Times we got excited when minor cultural figures appeared as character in dramas

[George White]

Saw Phil Norman on twitter talking about this, that recent A Spy Amongst Friends featuring scenes set at the Morecambe and Wise show, with Dick Hills and Sid Green as characters.

And also Stonehouse, which features Cliff Michelmore, but also English National Party head/beefeater cosplayer Frank Hansford-Miller, who was one of the interviewees in this wonderful Today programme - https://twitter.com/ScarredForLife2/status/1421378326053195778


Fave ones
James Tuck - ball lightning-obsessed Manck scientist featured on Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World is a character in the BBC Oppenheimer, CBS' Day One and Fat Man and Little Boy.

The HBO/Granada TVM Who Bombed Birmingham? - David Bamber as David Mellor.

Andrew Neil played by a tached Brian Cox in the 1990 TVS/TNT TVM Secret Weapon.

Actors can be a whole separate list - i.e. Feud having extras as Michael Gough and Bernard Kay  or Jonathan Hyde as Alan Wheatley as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Adventures of Robin Hood bit in HBO/BBC film Fellow Traveller. Still want RTD to cast him as a Thal in Dr Who as a reference to Wheatley's role as Temmosus in the Daleks.

[Brundle-Fly]

Adventures In Space & Time (2013). Sarah Winter as Delia Derbyshire.

[Pavlov`s Dog`s Dad`s Dead]

English National Party head/beefeater cosplayer Frank Hansford-Miller, who was one of the interviewees in this wonderful Today programme - https://twitter.com/ScarredForLife2/status/1421378326053195778

Absolutely love the young lad sat in front of him, who starts off by going cross-eyed, and then freezes. He's even better than Frank's comical accent - a Southern English pompous eccentric straight out of central casting.

ETA you can tell it must be a vintage recording from the phrase "wonderful Today programme".

[Glebe]

https://twitter.com/ScarredForLife2/status/1421378326053195778

Been reading Scarred for Life Vol.1 for awhile now, took a little break from it 'cos its a hefty tome!

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Michael Parks as Jack Kirby in Argo. In reality, I don't think he was directly involved in the rescue plan - the storyboards they used were left over from an unproduced film Kirby had worked on - but "print the legend" and all that.

[Thomas]

This is Michael Sheen's job

[George White]

Michael Parks as Jack Kirby in Argo. In reality, I don't think he was directly involved in the rescue plan - the storyboards they used were left over from an unproduced film Kirby had worked on - but "print the legend" and all that.

Well, for legal reasons, they changed the film. 'Argo' IRL was a reuse of a scuppered adap of Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light, thats the film Jack worked on.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Adventures In Space & Time (2013). Sarah Winter as Delia Derbyshire.

Hmm. Do I need to watch this? Looked like fluff but I'm frequently wrong about these things.

[Bad Ambassador]

Some Who knowledge is probably beneficial, but it's a generally accurate and faithful retelling, with a strong emotional core that emerges towards the end.

[George White]

I once did a list of films that have Dr Who actors as characters.

The Longest Day - Richard Todd (Kinda)is played by Patrick Jordan, opposite the actual Richard Todd as John Howard.
Small Axe has Leee John (Enlightenment)
Theres a dodgy INXS miniseries with a Kylie.
The Audrey Hepburn Story (2000) has an extra as Guy Middleton from the Highlanders.

Darren Boyd as John Cleese in Holy Flying Circus!
Zoe Tapper as Sheila Steafel (Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD) in The Curse ofSteptoe
Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris (Keys of Marinus) in Orson Welles and Me
John Turturro as Howard da Silva (PBS narration in the 70s), renamed Aldo Silvano in Cradle will Rock.
Tom Wu as Burt Kwouk (Four to Doomsday) in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.
Stephen Bill as Hugh Lloyd (Delta and the Bannermen) in Hancock (1990)
Sarah Alexander as Liza Goddard in the Blankety Blank Comic Relief thing.
An extra as Patricia Quinn (Dragonfire) in To Hell and Back - the Meat Loaf Story.

The Look of Love - Dara O'Briain plays "Alternative Comedian", a role O'Briain has admitted to being basically a "No Celebrities Were Harmed" Alexei Sayle. Sayle is also a character in the BBC drama The Long Firm (2004).
Jonathan Hyde plays Alan Wheatley (The Daleks) in the BBC play Fellow Traveller, featuring a making of the Adventures of Robin Hood.
Lisa Maxwell played Dimensions in Time's Gillian Taylforth in the BBC TVM about George Carman with David Suchet.
Dawn French as Verity Lambert in The Comic Strip Presents - Strike!
Paddy Considine in Funny Cow - playing a character loosely based on Kenneth Ives from the Dominators who IRL was married to Marti Caine.
The 00s Canadian comdram SLings and Arrows - the character of Oliver Welles is a thinly disguised version of Robin Phillips (The Keys of Marinus, later director of the Stratford festival).
Ritchie Tozer in It's A Sin is partly Dursley McLinden.


Nolly has at least two so far.
Augustus Prew as Tony Adams (the Green Death)
Richard Lintern as Ronnie Allen (The Ambassadors of Death, the Dominators)
And a bit parter as Peter Hill (Day of the Daleks)>



Little Crackers had various actors play young versions of Barbara Windsor, Joanna Lumley, Sheridan Smith, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Stephen Fry, Paul O'Grady, Catherine Tate, Bill Bailey, Meera Syal.


