer Peter Rogers and one of earliest and most powerful female film producers in this country. What was she like to work for?

Betty Box. Yes, a bit of a heroine of mine – in fact I’ve just done an interview with an online magazine about ‘Women in Film’ & she was the first name that sprung to mind. A real pioneer, and a very dynamic woman to work with. 

In 1974 you appeared in the very first Confessions film, Confessions of a Window Cleaner. That series became a massive success story at a time when the British film industry was struggling. What are your memories of making that film?

The first Confessions film was quite a big deal at the time. It had a huge launch party before filming even began, and was publicized with great fanfares. I had worked with the director Val Guest, who I had huge respect for, on an episode of The Adventurer (with Gene Barry) and it’s always gratifying to be asked by a director to work with him again. The shooting was ok – I’m not sure how comfortable was with it.  I’ve definitely given better performances. However Robin Askwith & I had worked together several times. We shared a very dynamic agent/manager at the time in Hazel Malone who seemed to have most of the young successful actors of the time in her stable, as it were. We had done adverts and corporate videos and would go on to film Pete Walker’s The Flesh and Blood Show together. I was, and still am, a huge admirer of Robin’s often underrated work.

Confessions of a Window Cleaner featured loads of excellent actors - Joan Hickson, Richard Wattis, John Le Mesurier to name but a few - all jobbing actors but wonderful talents. Did you meet any of them whilst filming and if so, what were they like?

No, sadly I didn’t meet any of those great actors while filming. My scene was pretty much self -contained in the single set. But at the launch and wrap parties they were there, which at the time I seemed to take totally in my stride!

 

You appeared in two of my favourite television series from the 1970s - The Sweeney and The Professionals. What are your memories of working on those shows?

Both The Sweeney and The Professionals were terrific fun. It was always exciting to be part of those iconic series. I was thrilled to be working with John Thaw, and Dennis Waterman ( who I knew a little) and the great Lee Montague, who took away with him a little piece of my heart! And in both series I got to drive a cool sports car, which I always loved. The Professionals was just as much fun. The villain in my episode was Roger LLoyd Pack, who I had known for some years. He was a lovely man and a terrific actor. He was a wonderful surprise to see in the green room on the first day.

 

And then to be part of that thrilling sequence, being imprisoned in that demolishing building, and, even more thrilling, to be rescued by Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins, is something a jobbing actress doesn’t forget easily. I was the envy of all my friends!


You have also acted a great deal on stage during your career. What have been your favourite roles and do you prefer live theatre or film/television?

My preferred medium to work in was always film, for the extraordinarily fascinating process of the whole enterprise. Not to mention the wonderful camaraderie of the film set.


You worked with the late Yootha Joyce on a stage production of Boeing Boeing. I'm a big fan of Yootha - what was she like to work with?

In retrospect, though, I should have liked to do more serious theatre, but, again, I enjoyed all the roles for different reasons. The two national tours of Boing Boeing broke all box office records at the time, due the huge popularity of The Man About The House cast. Every town we went to had a ‘Sold Out’ notice on the theatre as we arrived. And it was extraordinary to be on those stages with such a consummate actress as Yootha Joyce every night. She was the doyenne of timing and comedy performance.

 

I started up my blog as a tribute to the late Joan Sims, an actor I really admire. Why do you think so many of these comediennes and comedy actors are still so popular today?

Which of course brings us on to another comedy great Joan Sims. Coincidentally, she and I went to the same High School in Brentwood (at different times!) She was always used as a shining example to us aspiring actors. She and many comedy actors of her generation were supreme, I think, because of their huge talent which was always combined with sheer hard graft.


I've loved the Carry On films since I was a child and although they deal in stereotypes, the quality of the actors involved always makes them worth watching. Many people see the films as sexist - do you have any views on the way women were portrayed in these films and how much do you think that has changed in the film industry today?

Ha. The criticism of the Carry Ons being sexist seems to totally miss the point. Of course they were! And it’s not as if the men were presented in a totally heroic light. The films are very very funny and also, now, present a wonderful historical snapshot.

More to the point of how women are treated now  in the film industry, in the light of the recent Hollywood controversy about equal pay, it would be  interesting to know if Barbara Windsor, Joan Sims etc were paid similarly to the men.


