Umar Akmal

Umar Akmal

Umar Akmal (Urdu: عمر اکمل‎; born 26 May 1990) is a Pakistani cricketer. He made his One Day International (ODI) debut on 1 August 2009 against Sri Lanka and made his Test debut against New Zealand on 23 November 2009. He is a right-handed batsman and a part-time spinner. Like his two brothers, Adnan and Kamran, Umar has kept wicket for the national team in many ODIs.

He was announced as a franchise player for the inaugural Caribbean Premier League alongside Pakistani teammates Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik [1] Domestically, he played for Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited for eleven years, before signing with United Bank Limited in August 2017.[2]

In February 2020, he was suspended by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), after he had breached their Anti-Corruption code.[3][4] In April 2020, the PCB banned him from cricket for three years, after he pled guilty to failing to report corrupt approaches

Personal life

Born to Mohammad Akmal Siddique, "a very senior administrator in Pakistan cricket", in a family of seven children, with six sons who all played cricket at some point but many went to business, and one daughter,[6] Umar is the youngest brother of Adnan Akmal and Kamran Akmal who are also cricketers, both wicket-keepers. He is also the cousin of Pakistani batsman Babar Azam.

While he was playing for the Barbados Tridents, in the Caribbean Premier League, he had to spend a night in hospital after he suffered mild seizures. Following this, the PCB called him back for a complete medical checkup and also dropped him from the upcoming Zimbabwe tour. On 6 September 2013, he was cleared by a neurologist, saying that the seizure was possibly due to a lack of sleep.[7]

In 2014 he married Noor Amna, the daughter of Pakistan leg-spinner Abdul Qadir.[8]

Early and domestic career

Umar represented Pakistan in the 2008 U/19 Cricket World Cup in Malaysia. After his success at the U-19 level he earned himself a first-class contract and played the 2007–08 season of the Quaid-i-Azam Trophy, representing the Sui Southern Gas team. He is considered a future asset for Pakistan cricket.

He is an aggressive style cricketer. In only his sixth first-class match he smashed 248 off just 225 deliveries, including four sixes.[9] He followed that up with an unbeaten 186 in his 8th first-class match, off just 170 balls. He fared less well in his second season of first-class cricket, with a string of low scores batting at number 3.

He found form in the final few matches of the 2008/09 season and then in the RBS T20 tournament thus getting the selectors nod to play for Pakistan A side on their tour to Australia A.

Umar came to prominence during the Australia A tour in June/July 2009. In the two Test matches he recorded scores of 54, 100*, 130, 0. In the ODI series that followed Umar continued his fine form with a century in the opening ODI encounter off just 68 deliveries.

These performances made him gather considerable praise from the media who were there to witness him and calls began to grow about his inclusion in the ODI series for the main Pakistan side against Sri Lanka.[10]

In April 2018, he was named in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's squad for the 2018 Pakistan Cup.[11][12] He was the leading run-scorer for Habib Bank Limited in the 2018–19 Quaid-e-Azam One Day Cup, with 410 runs in ten matches.[13] In March 2019, he was named in Baluchistan's squad for the 2019 Pakistan Cup.[14][15] In the opening match of the tournament, he scored 136 not out, his highest total in List A cricket.[16] He was the leading run-scorer in the tournament, with 342 runs in five matches.[17]

In September 2019, he was named in Central Punjab's squad for the 2019–20 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy tournament.[18][19]

Test career

Umar made his Test debut against New Zealand at Dunedin on 23 November 2009. On the third day of his debut test, Umar Akmal hit 129 runs from 160 balls becoming only the second Pakistani to score a hundred on debut away from home after Fawad Alam.

This feat also made him the first Pakistani batsman to score both his maiden Test and ODI century away from home, following his ODI century against Sri Lanka. The innings was noted as special due to Pakistan's tough position in the match and the hundred partnership which Akmal was involved in alongside his elder brother Kamran. He followed up the century in the first innings with a fifty in the second innings.

In only his second Test match he was moved up the order to the crucial spot of number 3, where he struggled initially but managed to counter-attack the hostile bowling with his natural flair, making 46 before he was undone by an inswinger by Daryl Tuffey.

In the second innings he was moved down the order to his usual batting spot of number 5 as captain Mohammed Yousuf chose to bat at number 3 himself, and Akmal looked his usual aggressive self throughout his innings of 52 which came off only 33 balls.