Nigel Stock and Dinah Sheridan as themselves in The Mirror Crack'd.

Various in Cor Blimey
Jamie Winstone as Barbara Windsor (Army of Ghosts) in Babs (also has a Bernie Cribbins)

[Satchmo Distel]

Christian Bird as Jimmy Tarbuck in Nowhere Boy

Morecambe and Wise played themselves in The Sweeney

Nick Burnell plays Patrick Cargill in Hancock (above, 1990)

Michael Villani plays Merv Griffin in Man On The Moon

[Gob Shine Algorithm]

Henry Goodman as Karl Marx in Limehouse Golem (Karl Marx = minor cultural figure by virtue of entirety of Western World now unthinkingly capitalist).

Kevin Eldon as Rod Hull in the nineties drama 'Fist of Fun'.

[Brundle-Fly]

Reece Shearsmith as Richard Attenborough as Reginald Christie in Psychoville.

[Glebe]

Has Steve Pemberton as Harry Secombe in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers been mentioned? 'Twas Edward Tudor-Pole of Tenpole Tudor who played Milligan apparently.

Not really 'minor' figures though. More recently Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson) appearing in See How They Run was a surprize, though again Attenborough was hardly a 'minor' figure.

[Brundle-Fly]

Has Steve Pemberton as Harry Secombe in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers been mentioned? 'Twas Edward Tudor-Pole of Tenpole Tudor who played Milligan apparently.

Matt Berry's Toast series has some nice appearances ranging from Tom Baker circa 1977 to Richard Kiel circa 1977.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Adventures In Space & Time (2013). Sarah Winter as Delia Derbyshire.

Sophie Wilson (engineer of the BBC micro and later ARM processors) appeared as a barmaid in Micro Men the Sinclair/Curry dramatisation.

She's trans and wasn't 'out' during the early days of Acorn so the dramatisation had her played by a male actor presenting as a bloke. But it was a nice cameo.

[George White]

Charles Dance and Belinda Lang as the Hamiltons in Justice in Wonderland.
You can just imagine Neil saying, 'Oh, I'd like Charles Dance to be me', and they actually got him. Good lad, Dance.

[Psybro]

I was disappointed when Nigel Clough didn't play himself in The Damned United.

[dissolute ocelot]

Frost/Nixon is unsurprisingly good for this e.g. Matthew Macfadyen as future BBC boss John Birt.

David Schwimmer as the Kardashians' actual dad Robert Kardashian in The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story is also great casting.

[Gulftastic]

Hardly a minor cultural character but I got more excited than I should when Martin out off of 'Game On' appeared in a single scene as Stan Laurel in the 'Chaplin' biopic.

[George White]

Koo Stark, referred to only as 'the American Actress ' in US TVM Fergie and Andrew - Behind PalaceDoors.

[Alternative Carpark]

I once did a list of films that have Dr Who actors as characters.

You can also add

Jonathan Kerrigan as John Alkin (Planet of Fire) in Best Possible Taste: The Kenny Everett Story.

Kascion Franklin playing Danny, but Lenny Henry (Spyfall) in all but name, in Danny And The Human Zoo, a TVM about LH's early life and career which Lenny Henry wrote himself.

[George White]

Nolly also had Brian Badcoe,  Michael Summerton, Angus Lennie...

[George White]

In An Englishman Abroad, harold Innocent is playing Paul Hardwick (who played Brezhnev in Octopussy). Paul Herzberg plays Hardwick in My Week with Marilyn. Didn't do WHo, but did do the CSO-tastic 1981 BBC Thousand and One Nights.

 Also played Brezhnev in the Thames docudrama Hammer and Sickle (Brian Glover as Khrushchev) and the Granada docudrama Invasion. Was basically the Michael Sheard of Brezhnevs.

[dissolute ocelot]

Jessica Brown Finlay as Buzzcocks cover designer and artist Linder Sterling in the Morrissey biopic England Is Mine is not only an iconic figure for fans of pictures of women with sinister breasts, but so much cooler than Morrissey, it's little surprise Moz has become a bitter old man.

[George White]

Sadly, ex-Los Alamos boffin James Tuck of Arthur C Clarke's 'ball lightning' ep is not in Oppenheimer, despite being in the previous dramatisations Oppenheimer (1980), Fat Man and little boy (1989) and Day One (1989).

[mjwilson]

Jessica Brown Finlay as Buzzcocks cover designer and artist Linder Sterling in the Morrissey biopic England Is Mine is not only an iconic figure for fans of pictures of women with sinister breasts, but so much cooler than Morrissey, it's little surprise Moz has become a bitter old man.

I don't know whether it's wise to ask, but what are sinister breasts?

[Bad Ambassador]

They're frowning.

[MojoJojo]

Found out today that Scott Adams, the crazy dilbert guy who lives in a dilbert shaped house with a dilbert shaped swimming pool, appeared in Babylon 5.

[Glebe]

Okay not 'minor' figures but Michael Sheen played Chris Tarrant in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? cheating scandal mini-series Quiz (2020), while Conor Mullen played Gay Byrne in 2018 TV movie Mother's Day, which was about the 1993 IRA bombings in Warrington.