Of all the roles you've played, what's been your favourite? 
 
I have enjoyed most of the varying parts I’ve played. I really loved doing Z cars, which is rarely mentioned these days, - great writers, directors and actors. I loved the Charles Wood TV film I did opposite Freddie Jones, which has I think been lost in the mists of time. And I was so lucky to land my first film part in the European noir The Exquisite Cadaver (now apparently on YouTube as The Exquisite Corpse.) The director Vicente Aranda was a great talent and a respected intellectual. That whole first filming experience was completely stimulating. And, interesting to note now, with three wonderful leading female roles.

Nowadays, I am retired from acting, though I do some narration work and occasional film conventions. I also teach two days a week. In September, however, I will be doing a short spoof horror film, with the fabulous Caroline Munro, David Barry, and Emma Dark, for The Misty Moon Film Society, of which I am an honorary patron.

Finally, what's your favourite Carry On film and why?

It’s got to be Up The Khyber. Always makes me laugh like a drain. The thing about the Carry On films is that, then and now, they are simply feel – good movies.

 

A massive thank you to Judy - it was an absolute delight from start to finish. I hope you all enjoyed reading the interview as much as I did! 

You can follow Judy on Twitter here


You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and also Facebook

Liz Fraser in The Professionals

This is fantastic. I love the brilliant actress Liz Fraser, she lights up the screen whenever she appears. I also have a real soft spot for the classic 1970s British television series The Professionals, so when the two meet it's glorious!

Liz appeared as a fabulously fruity character in The Professionals episode Backtrack in 1979. She plays a character on the wrong side of the law, one Margery Harper. Margery takes rather a shine to Doyle, played by Martin Shaw. Liz shares some wonderfully comedic moments with both Shaw and Lewis Collins as well as scenes with the late Michael Elphick. 

It's a hilarious performance from Liz and it makes me wish we had seen more of her in classic TV dramas like this. She seizes this role with relish and makes much more out of it than was probably ever imagined by the production company or her fellow actors!

Some lovely person has uploaded Liz's scenes from the episode onto YouTube and they are well worth a watch to see Liz being brilliant and for a healthy dose of telly nostalgia!

You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan 

Carry On Hero of the Week: Ernest Steward

 

This blog forms part of an occasional series looking at important yet little known or publicly appreciated contibutors to the Carry On series. So far I've included a range of very talented people from both in front and behind the camera. Today we're going back behind the camera with a little look at the career of Ernest Steward.

Ernest Steward is a name many of you will recognise from the opening credits of many a British film and indeed many a Carry On film but as far as I can locate, there is little recorded about the man himself. Born in London in 1910, he began his career in film in the late 1940s as a camera operator. His early credits included David Lean's Great Expectations starring John Mills (1946) and London Belongs To Me (1948) which starred the likes of Alastair Sim and Richard Attenborough.

As a Director of Photography he tended to specialise in light comedy films. Relatively early on in his career he formed a productive relationship with legendary female film producer Betty Box (Peter Rogers' wife) and worked prolifically with both Box and her director, Gerald's brother Ralph Thomas. This working relationship included each of the Doctor comedies starring the likes of Dirk Bogarde and Leslie Phillips (seven films in total from Doctor in the House in 1954 through to Doctor in Trouble in 1970). 

Other familiar titles Ernest worked on at around this time included Upstairs and Downstairs (1959); A Pair of Briefs (1962); Crooks Anonymous (1962); The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963); I've Gotta Horse in 1965 (starring Amanda Barrie) and Deadlier Than The Male in 1967, with future Carry On Behind star Elke Sommer. Ernest began his association with the Carry On films with one of the best loved classics of the entire series, Carry On Up The Khyber in 1968. He went on to work as Director of Photography on a further nine Carry On adventures including the likes of Camping, Up The Jungle, At Your Convenience, Matron and Dick. His last credit with the Carry Ons was for England in 1976. During this period he seemed to alternate with that other renowned Director of Photography, the late great Alan Hume.