He had his first failure in the first innings of the third test at Napier where he was caught in the gully for a duck but scored a rearguard 77 in the second, promoting him to the leading run scorer of the series. Akmal finished the tour with 400 runs at an average of 57.14.

Umar Akmal's early success was briefly tarnished by a controversy during Pakistan's 2009–10 tour of Australia. It was widely reported that Umar had feigned an injury to protest the dropping of older brother Kamran for the final Test match against Australia.

Umar denied such rumors and played in the final match without his brother. He was later fined 2–3 million rupees by the PCB for breaching his contract and speaking to the media without approval.[20]

ODI and Twenty20 Career

In an interview, Umar said "My own dream is to one day play for Pakistan alongside Kamran Bhai (Umar's brother) and I'm working hard to try and achieve that goal".[21] Akmal was selected in Pakistan's squad for the One Day International Series against Sri Lanka in July/August 2009.

He had missed out on the first ODI Umar made his debut in the second match of the series replacing Mohammad Yousuf in the middle order. In only his second career ODI Umar scored his maiden ODI fifty. Umar followed up his maiden fifty by scoring a century in the very next match. For this match winning effort he was awarded his first career Man of the Match award.[22] His exploits in Sri Lanka earned him a place in Pakistan's Champions Trophy squad. He played two good innings.

His 41 not out against West Indies was a match winning knock and landed him his second career Man of the Match award.[23] His next big innings came in the semi final against New Zealand, where he scored a brisk 55 in a losing effort, before he was wrongly given out by umpire Simon Taufel, who later apologized.[24]

Despite the fact that Umar Akmal is not a wicket-keeper he kept wicket for Pakistan temporarily in the third ODI against England in 2010 from the 27th over onwards because his elder brother Kamran was being diagnosed for an injury to his finger. Umar Akmal scored 71 runs from 52 balls in his debut World Cup match and was named Man of the Match.[25]

In February 2012, Pakistan faced England in four ODIs. Pakistan's brittle batting meant the team management chose to play Umar as a wicket-keeper based on his batting, though his brother Adnan was considered the better 'keeper'.

The result of choosing the less accomplished glovesman was that in the first two matches Umar Akmal missed opportunities to dismiss Ravi Bopara and Alastair Cook early in their innings, and they respectively went on to score a half-century and a century.[26]

Umar was dropped from ODI series against Sri Lanka in 2015, but called to the T20I series. He proved his value to the team, by scoring 24-ball 46 runs in the first T20I match.

Umar Akmal has the record for scoring the second most number of ducks in Twenty 20 cricket history (26) just behind Dwayne Smith.[27] On 7 October 2019, during the second T20I of the home series against Sri Lanka, he equalled Tillekaratne Dilshan's record for scoring the most number of ducks in T20Is with 10.[28]

T20 franchise career

Pakistan Super League

Umar was bought by Lahore Qalandars for US$140,000 in 2016 season. He performed well and ended up as the highest runs-scorer in PSL 2016 scoring 335 runs in seven innings with four half-centuries.[29] His team didn't qualify for play-offs and finished last in the group stage. He was retained by Lahore Qalandars for 2nd season. He finished the season with 164 runs from 8 matches with only one fifty.[30] He was again retained by Qalandars for 3rd season. He was eventually dropped by Lahore Qalandars for later part of the tournament for his below par performance and disciplinary issues.

Umar joined Quetta Gladiators for 4th season as a result of a trade. He scored 277 runs in 12 matches in the tournament.

Other leagues

In June 2019, he was selected to play for the Winnipeg Hawks franchise team in the 2019 Global T20 Canada tournament

Ken Dodd

Ken Dodd

Sir Kenneth Arthur Dodd OBE (8 November 1927 – 11 March 2018) was an English comedian, singer and occasional actor. He was described as "the last great music hall entertainer", and was primarily known for his live stand-up performances.

A lifelong resident of Knotty Ash in Liverpool, Dodd's career as an entertainer started in the mid-1950s. His performances included rapid and incessant delivery of often surreal jokes, and would run for several hours, frequently past midnight. His verbal and physical comedy was supplemented by his red, white and blue "tickling stick" prop, and often introduced by his characteristic upbeat greeting of "How tickled I am!" He interspersed the comedy with songs, both serious and humorous, and with his original speciality, ventriloquism. He also had several hit singles primarily as a ballad singer in the 1960s, and occasionally appeared in dramatic roles. He performed on radio and television, and popularised the characters of the Diddy Men.

