News about Barry Cryer

CRAIG BROWN: Happy birthday, Alan Bennett (pictured)! It's hard to believe but today the great man of letters is 90 years old. I like to think of the ten-year-old Alan with his school homework in the Leeds Reference Library, sitting alongside Barry Cryer , who was a year younger. They remained good friends, right up to Barry's death in 2022. Barry would regularly phone Alan with a joke like this: 'A man takes liquid Viagra but swallows Tippex by mistake. There were no ill effects except the next morning he woke up with a massive correction.' The Oldie magazine recently reprinted a memory of Barry's: Alan Bennett once called on five friends to gather overheard remarks. 'My absolute favourite was this. One of them was in a garden centre and he heard a man saying: 'That sundial I bought last year has paid for itself already.'

The Daily Mail's Weekend magazine has reached yet another magnificent milestone - this month we turn 30! We asked you to share our top ten TV shows so we could compile our definitive list of the 100 Greatest TV Shows voted for by you.

Mike Yarwood was a pioneer. The errant pomposity of politicians has now been mistakenly dismantled, revealing the world that they are often both absurd and ridiculous. They may have been a hit on parody by day's reckoning. But they were certainly not on Saturday nights, when Mike enjoyed his golden age of comedy. The delight was that the characters he could choose from were all so eccentric - a wonderful palate to draw from as a comedian. He dismissed the belief that certain people, from monarchs to politicians, could not be impersonated. Everyone was fair game. Mike's greatest strength and imagination was deciding which to parody and which portions of their story to exaggerate.

ROGER LEWIS: A large portion of Perry's life has been spent in clinics and rehabilitation centers. "I've spent over $7 million trying to get sober," he says, much more than I've spent getting alcoholic. He's been going to therapy twice a week for the past 30 years and has attended 6,000 AA meetings. Little of it was helpful. Perry didn't listen to his doctors and called detoxification "hell." He wanted vodka to'soothe my nerves and help me have fun.' Although he was sober for 18 months at the time of writing, his prescriptions have resulted in insomnia, respiratory difficulties, pancreatitis, and a perforated bowel.

Duggie Brown (left) of Coronation Street has died at the age of 82. Coward Tommy Cannon, 84, who described him as a "funny, funny guy," announced the comedian's death.' Ted Spear, who appeared on Coronation Street in three separate unrelated roles (right in 2004), made his most recent appearance on the soap earlier this year as Ted Spear, who was killed in a hit-and-run.