 

Following the completion of his last Carry On in 1976 Ernest then moved into television. For two years in the late 1970s he struck up a fruitful relationship with Mark 1 Productions. If that name doesn't ring a bell, the titles that company produced will. Ernest first worked on seven episodes of The New Avengers in late 1976 and into 1977. This was a reboot of the original, classic swinging sixties adventure series. This seventies remake starred Patrick Macnee as the legendary John Steed with co-starring roles for Joanna Lumley as Purdey and Gareth Hunt as Gambit. Following on from this came a run of eleven episodes as lighting cameraman on the classic crime fighting series The Professionals. Ernest was a regular fixture for much of the first series. 

 

After all this dabbling in television, Ernest Steward returned to the world of film for his last ever job as Director of Photography. This was a reboot of the classic St Trinian's film series in 1980. The Wildcats of St Trinian's, despite starring the likes of Sheila Hancock, Maureen Lipman, Michael Hodern, Julia McKenzie and Rosalind Knight. After this film was completed, Steward chose to retire from the industry. 

Ernest Steward died in Yorkshire at the age of 79 in 1990. Little else is known about the man who helped bring so many of our favourite comedy films to life. Ernest was responsible for the photography in the classic dining room sequence at the end of Carry On Up The Khyber. That alone gives him legendary status in my eyes. 

 

If anyone knows anything more about the late Ernest Steward, please do get in touch as I'd love to hear from you. 


You can follow me on Twitter @CarryOnJoan and also on Facebook

Whatever Happened To ... Derek Francis?

I have been running a series of blogs which take a look back at some of those reliable, solid, instantly recognisable character actors who provided such wonderful support in the Carry On films. Often, so little has been written about them and I think it's time to change all that. So far I have written about everyone from Carol Hawkins and Esma Cannon to Peter Gilmore, Cyril Chamberlain and Richard Wattis.

Today I am going to focus on a well known supporting actor who graced six classic Carry On films - Derek Francis. 

Derek Francis began his Carry On career in 1967 with a cameo role as Sir Edmund Burke in Carry On Doctor. He shares scenes with Kenneth Williams, Jim Dale and Hattie Jacques. Burke works with Kenneth's Dr Tinkle to get rid of Jim's character from the hospital. After this bluff, gruff cameo role, Derek was invited back for the role of a farmer in the hugely successful Carry On Camping. He plays Patricia Franklin's father in the film and after getting the wrong end of the stick thanks to Charles Hawtrey, ends up shooting Terry Scott's Peter Potter in the backside!

We next see Derek Francis in the very small role of the vicar who shares a train compartment with Terry Scott right at the beginning of Carry On Loving, released in 1970. Derek again plays a farmer in Carry On Henry, this time interrupting Sid's King Henry as he is about to indulge in some jiggery pokery with the lovely Margaret Nolan!

After his fourth Carry On film, Derek then went on to have two more substantial supporting turns in two prime 1970s Carry Ons. First of all he played the droll Arthur, Finisham Maternity Hospital's security guard cum night watchman in Matron. Derek shares some wonderful deadpan scenes with Sid James in this one. FInally, Derek returned to Pinewood one last time to play Brother Martin in Carry On Abroad. This final appearance saw Derek share most of his scenes with Bernard Bresslaw, who shocks Brother Martin by ditching his plans to become a monk to run off with Carol Hawkins. Watch out for some wonderful moments at the end of Abroad which sees Derek dance with Hattie Jacques' Floella!

Derek Francis made some wonderful contributions to the Carry On series. However, he was also extremely prolific in other areas of the acting profession. He clocked up no less that 168 screen credits during a career that spanned nearly three decades. In film, he appeared in the likes of Press For Time, What's Good for the Goose, The Comedy Man, Scrooge, Jabberwocky and The Wicked Lady. The majority of Derek's screen credits however, came on television.

On the small screen Derek Francis popped up in nearly all that was good on British television during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. The following is just a small selection: The Sweeney, The Professionals, Danger Man, Jason King, Up Pompeii, Rising Damp, The New Avengers, Sykes, Rings on their Fingers, The Dick Emery Show, Middlemarch, Nicholas Nickleby and The Forsythe Saga. 

For fans of classic Coronation Street, Derek also turned up in Weatherfield in 1977. He played Charles Beaumont, a relative of Rovers Return landlady Annie Walker. While Annie had always boasted about the Beaumont's of Clitheroe, sadly Charles turned out to be a chancer on the scrounge and after borrowing money from several of the Rovers regulars, Annie had to show him the door.

