Morecambe & Wise: Laughter All The While Quiz

Answer: Cliff Richard

Cliff made an appearance in Eric and Ernie's flat in this particular episode.
Cliff Richard, real name Harry Webb, was born in October 1940 in India. He came to pop music stardom in the late 1950s, firstly with his band The Shadows, and then as a solo singer. He had 14 UK number one hits between 1958 and 2000, including at least one in each of five decades.
Well-known early songs included "Bachelor Boy" and ""Summer Holiday", which was also a 1963 movie in which he and The Shadows starred. He also fronted in many TV specials. He was knighted in 1995.

Answer: Susan Hampshire

The show was broadcast on January 26, 1973 and other stars making guest appearances included Georgie Fame & Alan Price, The Settlers, Ann Hamilton, Janet Webb, Jenny Lee-Wright, and Percy Edward.
After her debut in the early 1960s and work on both sides of the Atlantic, Hampshire found fame in the TV drama "The Forsyte Saga" (1967). Many other 'costume dramas' followed, and Hampshire was a multi Emmy winner. She also became a much-respected author.

Answer: Roy Castle

Roy Castle, August 31, 1932 to September 2, 1994, was a multi-talented performer, musician and dancer who also presented the TV show "Record Breakers", which featured feats from the Guinness Book of World Records. He also set his own world tap-dancing record on the show.
Ernie Wise was often referred to by his partner as the one with the short, fat hairy legs.
Other guests on that episode in March 1973 were Pete Murray, Anne Murray, The Pattersons, Raymond Mason, Les Rawlings, Johnny Vyvyan, John East, Hugh Elton, Charles Finch and Eric French.

Answer: Peter Cushing

Peter Cushing was born in Surrey in 1913 and died in Kent in 1994. He was among a school of actors that included Christopher Lee and Vincent Price who cut their teeth in the Hammer House of Horror movies from the mid 1950s. Later roles included appearances in "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope" (1977), though monster roles seemed to stereotype much of his career.
Other stars on that "M&W" episode in March 1973 were Bernie Winters, Wilma Reading, Alan Price and Georgie Fame.

Answer: Laurence Olivier

Other stars of that show included Vanessa Redgrave, Hannah Gordon, John Hanson, The New Seekers, Yehudi Menuhin, Rudolph Nureyev and Andre Previn.
Laurence Olivier (Baron Olivier, to give him his title) was born on May 22, 1907 in Surrey and died in Sussex on July 11, 1989. He was regarded as one of the foremost Shakespearean actors of the 20th century and there were few leading roles he did not take on and master. Among around 60 movies was "Marathon Man" opposite Dustin Hoffman in 1976. Olivier played the evil one.

Answer: Hughie Green

Other guests on that show were David Dimbleby, Arthur Tolcher, Ann Hamilton and Wilma Reading Hughie Green was born in London on February 2, 1920 and died there on May 3, 1997. He was a childhood radio star with his own show by the age of 14, then worked in Canada and in Hollywood, where he starred in several movies, including "Tom Brown's School Days" (1940).

When WW2 broke out he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, serving as a ferry pilot. He returned to the UK after the war and picked up his career as an entertainer.

He was the host of the game show "Double Your Money" from 1955. He developed "Opportunity Knocks" as a radio show and it transferred to TV in 1960. It discovered a number of entertainers who became big stars. By 1978, however, despite the success of the show, TV companies became tired of Green's strongly expressed right-wing comments and it was axed. "I mean that most sincerely" was one of his catchphrases.

Answer: Diana Rigg

Diana Rigg appeared on the Christmas special in 1974. Other guests were Des O'Connor, Gordon Jackson, Robin Day, Diane Soloman, Brenda Arnau, Ann Hamilton, Pan's People, Reg Turner, Debbie Ash and Fiona Grey.
Diana Rigg was born in Yorkshire in 1938 and was best known for her role as Emma Peel in the spy show "The Avengers" between 1965 and 1967. Over the following 40 years, she was rarely out of work in TV shows and TV movies.
She also played James Bond's only known wife, Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo, in the 1969 outing "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."

Answer: Elton John

Elton John was introduced as another potential new partner for Ernie Wise.
Other guests were John Thaw, Dennis Waterman, Kate O'Mara, Marion Montgomery, The Nolans and Angela Rippon.
The show also featured two of the best-remembered Morecambe & Wise sketches, their take on the song "Singing In the Rain", which featured Eric becoming a very wet New York copper, and the newsreader Angela Rippon emerging from behind a desk to show off spectacularly pretty legs in a dance routine.
Elton John was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in Middlesex, England on March 25, 1947. It would be difficult to do justice to his career in a few sentences; suffice to say he became one of rock music's biggest stars over a career that really got going in 1969. He was noted for his outrageous spectacles in the early part of his career and "Rocket Man" was a UK Number Two hit in 1972.

