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Jenny Morrill Feb 20, 2017

Round The Horne is touring around the UK. We went. We laughed. A lot.

New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham

2017 sees another run of the Round The Horne 50th anniversary tour by the Apollo Theatre Company, where the classic Radio 4 show is brought to life by a brilliantly authentic cast of voice actors.

If you've never heard Round The Horne, you're missing a staple of British comedy. The show ran from 1965-1968, and pushed the boundaries of acceptable humour with its blend of double entendres, camp comedy and general silliness.

The staple cast included Kenneth Horne, Betty Marsden, Hugh Paddick, Kenneth Williams, and announcer Douglas Smith. Smith's involvement is made funnier in contrast to his other well known role as a Radio 4 announcer. The original show featured musical accompaniment by Edwin Braden and the Hornblowers, and later The Max Harris Group. For the anniversary show, musical and sound effect...

Emmerdale star Patrick Mower has revealed that he now regards writing as his main career focus. The actor, who plays Rodney Blackstock on the ITV1 soap, has been busy penning a children's book and a thriller in recent months. Mower told This Morning today: "I've written a children's book which is finished, so I'm talking to a publisher about that. I'm a writer more than an actor now. Obviously I'm in Emmerdale, but I don't do too much in it. I've got a nice story at the moment, but I try not to do too much acting. "The [other] story that I'm writing is a thriller. My lead character - well, he thinks he's the lead character! He's an Irish TV presenter, and he's based really on Eamonn Andrews. I got to know Eamonn really well - I was in a play in Dublin for about five weeks, and I used...

A talented Irish actor on stage and in films for Ford and Huston

For an actor who worked with two of the greatest movie directors of the last century and appeared in the world premieres of plays by Brian Friel, Ireland's leading contemporary dramatist, Donal Donnelly, who has died after a long illness, aged 78, was curiously unrecognised. Like so many prominent Irish actors in the diasporas of Hollywood, British television, the West End and Broadway – all areas he conquered – Donnelly was a great talent and a private citizen, happily married for many years, and always seemed youthful.

There was something mischievous, something larkish, about him, too. He twinkled. And he had a big nose. He had long lived in New York, although he died in Chicago, and had started out in Dublin, although born in England.

In John Huston's swansong movie The Dead (1987), the best screen transcription of a James Joyce fiction,...