It’s official! My play ‘Jeepers Creepers: Through the Eyes of Marty Feldman’, based on my biography of the comedy legend, will be staged from 18th. January to 20th. February 2016 at the Leicester Square Theatre. Monty Python’s Terry Jones will direct David Boyle and Rebecca Vaughan as one of the most intriguing of comedy partnerships. Produced by Martin Witts, the play will chart the Feldmans from Marty’s big Hollywood break in ‘Young Frankenstein’ through to the, seemingly always, inevitable decline and fall. The Leicester Square Theatre is already taking bookings for ‘Jeepers Creepers’ at www.leicestersquaretheatre.com or by telephoning: 020 7734 2222.

Sad to hear that that very fine actor Richard Davies died on Thursday, at the age of 89. Probably best-loved as the cheerfully cynical Welsh school teacher Mr. Price in the LWT sitcom ‘Please Sir!’ (I vividly remember being delighted when he popped up in the School Days episode of ‘Paul Merton’s Life of Comedy’ in 1995), he skillfully straddled mainstream japes with a flair for the anarchic. Students of such high octane lunacy should embrace his Clive Jenkins for ‘Not the 9 O’Clock News’, and his Chancellor of the Exchequer in ‘Whoops Apocalypse’; although his turns for ‘Fawlty Towers’ (The Kipper and the Corpse), ‘One Foot in the Grave’ (Monday Morning Will Be Fine), and the butcher in ‘Steptoe and Son Ride Again’, are no less frantically funny. Other roles ranged from a brilliant Mr. Pritchard in Andrew Sinclair’s 1972 film adaptation of ‘Under Milk Wood’ (naturally) to the passionately Welsh (naturally) Burton in ‘Doctor Who’ (Delta and the Bannerman). One of my personal favourites is his one-off appearance opposite Sid James in ‘Two in Clover’; Super Sub. for an indisposed Victor Spinetti, and giving a beautiful performance. Rest easy, bytty.