P
Writing
Paul Simpkin
No biography available.
Known For
Spitting Image: The Sound of Maggie · 1989Spitting Image: The Sound of Maggie
1989
MovieComedy
The Sound of Maggie! was a special episode of Spitting Image featuring numerous parodies of songs from both musicals and films, sung by the puppet cast of the show.
Stiff Upper Lips · 1998Stiff Upper Lips
★ 5.61998
MovieComedy
Stiff Upper Lips is a broad parody of British period films, especially the lavish Merchant-Ivory productions of the 'eighties and early 'nineties. Although it specifically targets A Room with a View, Chariots of Fire, Maurice, A Passage to India, and many other films, in a more general way Stiff Upper Lips satirises popular perceptions of certain Edwardian traits: propriety, sexual repression, xenophobia, and class snobbery.
Spitting Image: Election Special '87 · 1987Spitting Image: Election Special '87
1987
MovieComedy
Alastair Burnet announces the predicted results of the general election. Then he announces that the polls are now closed, shortly to be followed by the hospitals, the schools, and the BBC.
Solitaire for 2 · 1995Solitaire for 2
★ 6.01995
MovieComedy
Katie can read minds. Being desirable, the male minds she reads are all thinking of one thing. She always responds by hitting them and storming off without explanation. Daniel is an expert in body language and interprets this as a sign she wants to be pursued. Since Daniel spends most of his time, when not terrorizing his students, pursuing women, Katie gets ever more exasperated that he is treating her exactly as he treats every presentable female from the motorcycle cop to the squeegee girl. She cannot read minds when her eyes are covered, or when minds are thinking in a foreign language, so she misinterprets Sandip's desire for hunger. She also holds Daniel responsible for his subconscious desire for his friend's wife (Caroline).
Bostock's Cup · 1999Bostock's Cup
★ 6.71999
MovieComedy
Former players and associates of third division club Bostock Stanley gather for a celebratory dinner to commemorate their famous FA Cup victory twenty-five years previously during which a shocking truth is revealed.
The Brittas Empire · 1991The Brittas Empire
★ 6.61991
SeriesComedy
The Brittas Empire is a British sitcom created and originally written by Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen. Chris Barrie plays Gordon Brittas, the well-meaning but incompetent manager of Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre.
The show ran for seven series and 53 episodes — including two Christmas specials — from 1991 to 1997 on BBC1. Norriss and Fegen wrote the first five series, after which they left the show.
The Brittas Empire enjoyed a long and successful run throughout the 1990s, and gained itself large mainstream audiences. In 2004 the show came 47th on the BBC's Britain's Best Sitcom poll, and all series have been released on DVD.
The creators Andrew Norriss and Richard Fegen often combine farce with either surreal or dramatic elements in episodes. For example in the first series, the leisure centre prepares for a royal visit, only for the doors to seal, the boiler room to flood and a visitor to become electrocuted. Unlike the traditional sitcom, deaths were quite common in The Brittas Empire.
Filmography
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