Pomona Rewind

Some actors are lucky to strike a chord with a great director or equally great writer. And so it was with the Liverpudlian actor Michael Angelis whose collaborations with Alan Bleasdale produced some of the finest works ever created for British television. Some audiences will remember him as the rabbit mad brother Lucien in Carla Lane and Myra Taylor's sitcom 'The Liver Birds' or know him as the narrator who took over from Ringo Starr on 'Thomas the Tank Engine'. However his iconic role was surely as Chrissie Todd, the beating heart of Alan Bleasdale's  'The Boys from the Black Stuff' and it is that part that he should really be remembered for. Few actors before or since have essayed the disintegration of an unemployed man in quite the same way as Angelis managed in Bleasdale's searing indictment of the abandonment of the British working class. With his droll Scouse accent, Angelis was adept at squeezing comedy out of most scenes. However 'The Bo...

In the bombastic bear pit of US Presidential contests, there are always defining moments. Many cite John F Kennedy's confident mastery of TV in the debate against Richard Nixon in 1960 as a crucial moment in a closely fought campaign. The use by George HW Bush's campaign of the Willie Horton attack ad in 1988 against Michael Dukakis fatally damaged the Massachusetts Governor's White House bid.  Bill and Hillary Clinton's appearance on CBS's '60 Minutes' during the New Hampshire primary race not only saw them deny his affair with Gennifer Flowers but it undoubtedly kept his campaign for the Presidency afloat. During the last Presidential race in 2016, there were many popcorn moments.  Looking back, though, the spat between Fox News and the Trump campaign over the attacks on Megyn Kelly was the defining moment for journalism and the wider Republican Party.  Trump entered the primaries as a disruptor and an outsider - an outspoken candidate with no history of e...

BJ Hogg was one of those actors who was not really known outside Northern Ireland. However in his homeland, he was an accomplished theatre and screen actor - best known for his role as the loyalist Big Mervyn in the BBC Northern Ireland sitcom, 'Give My Head Peace', appearing in 73 episodes. But he also worked with filmmakers of the calibre Mike Leigh, Danny Boyle, Alan Clarke, Thaddeus O'Sullivan, Richard Attenborough and Steve McQueen. Born in Lisburn in 1955, his father was a player in Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyard and his mother ran a store in his hometown. He originally trained to be a chef and his introduction to acting came through a different route from most of his contemporaries. A showband musician, he heard that Belfast's arts theatre was putting on a musical production called 'The Rockin' 50s' and needed people who could act, sing and play instruments. It was enough to earn him his Equity card and he never looked back...

After moving to LA, the English actress and author Jill Gascoine kind of faded from view. Yet for a period in the 1980s, she broke convention as the star of Britain's favourite detective series 'The Gentle Touch'. Born in London in 1937,  she cut her teeth as an actor in the Dundee Repertory Theatre and in Leicester where she worked with Ken Loach at the Living Theatre. It was in Dundee that she would marry her first husband Bill Keith, a local hotelier with whom she would have two sons but it ended in divorce. Scraping a living and supporting her two sons, she graduated to television roles building a career with appearances in popular shows during the 1970s like 'Dr Finlay's Casebook', 'Z Cars', 'Dixon of Dock Green', 'Late Night Theatre' 'Six Days of Justice', 'General Hospital', 'Softly, Softly', 'Taskforce' and 'Within These Walls'. There was also a role in the raunchy 1975 Briti...

Irrfan Khan was a massive star in India. He was so massive, it would be easy to settle for being a Bollywood celebrity. However Irrfan Khan was not the kind of actor to settle. And while he carved out a successful career in Hindi cinema, he was critical of Bollywood movie chiefs for lacking originality, he set his sights on building a career outside India as well. Khan began his career in an Oscar nominated movie by the American based Indian director Mira Nair but went onto work with the likes of Asif Kapadia, Michael Winterbottom, Wes Anderson, Danny Boyle, Ang Lee, Colin Trevorrow and Jon Favreau. Born and raised in a Muslim family in Jaipur in 1967, he spent his childhood in Tonk and was a promising cricketer. Khan wax so good he was selected for the prestigious under 23 CK Nayudu Trophy - a tournament that paved the way for many of the country's top professionals. However he could not afford to travel and the chance was missed. Luckily, he had an uncle ...