Answer: Shirley Bassey

Other stars in that year's Christmas special were Glenda Jackson, Andre Previn, Francis Mathews, Dick Emery, Frank Bough, Robert Dougal, Cliff Mitchellmore, Patrick Moore, Michael Parkinson and Eddie Waring.
Dame Shirley Bassey was born in Cardiff on January 8, 1937. In a career that started in the 1950s, she was a popular recording and performing artist. One of her best-known songs was "Big Spender", a Number 21 hit in 1967, and she sang the themes for three James Bond movies, "Goldfinger" (1964), "Diamonds Are Forever" (1971) and "Moonraker" (1979).

Answer: Nothing Like A Dame

"There is nothin' like a dame,
Nothin' in the world,
There is nothin' you can name
That is anythin' like a dame!"
The news, sports and weather presenters were shown dressed as US sailors dancing and singing on the deck of a battleship.
Other guests included Penelope Keith, Elton John, Angharad Rees, Francis Matthews, Arthur Lowe, John le Mesurier, John Laurie, Richard Briers, Paul Eddington, James Hunt, Stella Starr, Sandra Dainty, Jenny Lee-Wright and Valerie Leon.
It was written, like so many of the top M&W shows, by Eddie Braben.
That 1977 special attracted 28 million viewers and broke all ratings records. Let's put it this way, 28 million was half of the UK's population at the time.
Richard Rodgers wrote the music and Oscar Hammerstein the lyrics for the 1949 Broadway musical "South Pacific". It was made into a movie in 1958.

Answer: Sir Harold Wilson

In 1978, Eric and Ernie moved from the BBC to Independent Television (the old Thames TV franchise). Barry Cryer and John Junken wrote the script. The guests were: Leonard Rossiter, Frank Finlay, Nicholas Parsons, Sir Harold Wilson and Eamonnn Andrews.
Harold Wilson was born in Yorkshire on March 11, 1916 and died on May 24, 1995. He became an MP in 1945 and went on to lead the Labour Party. He was Prime Minister from 1964 to 1967 and again from 1974 to 1976.
One of the most famous quotes attributed to Wilson came after he devalued sterling in 1967 and said: "It does not mean that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued."
Wilson had many mannerisms, such as pipe-smoking, that endeared him to impressionists, who frequently used the "£ in your pocket" line. On the whole, those impressions were mostly kind rather than cruel to Wilson.

Answer: David Frost

Glenda Jackson and Des O'Connor also starred. O'Connor was the butt of many jokes by M&W over the years. Sir David Frost was born in Kent in 1939 and was a journalist and writer. He found fame, though, as the host of the groundbreaking "That Was The Week That Was" satire show on TV in the 1960s.
Away from that he was a respected heavyweight television interviewer, who came face-to-face with seven serving US presidents and eight British Prime Ministers from the mid 1960s to 2008. His sessions with Richard Nixon in 1977 were later developed into a play and a movie.

Answer: Rula Lenska

Countess Roza-Marie Leopoldyna Lubienska was born in England in 1947. Her mother had also been a countess and her father was Major Count Ludwik Maria Lubienski, chief of the Polish mission to Gibraltar in WW2.
Rula Lenska made her name in the 1976 drama "Rock Follies" and was also known in the USA and Canada for promoting a hair product.
She starred in numerous TV and movie dramas, including a two-year stint (2009 to 2011) in British TV's top-rated drama "Coronation Street".
She was in the 1982 M&W Christmas special with Robert Hardy, Richard Vernon, and Wall Street Crash.

Answer: Robert Hardy

Robert Hardy starred with Ian Ogilvy and Kay Korda in one episode and with Ralph Richardson, Ian Ogilvy, Susannah York, Alvin Stardust, and Suzanne Danielle in that year's Christmas special.
Robert Hardy was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, on October 29, 1925. A theatre and movie actor from 1959, he found TV popularity while playing Siegfried Farnon in "All Creatures Great and Small" (1978-1990). The show was based on the novels of the real life vet 'James Heriott' (real name James Alfred Wight.)

Answer: Bert Kwouk

Bert Kwouk was born in England in 1930 but was of Chinese ethnicity and was raised in Shanghai. He starred alongside Ingrid Bergman in "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" (1958) and went on to roles in three 007 movies: "Goldfinger" (1964), "You Only Live Twice" (1967) and "Casino Royale" (1967). He was Cato in "The Return of the Pink Panther" (1975), "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" (1976), "Revenge of the Pink Panther: (1978), "Trail of the Pink Panther" (1982), "Curse of the Pink Panther" (1983) and "Son of the Pink Panther" (1993).
Between 2002 and 2010, he was a regular on the TV show "Last Of The Summer Wine". By the time it finished, it had established the record of being the longest-running comedy show in the world (at least featuring real people).
Other stars of the Christmas special on Boxing Day 1983 were Gemma Craven, Nigel Hawthorne, Derek Jacobi, Fulton Mackay, Nanette Newman, Peter Skellern and Patrick Mower. It was the last-ever M&W Show. Eric Morecambe died the following May. He was aged 62.