He was knighted in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to entertainment and charity. His stage career lasted for over 60 years, and he continued to perform until the end of 2017, when his health permitted; he died on 11 March 2018, aged 90.

Early life

Kenneth Arthur Dodd was born on 8 November 1927 in a former farmhouse in Knotty Ash, a suburb of Liverpool, to Arthur Dodd and Sarah (née Gray);[1] where his parents lived. He had an older brother, William and a younger sister, June.[1] He went to the Knotty Ash School, and sang in the local church choir of St John's Church, Knotty Ash. He was to live in Knotty Ash all his life, dying in the house in which he was born, and often referred to the area—as well as its mythical "jam butty mines" and "black pudding plantations"—in his act.[2][3]

He then attended Holt High School, a grammar school in Childwall, Liverpool, but left at the age of 14 to work for his father, a coal merchant.[4][5] Around this time he became interested in show business after seeing an advert in a comic: "Fool your teachers, amaze your friends—send 6d in stamps and become a ventriloquist!"[6] and sending off for the book. Not long after, his father bought him a ventriloquist's dummy and Ken called it Charlie Brown. He started entertaining at the local orphanage, then at various other local community functions. His distinctive buck teeth were the result of a cycling accident after a group of school friends dared him to ride a bicycle with his eyes closed.[2] Aged 18, he began working as a travelling salesman, and used his work van to travel to comedy clubs in the evenings.[7]

Early career

He gained his big break at age 26 when, in September 1954, he made his professional show-business debut as Professor Yaffle Chucklebutty, Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter at the Nottingham Empire. He later said, "Well at least they didn't boo me off".[8][9] He continued to tour variety theatres up and down the UK, and in 1955 he appeared at Blackpool, where, in the following year, he had a part in Let's Have Fun. His performance at the Central Pier was part of a comedy revue with Jimmy James and Company. Also on the same bill were Jimmy Clitheroe and Roy Castle.[10] Dodd first gained top billing at Blackpool in 1958.[11]

Comedy

Dodd was described as "the last great music hall entertainer".[12] His stand-up comedy style was fast and relied on the rapid delivery of one-liner jokes. He said that his comic influences included other Liverpool comedians like Arthur Askey, Robb Wilton, Tommy Handley and the "cheeky chappy" from Brighton, Max Miller.[13] He interspersed the comedy with occasional songs, both serious and humorous, in an incongruously fine light baritone voice, and with his original speciality, ventriloquism.[14] Part of his stage act featured the Diddy Men ("diddy" being local slang for "small"). At first an unseen joke conceived as part of Dodd's imagination, they later appeared on stage, usually played by children.[15]

Dodd worked mainly as a solo comedian, including in a number of eponymous television and radio shows and made several appearances on BBC TV's music hall revival show, The Good Old Days.[16] Although he enjoyed making people laugh, he was also a serious student of comedy and history, and was interested in Sigmund Freud and Henri Bergson's analysis of humour.[7] Occasionally, he appeared in dramatic roles, including Malvolio in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night on stage in Liverpool in 1971; on television in the cameo role of 'The Tollmaster' in the 1987 Doctor Who story Delta and the Bannermen; as Yorick (in silent flashback) in Kenneth Branagh's film version of Shakespeare's Hamlet in 1996; and as Mr. Mouse in the 1999 television movie adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.[17] Marking Dodd's 90th birthday, a fulsome appreciation by Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington noted that "Ken has done just about everything: annual Blackpool summer seasons, pantomimes, nationwide tours, TV and radio. He was a very fine Malvolio.

Dodd was renowned for the length of his performances, and during the 1960s he earned a place in The Guinness Book of Records for the world's longest ever joke-telling session: 1,500 jokes in three-and-a-half hours (7.14 jokes per minute), undertaken at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool, where audiences entered the show in shifts.[19]

Dodd appeared in many Royal Variety Performances. The last was in 2006, in front of Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, at the London Coliseum.[20]

Dodd toured frequently throughout his professional career, performing lengthy shows into his eighties, that often did not finish until after midnight. In his final year, he continued to tour the UK extensively, with his comedy, music and variety show. His final performance was on 28 December 2017 at the Echo Arena Auditorium in Liverpool.[21] He said the secret of his success was simply, "I love what I do".[22]

Music

Dodd had many hit records, charting on 18 occasions in the UK Top 40, including his first single "Love Is Like a Violin" (1960), produced on Decca Records by Alex Wharton, which charted at number 8 (UK). His version of Bill Anderson's song "Happiness" charted in 1964 and became Dodd's signature song.[23]

Dodd's recording of "Tears" on the Columbia label topped the UK singles chart for five weeks in 1965,[24] becoming the biggest hit single in Britain that year and selling over a million copies in the UK alone. The recording is the third best selling song of the 1960s in Britain;[25] at the time it was the UK's biggest selling single by a solo artist,[26] and remains one of the biggest selling singles of all time. Dodd was selected to perform the song on A Jubilee of Music on BBC One on 31 December 1976, a celebration of the key pop successes of the Queen's first 25 years as Britain's monarch.