On Stage, Derek Francis is best remembered for the title character in Cymbeline for The Old Vic in 1957.

Derek Francis was born in Brighton in November 1923. Little is known about his early life however he began his acting career in the mid to late 1950s. He continued to appear regularly on screen right up until his death from a heart attack at the age of just 60 in March 1984. His last role, as Pemberton in a television film of A Christmas Carol was broadcast posthumously.

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The Fantastic Ms Fraser

I have written about how much I love the glorious actress Liz Fraser before, but perhaps not in a great deal of depth. A contemporary of the likes of Joan Sims, Patsy Rowlands and Dilys Laye, Liz appeared in many classic films and television series during what many consider to be the golden age of British entertainment.

She made her name as the sexy teenager opposite Ian Carmichael in the classic British comedy I'm All Right Jack in 1959. As a new young actress, she held her own opposite the likes of Peter Sellers, Irene Handl, Terry-Thomas and Margaret Rutherford. Quite a line up! This film was just the beginning for Liz, who quickly cornered the market in glamorous blondes who were nobody's fool! 

Liz went on to star in many wonderful films, including four classic Carry Ons - Regardless, Cruising, Cabby and Behind. She appeared in Two Way Stretch in 1960 opposite Peter Sellers; Doctor in Love the same year with Joan Sims as a pair of strippers; The Bull Dog Breed with Norman Wisdom; The Pure Hell of St Trinian's; Raising The Wind (1961); A Pair of Briefs (1962) and my favourite, Double Bunk in which she co-starred with Sid James, Dennis Price and Ian Carmichael.

In the 1950s and 60s Liz Fraser also regularly appeared with Tony Hancock and Sid James in the iconic Hancock's Half Hour on television. This association led her to be cast as Sid's girlfriend in the spin-off series Citizen James. 

In the 1960s, Liz began to appear in more dramatic parts, an attempt to get away from the dizzy blonde roles of earlier years. This led to parts in films such as The Americanisation of Emily (1964); The Family Way (1966) and Up The Junction (1968). In the 1970s Liz made several forays into the world of the sex comedy, always maintaining her dignity while those around her were losing theirs. I almost wish Liz had stayed clear of these awful films, however she obviously enjoyed the experience from what I've read and at the time, parts in British film must have been few and far between. In the late 1970s, Liz appeared in two Confessions films, Adventures of a Taxi Driver, Under The Doctor, Adventures of a Private Eye and Rosie Dixon: Night Nurse. Moving on...

Two of my favourite Liz Fraser performances cropped up on the small screen. The first came in an episode of The Professionals in 1978. Liz plays a "fence" called Margery Harper and she makes a gloriously dubious, blowsy woman who takes a shine to Martin Shaw's Ray Doyle. It's all deliciously tongue in cheek. I also loved Liz's cameo appearance in the classic BBC adaptation of the Miss Marple story, Nemesis. Liz plays a drunken Mrs Brent and it's a wonderfully tragic performance.

I wish Liz had been given more opportunities to play dramatic parts. In 1988 she played a woman dying of cancer alongside Jean Boht in a BBC play called Eskimos Do It. Sadly I've never seen this film and I doubt the Beeb will repeat it any time soon. As with many actors in the public eye, Liz probably became pigeon-holed as a certain type of character actress, which is a shame as this gutsy woman obviously had a lot more to give.

Liz appears regularly reminiscing about the glory days of British film and it's always a joy to hear from her. She is a realist, always speaks her mind and clearly doesn't give a damn what people think, qualities I admire! She always speaks so fondly of her fellow actors, particularly Sid James and Joan Sims. Liz defends Sid so eloquently when so many others just want to muck rake and I love her loyalty. She was also very close to Joan and was obviously a very dear, loyal friend to Sims throughout her life, providing both practical and emotional support. 

Robert Ross once described Liz Fraser as the British answer to Marilyn Monroe and I must agree with him. She is stunning in so many of her films, combining glamour with a natural acting talent and flair for comedy. She is a highlight of many classic British comedies and a firm fan favourite. Liz is now in her 80s but is still a force to be reckoned with and long may that continue!

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