Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
William RUSHTON (1937-1996)
THIS IS YOUR LIFE - William Rushton, actor, cartoonist, comedian and satirist, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews outside the Orange Tree pub in Richmond upon Thames while celebrating the 21st anniversary of the London Standard's Pub of the Year Award, for which he had been a judge since it began.
Willie, who was born in Chelsea, was educated at Shrewsbury School, where he was part of a group that produced the school magazine. After completing his National Service and briefly working in a solicitor's office, he reunited with his school friends, who took advantage of the boom in satire in the early 1960s and created the news magazine Private Eye, with Willie contributing illustrations and comic strips.
In 1961, he appeared in Spike Milligan's play The Bed Sitting Room and, the following year, was part of the team that established the ground-breaking BBC television satirical comedy programme That Was The Week That Was. He made hundreds of cabaret, radio, and television appearances and wrote and illustrated over a dozen books.
"My god, it's an Irish kiss-o-gram!"
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Series 27 subjects
Bill Waddington | Robert Foote | Carl Davis | Gorden Kaye | Teddy Johnson and Pearl Carr | Monty Fresco | Joe Johnson