Dodd had two further UK top ten records: "The River (Le Colline Sono In Fiore)", written by Renato Angiolini with lyrics by Mort Shuman (number 3, 1965); and "Promises", written by Norman Newell and Tom Springfield (number 6, 1966).[24] As well as his successful chart career as a ballad singer, Dodd occasionally released comedy novelty records, including the 1965 EP Doddy and the Diddy Men, featuring the song "Where's Me Shirt?" which Dodd co-wrote.[27]

In the 1960s, his fame in the UK was such that he rivalled the Beatles as a household name, and his records have sold millions worldwide.[17]

Tax evasion court case

In 1989, Dodd was charged with tax evasion. The subsequent trial, with the prosecution case led by Brian Leveson QC, produced several revelations. The Diddy Men, who had appeared in his stage act, were often played by local children from stage schools, and were revealed never to have been paid. Dodd was also revealed to have very little money in his bank account, having £336,000 in cash stashed in suitcases in his attic. When asked by the judge, "What does £100,000 in a suitcase feel like?", Dodd replied, "The notes are very light, M'Lord."[28] He also said: "I am not mean, but I am nervous of money, nervous of having it, nervous of not having it" and described money as "important only because I have nothing else".[29]

Dodd was represented by George Carman QC, who in court quipped, "Some accountants are comedians, but comedians are never accountants".[30] He described Dodd as "a fantasist stamped with lifelong eccentricities."[29] The trial lasted three weeks; Dodd was acquitted.[30]

Despite the strain of the trial, Dodd immediately capitalised on his new-found notoriety with a successful season running from Easter to Christmas 1990 at the London Palladium. It was there he had previously broken the house record for the longest comedy season at the theatre, in 1965, with a residency lasting 42 weeks. Some of his subsequent material mocked the trial and tax in general. For a while, he introduced his act with the words, "Good evening, my name is Kenneth Arthur Dodd; singer, photographic playboy and failed accountant!"[31] Dodd also made a joke that when income tax was introduced it was a mere 2p in every £1 earned, followed by the punchline "I thought it still was!" [1]

Honours

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1982 New Year Honours for services to show business and charity and was knighted in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to entertainment and charity.[32] The award was formally conferred by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 2 March 2017.[33]

In 1993 Dodd won Top Variety Entertainer and was also awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at ITV's British Comedy Awards.[34] In 1994, Dodd appeared in the TV special An Audience with Ken Dodd. The show was a success and introduced him to a younger audience.[9] Dodd later became one of a select few to be given a second show, entitled Another Audience with Ken Dodd and originally broadcast in 2002.[35]

He was made a Freeman of the City of Liverpool in 2001.[36]

In a 2005 poll of comedians and comedy insiders to find the 'Comedians' Comedian', Dodd was voted amongst the 'Top 50 Comedy Acts Ever', ranked as number 36.[37] He was made an honorary fellow of Liverpool John Moores University in 1997. A statue depicting Dodd with his trademark "Tickling Stick" was unveiled in Liverpool Lime Street railway station in June 2009. It was temporarily removed in 2017 for renovation works.[38]

Dodd was inducted into the exclusive show business fraternity, the Grand Order of Water Rats.[39]

Dodd was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Chester at a graduation ceremony in 2009 in Chester Cathedral.[40] He was awarded a Doctorate of Letters at Liverpool Hope University in 2010 during the university's Foundation Day celebrations.[41]

In 2016, Dodd was awarded the Aardman Slapstick Comedy Legend Award, a recognition of his lifetime's contribution to the world of comedy. He received the award as part of the Slapstick Festival in Bristol.[42]

