Documentary featuring a cavalcade of Northern comedy stars including the great Frank Randle, George Formby, Arthur Askey, Norman Evans and many more. The North of England has always enjoyed its own very particular brand of comedy, best seen today in Coronation Street. 80 years ago however Mancunian Studios produced feature films for the northern masses. Funny Up North tells the story of the Mancunian Studios, its eccentric owner John E Blakeley and its cavalcade of stars including such household names as Arthur Askey, Jimmy Jewell, George Formby and the legendary Frank Randle. Hosted by Professor Chris Lee, the authority on northern cinema, Funny Up North takes you on a journey from its humble beginnings to its sad demise in the 1960s.
Profile of the actress who found fame in Coronation Street and whose life offscreen was as colourful as that of Elsie Tanner, the character she played for 21 years. Close friends and co-stars including Julie Goodyear, Helen Worth, Tony Booth, and Tony Warren, the creator of Coronation Street, share their touching and hilarious memories of this larger-than-life, spirited woman.
Nellie (Pat Phoenix) is weak and bedridden in her aging, decrepit house due to a bad heart. Living out of her front room, Nellie is looked after by her son Harold (Tom Bell) who is going deaf and prone to eccentric and emotional outbursts following a motorbike accident some years previous. Relations are tense and fractious between Nellie and Harold, a state of affairs which isn't helped by Nellie's affectionate recollections of her estranged son Stanley (Tom Georgeson) who left many years before, taking with him Nellie's savings.
Constant Hot Water was a British sitcom, written by Colin Pearson. Six episodes were broadcast on ITV1 from 10 January 1986 to 14 February 1986 on ITV. Every episode was broadcast on Friday nights at 8:30pm, and lasted 25 minutes. It starred popular British actresses Pat Phoenix and Prunella Gee, who played rival landladies, Phyllis Nugent and Miranda Thorpe, in the seaside town of Bridlington. Busybody Nugent strongly objected to the arrival of glamorous widow Thorpe, who had opened up her house next door as a rival B&B. The series was unsuccessful and in 2003, it peaked at no.6 as the worst British sitcom in the Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy. The British Comedy Guide described the humour as "erratic" and added that the show "rarely rose above the mundane". Constant Hot Water was never released on video, and it remains unreleased on DVD.
Patricia Phoenix was an English film and television actress who became one of the first sex symbols of British television through her role as Elsie Tanner, an original cast member of Coronation Street. Phoenix attended Fallowfield Central School. As a child, she nursed early theatrical ambitions, appearing regularly on the radio in Children's Hour at the age of 11, after having submitted a monologue. After leaving school, she worked as a filing clerk for the gas department of Manchester Corporation, performing in amateur dramatics in her spare time. She joined the Arts Theatre in Manchester and other Northern repertory companies. Phoenix's big break came in 1948, when she played Sandy Powell's wife in the Mancunian Film Studios film Cup-tie Honeymoon, followed by a summer season in Blackpool with Thora Hird in the show Happy Days. Phoenix's love life was often fodder for tabloid stories. Her first marriage was to actor Peter Marsh, whom she married in Bradford Cathedral; the marriage lasted only a year. In 1972, she married her Coronation Street co-star Alan Browning, who had alcohol-related problems and died from liver failure in 1979. She later married actor Antony Booth, the father-in-law of future Prime Minister Tony Blair. Phoenix wrote two volumes of autobiography: All My Burning Bridges (1974) and Love, Curiosity, Freckles and Doubt (1983). She was a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party, campaigning for her son-in-law Tony Blair in the 1983 General Election and helping him win his first seat in a landslide majority, and a practising Roman Catholic. She also owned the Navigation Inn, a pub in Buxworth.
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