Unveils the untold story of the iconic franchise, exploring its origins, secrets, and the complex legacy of Peter Sellers.The Pink Panther series is one of the most enduring and financially successful franchises in movie history, beginning with 1963’s The Pink Panther, which introduced audiences to the iconic Inspector Clouseau, unforgettably played by Peter Sellers.Drawing on previously unseen material and ‘exclusive’ interviews with stars of the films and...

1971 was a great year for cinema.Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Dario Argento, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, Sergio Leone, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Nicolas Roeg and Steven Spielberg, among many others, were behind the camera, while the stars were also out in force. Warren Beatty, Marlon Brando, Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Sean Connery, Faye Dunaway, Clint Eastwood, Jane Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, Steve McQueen, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Vanes...

In the league table of the funniest universities in the world, Cambridge wears the crown. Home of Britain's oldest student sketch comedy troupe, the Cambridge Footlights, it has been a veritable conveyor belt of comic talent that's been rolling for more than a century.From Monty Python, The Goodies and Not the Nine O'Clock News to Peep Show, QI and The Great British Bake-Off, its alumni are behind many of the sh...

"This lively, funny, moving history of a movie studio and the people who made it feels uncannily like ... an Ealing comedy." Martin ScorseseA behind-the-scenes account of life at Ealing Studios - one of the great cinematic success stories of post-war Britain, and a byword for a particular strain of comic film-making that continues to inspire imitators over half a century on.This is the only full narrative history of Ealing, focusing on its output in the 1940s and '...

For decades, British stage musicals struggled to compete against the dazzling Broadway productions that came roaring in from across the pond. But that tide was turned at last in 1978, when Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of Evita brought the West End back into contention with Broadway. It was just the first of several blockbuster productionsthat helped Britain dominate musical theater all over the world.In this revealing behind-the-scenes narrative, journalist and auth...

Spontaneous, hilarious, irrepressible and, of course, trailblazing - Kenny Everett was revolutionary in television and radio comedy. Chris Evans, Chris Moyles, Rob Brydon and Steve Wright have all cited Kenny as a huge influence on their work - even the great Spike Milligan called him a genius. It was Kenny who developed the radio show format with which we are so familiar today: a mix of music, jingles, funny voices and sound effects. When he seamlessly made the move to television in the s...

For most people in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s, Radio 1 provided the soundtrack to their lives. Commanding up to 24 million listeners a week, it was the most popular radio station in the world. An iconic institution and one of the UK's most famous brands, its history and socio-cultural impact is explored in full here for the first time. Robert Sellers draws on archive material and first-hand interviews with DJs and key personnel to capture the extraordinary story of Radio 1, from its be...

The Boozy Biography of the Four Greatest Actors to Ever Walk--Or Stagger--Into a Pub.Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed: On screen they were stars. Off screen they were legends!Hellraisers is the story of drunken binges of near biblical proportions, parties and orgies, broken marriages, riots, and wanton sexual conquests. Indeed, acts so outrageous that if you or I had perpetrated them we could have ended up in jail. Their mercurial acting...

"A mesmerizing portrait of a true star." — SagaPeter O'Toole was supremely talented, a unique leading man and one of the most charismatic actors of his generation. Described by his friend Richard Burton as "the most original actor to come out of Britain since the war," O'Toole was also unpredictable, with a dangerous edge he brought to his roles and to his real life.With the help of exclusive interviews with colleagues and close fr...

The definitive insider’s story of life behind the scenes and within the corridors of power at the biggest football club in the world.When Martin Edwards became chairman of Manchester United in 1980, the club's estimated worth was £2 million. When he retired just over two decades later the club was valued at £1 billion. Under his expert business stewardship, Manchester United grew into one of the world's most recognized sporting brands and the richest and most famou...

He's the man with short fat hairy legs who kept us laughing for decades, his comic timing sparking perfectly with the genius of his partner Eric Morecambe. Yet little has been known about Ernie's amazing story, until now.Little Ern! takes us from Ernie's childhood in Leeds, where he supported his family by performing on stage, to being left to fend for himself in London at thirteen, a star in the making. We see his friendship with the young comic Eric grow when they toured...

Oliver Reed may not have been Britain's biggest film star - for a period in the early 70s he came within a hairsbreadth of replacing Sean Connery as James Bond - but he is an august member of that small band of people, like George Best and Eric Morecambe, who transcended their chosen medium, became too big for it even, and grew into cultural icons.For the first time Reed's close family has agreed to collaborate on a project about the man himself. The result is a fascinating new ins...