Personal life

Dodd's relationships with women lasted for decades; Dodd's biographer Stephen Griffin wrote: "As ever, despite the blossoming romance, there was to be no talk of marriage... he thought that marriage could lead to complacency in a relationship, and caused some couples to stop putting in any effort."[43] In 1955, Dodd began a 22-year relationship with Anita Boutin;[44] they were engaged at the time of her death from a brain tumour in 1977, at the age of 45.[29][45] Shortly after her death, Dodd began a relationship with Anne Jones, which lasted from 1978 until his death. They had first met in 1961 when Jones appeared in The Ken Dodd Christmas Show at the Manchester Opera House. Dodd married Jones on 9 March 2018, two days before his death.[29][46]

Dodd said that one of his biggest regrets in life was that he never had children. It was widely reported that he and Anne were unable to conceive naturally.[47] During his 1989 trial details of his personal life surfaced in the media, including revelations that he and Anne had undergone several failed rounds of IVF treatment in an attempt to start a family.[48]

In October 2001, a stalker, Ruth Tagg, harassed Dodd and Jones by sending them threatening letters and a dead rat, also appearing on the front row at almost all of his live shows during this time. She also attempted to burn down their house by pushing burning rags through the letterbox causing £11,000 worth of damage to the ground floor. Tagg pleaded guilty to harassment and arson at Preston Crown Court in 2003.[49]

Death and tributes

Dodd died on 11 March 2018 at his home in Knotty Ash, the same home in which he was born and raised, aged 90 after recently being hospitalised for six weeks with a chest infection.[50] He had been touring with his stand-up stage show until 2017. Numerous stars paid tribute, including fellow Liverpudlian Paul McCartney.[51] At his funeral on 28 March, which was led by the Bishop of Liverpool, Paul Bayes, hundreds of fans joined the cortege which passed from his Knotty Ash home to Liverpool Cathedral. The service was attended by actors Ricky Tomlinson, Stephanie Cole and Miriam Margolyes, comedians Jimmy Tarbuck, Stan Boardman and Jimmy Cricket and television executive Michael Grade. After the service, Dodd was laid to rest, alongside his mother and father, during a private burial service at Allerton Cemetery in Liverpool. Tickling sticks were placed on various statues around Liverpool in commemoration. At Liverpool Town Hall, St George's Hall, the Cunard Building and Liverpool Central Library, flags were lowered to pay respect.[52]

Theatre critic Michael Coveney declared in his appreciation for The Stage: “Ken Dodd was the greatest live performer I ever saw on stage anywhere.” [53]

In the December 2018 BBC TV retrospective, How Tickled We Were, the comic's biographer Michael Billington ranked Dodd alongside Lord Olivier as one of “the two theatrical geniuses of the British stage” in the writer's own lifetime. In the same broadcast, fellow Liverpudlian and comedian Jimmy Tarbuck declared Dodd “the greatest stage comic the country has ever seen”.[54]

Television work

Ken Dodd had numerous television shows and specials over 60 years, including:

The Ken Dodd Show (1959–1969)[55]

Complete Interview with Ken Dodd & The Beatles (1963)[56]

Doddy's Music Box (1967–1968)[57][58]

Ken Dodd and the Diddymen (1969–1972)[59][60]

The Ken Dodd Show – LWT (1969)[61]

Ken Dodd in Funny You Should Say That (1972)[62][63]

Ken Dodd says Stand By Your Beds[64]

Ken Dodd's World of Laughter – 3 series, 19 episodes (1974)[65]

The Ken Dodd New Year's Eve Special (1975)

The Ken Dodd Show (1978)[66]

The Ken Dodd Laughter Show (1979)

Dodd on his Todd (1981)[67]

Doddy! (1982)

Ken Dodd's Showbiz – 6 episodes (1982)[68]

Ken Dodd at the London Palladium (1990)

Ken Dodd This Is Your Life, extended 500th edition (1990)[69]

An Audience with Ken Dodd (1994)[70]

Another Audience with Ken Dodd (2002)[71]

Ken Dodd's Happiness (2007)[72]

Talking Comedy (2016)[73]

Ken Dodd: In His Own Words (2017)[74]

Other television work

Dodd also appeared in many other programmes, as an actor, performer, or as himself. Appearances include:

The Good Old Days – 15 episodes (1955–1982)[75]

Doctor Who: Delta and the Bannermen (1987)[76]

A Question of Entertainment – 18 episodes (1988)[77]

Hamlet (1996)[17]

Heroes of Comedy (1995–2001) About himself and other comics[78]

Dawn French's Boys Who Do Comedy (2007)[79]

My Favourite Joke – 4 episodes (2011)

The Story of Variety with Michael Grade – 2 episodes (2011)[80]

Fern Britton Meets... (2013)[81]

Miriam Margolyes

Miriam Margolyes

Miriam Margolyes, OBE (/ˈmɑːrɡəliːz/; born 18 May 1941) is a British-Australian actress and voice artist. Her earliest roles were in theatre and after several supporting roles in film and television she won a BAFTA Award for her role in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (1993) and was cast in the role of Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter film series.

