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University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
All Saints Churchyard Chelsea, Royal
Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Greater London, England
Edward George "Ned" Sherrin, CBE
(18 February 1931 – 1 October 2007) was an English broadcaster,
author and stage director. He qualified as a barrister and then
worked in independent television before joining the BBC. He appeared
in a variety of radio and television satirical shows and theatre shows,
some of which he also directed.
The son of
Thomas Adam Sherrin, a farmer, and his wife, Dorothy Finch
Drewett,[1] Sherrin was
born at Low Ham[2] on the Somerset
Levels.
He was educated at Sexey's School, in Bruton,
Somerset,[3][4] and rendered his national
service in the Royal Signals,[5] being commissioned as an officer in
1950.[6]
Although he read law at Exeter College, Oxford,
and subsequently qualified as a barrister,[7] he became involved in theatre at Oxford and joined British television at the founding of
independent television in 1956, producing shows for ATV in Birmingham.
Sherrin joined
the BBC in 1957 as a temporary production assistant, then began working
for them as a producer in "Television Talks" in 1963.[8] Specialising in
satirical shows, he worked extensively in film production and
television.
In 1962 he was responsible for the first satirical
television series ''That Was The Week That Was''[9] starring David Frost and Millicent Martin and
its successors ''Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life'' and
''BBC-3''. His other shows and films included
''Up Pompeii!'', ''Up the Front'', ''The Cobblers of Umbridge''
and ''The Virgin Soldiers''. In 1978, he also hosted ''We Interrupt This
Week'', a lively and humorous news events quiz featuring two teams of
well-known journalists and columnists sparring against one another. The
show was a production of WNET/Channel 13 New York.
Sherrin
produced and directed numerous theatre productions in London's West End,
including ''Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell'' and the landmark musical
''Side By Side By Sondheim''. He received an Olivier Award in
1984 for directing and conceiving ''The Ratepayers' Iolanthe'', an
adaptation by Sherrin and Alistair Beaton of the Gilbert and
Sullivan opera
''Iolanthe''.[10]
On BBC Radio 4, from
1986, he presented a light entertainment show on Saturday mornings
(latterly evenings) called ''Loose Ends'',[11][12] and
''Counterpoint'', a quiz show about all types
of music, until forced off the air when his voice succumbed to throat
cancer. In his autobiography, (So, anyway), John Cleese describes
Sherrin as 'money mad' and 'treacherous'.
He also toured the UK
with his one-man show ''An Evening of Theatrical Anecdotes''.
Sherrin wrote two volumes of
autobiography, several books of quotations and anecdotes, as well as
some fiction; and several works in collaboration with Caryl Brahms.
Openly gay,[13][14]
he was a patron of the London Gay Symphony Orchestra,[15] as well as
the Stephen Sondheim Society of Singapore up until 1995. Sherrin was
awarded a CBE in the 1997 New Year's
honours list.[16][17] He was diagnosed with unilateral vocal cord paralysis in January 2007[18] and died of complications of
throat cancer on 1 October 2007, aged
76.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Sherrin