For many years she has divided her time between England and Australia, and she has starred in productions in both countries, including the Australian premiere of the 2013 play I'll Eat You Last. In 2013, she became an Australian citizen, thereby holding dual British and Australian citizenship

Early life

Margolyes was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, on 18 May 1941,[2] the only child of Ruth (née Walters; 1905–1974), a property investor and developer, and Joseph Margolyes (1899–1995), a physician from the Gorbals,[3] Glasgow.[4] She grew up in a Jewish family;[5][6][7] her ancestors migrated to the UK from Poland and Belarus. Her great-grandfather, Symeon Sandmann, was born in the town of Margonin in central-western Poland, which Margolyes visited in 2013.

She attended Oxford High School and then Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read English.[8] There, in her twenties, she began acting and appeared in productions by the Cambridge Footlights comedy troupe.[9] She represented the university in the first series of University Challenge, where she may have been one of the first people to say "fuck" on British television; she claims to have used the word in frustration on the show in 1963.[10] However, at least two others said it on British television before that: Brendan Behan on Panorama in 1956 (although his drunken slurring was not understood), and an anonymous man who painted the railings on Stranmillis Embankment alongside the River Lagan in Belfast, who in 1959 told Ulster TV's magazine show, Roundabout, that his job was "fucking boring".[11][12]

Acting career

With her distinctive voice, Margolyes first gained recognition for her work as a voice artist. In the 1970s she recorded a soft-porn audio called Sexy Sonia: Leaves from my Schoolgirl Notebook.[13] She performed most of the supporting female characters in the dubbed Japanese action TV series Monkey. She also worked with the theatre company Gay Sweatshop and provided voiceovers in the Japanese TV series The Water Margin (credited as Mirium Margolyes).

In 1974 she appeared with Kenneth Williams and Ted Ray in the BBC Radio 2 comedy series The Betty Witherspoon Show.[14]

Margolyes' first major role in a film was as Elephant Ethel in Stand Up, Virgin Soldiers (1977). In the 1980s, she made appearances in Blackadder opposite Rowan Atkinson: these roles include the Spanish Infanta in The Black Adder, Lady Whiteadder in Blackadder II and Queen Victoria in Blackadder's Christmas Carol. In 1986 she played a major supporting role in the BBC drama The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. She won the 1989 LA Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Flora Finching in the film Little Dorrit (1988). On American television, she headlined the short-lived 1992 CBS sitcom Frannie's Turn. In 1994 she won the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mrs Mingott in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (1993).

In 1989, Margolyes co-wrote and performed a one-woman show, Dickens' Women, in which she played 23 characters from Dickens' novels.[15]

Margolyes came to the notice of younger audiences when she starred as Aunt Sponge in James and the Giant Peach (1996); she also provided the voice of the Glowworm in the same film. During the same time she played the Nurse in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996). Around this time, she voiced the rabbit character in the animated commercials for Cadbury's Caramel bars[16] and provided the voice of Fly the dog in the Australian-American family film Babe (1995).[17]

She played Professor Sprout in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets released in 2002. In a 2011 interview on The Graham Norton Show, in regard to her fellow castmembers, Margolyes claimed that she liked Maggie Smith, but rather bluntly admitted that she, "didn't like the one that died", meaning Richard Harris.[18]

In 2004, Margolyes played the role of Peg Sellers, the mother of Peter Sellers, in the Golden Globe winning film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

She was one of the original cast of the London production of the musical Wicked in 2006, playing Madame Morrible opposite Idina Menzel, a role she also played on Broadway in 2008.[19]

In 2009, she appeared in a new production of Endgame by Samuel Beckett at the Duchess Theatre in London's West End.[20]

Margolyes voiced the role of Mrs. Plithiver, a blind snake in 3D-animated-epic film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010). Margolyes reprised her role as Professor Sprout in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011).

She played recurring character Prudence Stanley in the Australian-based TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries from 2012 to 2015.

In 2014, she voiced Nana in the Disney Junior animated series for pre-school-age viewers Nina Needs to Go![21]

In January 2016 she appeared in The Real Marigold Hotel, a travel documentary in which a group of eight celebrities travel to India to see whether retirement would be more rewarding there than in the UK.[22] The series was reprised for two Christmas Specials The Real Marigold On Tour, from Florida and Kyoto.[23] She narrated the 2016 ITV documentary about Lady Colin Campbell entitled Lady C and the Castle.[24]

In December 2017 Margolyes appeared in the second season of The Real Marigold On Tour to Chengdu and Havana.[25] She appeared in the first episode of the third season when she travelled to St Petersburg, Russia with Bobby George, Sheila Ferguson and Stanley Johnson.

In January 2018 Margolyes hosted a three-part series for the BBC titled Miriam's Big American Adventure, highlighting the citizens of the US and the issues facing the nation.[26]

Since 2018, Margolyes has portrayed Mother Mildred in the BBC One drama, Call The Midwife.

She played Miss Shepherd in a 2019 production of The Lady in the Van for the Melbourne Theatre Company in Melbourne in Australia.[27]

Other work

Margolyes is a supporter of Sense (the National Deafblind and Rubella Association) and was the host at the first Sense Creative Writing Awards, held at the Charles Dickens Museum in London in December 2006, where she read a number of works written by talented deafblind people.[28]

In 2011, Margolyes recorded a narrative for the album The Devil's Brides by klezmer musician-ethnographer Yale Strom.[29]

Political activism

Margolyes is a member of the British-based ENOUGH! coalition, which seeks the boycott of Israel. She is also a signatory of Jews for Justice for Palestinians.[30] "What I want to try to do is to get Jewish people to understand what's really going on", she has said, "and they don't want to hear it. If you speak to most Jews and say 'Can Israel ever be in the wrong?' they say 'No. Our duty as Jews is to support Israel whatever happens.' And I don't believe that. It is our duty as human beings to report the truth as we see it." [31] Margolyes is a campaigner for a respite care charity, Crossroads.[32]

Margolyes is a member of the Vauxhall Constituency Labour Party. In August 2015, she was a signatory to a letter criticising The Jewish Chronicle's reporting of Jeremy Corbyn's alleged association with antisemites.[33]

In November 2019, Margolyes endorsed the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 UK general election because he "is going to protect the NHS".[34][35] Later in the month, along with other public figures, she signed a letter supporting Corbyn describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him in the 2019 UK general election.[36]

Personal life

Margolyes is a lesbian.[37] On becoming an Australian citizen,[32] on Australia Day 2013, Margolyes referred to herself as a "dyke" live on national television and in front of the then prime minister, Julia Gillard.[38]

Since 1967 her partner has been Heather Sutherland,[17][39] a retired Australian professor of Indonesian studies.[40] Margolyes divides her time between homes in London and Kent in the UK, Tuscany in Italy and Robertson, New South Wales, in Australia.[41][42][43][44]

Author and comedian David Walliams says he used Margolyes as a model for the title character in his children's book Awful Auntie after a rude exchange with the actress during a stage production. He stresses that he has nothing against Margolyes and is a fan of her work.

Gemma Collins

Gemma Collins

Gemma Clare Collins (born 31 January 1981)[1] is an English media personality and businesswoman. In 2011, she began appearing on the ITVBe reality series The Only Way Is Essex. Following a brief appearance on I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! (2014), Collins has appeared in various television shows including Celebrity Big Brother (2016), Celebs Go Dating (2018), and Dancing on Ice (2019). In 2019, she began starring in her own reality series and hosting a podcast on BBC Sounds.

Early life

Collins was born on 31 January 1981[1] in Romford, London, and attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School.[2] She also attended Frances Bardsley Academy.[3] Before her career in television, she was a used car sales person.[4]

Career

2011–2017: The Only Way Is Essex and Celebrity Big Brother

In 2011, Julie Childs, mother of Collins' friend Amy, informed producers of the ITV2 reality series The Only Way Is Essex about Collins, who was a used car sales woman at the time.[5] They went to Collins' house and then filmed her and her friends for two weeks.[6] After going back to work selling cars for a week, she was cast in the programme and began appearing in The Only Way Is Essex from its second series in 2011; her first ever scene was selling a car to Kirk Norcross.[6] While appearing on the programme, Collins opened her own self-titled clothes boutique.[7] Her mother Joan joined in the fifth series in April 2012.[8]

In June 2013, Collins released her debut autobiography Basically: My Real Life as an Essex Girl, which became a bestseller in its first week of release.[9] In November 2014, she took part in the fourteenth series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! on ITV.[10] After she refused to parachute into the jungle along with her cast mates, she withdrew after spending 72 hours in the jungle, allegedly due to health issues.[11]

On 5 January 2016, she entered the Celebrity Big Brother house to participate in the seventeenth series.[12] On 2 February 2016, she became the seventh housemate to be evicted, having received the fewest votes to be saved, spending a total of 29 days in the house.[5] In 2017, she returned to Big Brother, as a special guest for a shopping task, alongside fellow ex-contestants Marnie Simpson and Nicola McLean.[13]

In October 2017, Collins presented the BBC Radio 1 Teen Award for Best TV Show to Love Island, and after announcing the winner, she fell through the opening in the stage.[14] The clip later went viral on social media.[15][16] In an interview with Irish News, Collins said "the seriousness of it is, it could have been really fatal".[17] After the video's widespread attention, further videos of Collins were used as memes, including scenes from her appearances on The Only Way Is Essex and Celebrity Big Brother.[5]

2018–present: Dancing on Ice and Diva

In 2018, Collins appeared on Celebrity 100% Hotter,[18] as well as the fourth series of Celebs Go Dating.[19] Collins also appeared in Gemma Collins: Diva España, a one-off reality television special aired on 29 August 2018.[20] Collins also took part in Celebrity MasterChef, and guest starred in a promotional advert for Netflix's Orange Is the New Black.[21] In 2018, she released her second book, titled The GC: How to Be a Diva, in which she provides advice and self help for women to gain confidence.[22] In an interview on Loose Women, she admitted to using a ghostwriter.[23] Collins then collaborated with fashion website Boohoo.com on a collection of swimwear for plus-sized women in 2018.[24]

In 2019, Collins took part in the eleventh series of Dancing on Ice, alongside professional partner Matt Evers.[25] While competing in the series, Collins had an on-screen argument with judge Jason Gardiner, who made comments about her weight and lack of commitment to the series.[5] Collins was the fifth celebrity to be eliminated in Week 6, after a skate-off against Ryan Sidebottom.[26] In April 2019, Collins began filming for her own reality series, Gemma Collins: Diva Forever.[27] The series premiered on 7 August 2019 on ITVBe.[28] The pilot episode premiered to a total of 673,038 viewers, and was the most watched episode on ITVBe in that week.[29] Diva Forever was subsequently renewed by ITV for a second series,[30] but due to the effects of the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic, production was suspended.[31] As a result, Collins filmed a new reality series, Gemma Collins: Diva on Lockdown, from her home in Brentwood.[32] In August 2019, Collins began hosting a podcast on BBC Sounds, titled The Gemma Collins Podcast.[33][34] In September 2019, Collins released her debut perfume, Diva Pink

Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry CBE RA (born 24 March 1960) is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster. He is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries[1] and cross-dressing, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British "prejudices, fashions and foibles".[2]

Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as "Claire", his female alter-ego, and "Alan Measles", his childhood teddy bear, often appear.

He has made a number of documentary television programmes[3] and has curated exhibitions.[2] He has published two autobiographies, Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (2007) and The Descent of Man (2016), written and illustrated a graphic novel, Cycle of Violence (2012), written a book about art, Playing to the Gallery (2014), and published his illustrated Sketchbooks (2016). Various books describing his work have been published. In 2013 he delivered the BBC Reith Lectures.[4]

Perry has had solo exhibitions at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Barbican Centre,[5] the British Museum[6] and the Serpentine Gallery[7] in London, the Arnolfini in Bristol, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh,[8] and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan.[8] His work is held in the permanent collections of the British Council and Arts Council,[8] Crafts Council,[9] Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam,[10] Tate[11] and Victoria and Albert Museum, London.[12]

He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003. He was interviewed about the win and resulting press in Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World.[13] In 2008 he was ranked number 32 in The Daily Telegraph's list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture".[14] In 2012, Perry was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life

Personal life

Early life and education

Born into a working-class family, Perry was four years old when his father, Tom, left home after discovering his mother, Jean, was having an affair with a milkman, whom she later married and who Perry has claimed was violent. Subsequently, he spent an unhappy childhood moving between his parents and created a fantasy world based around his teddy in order to cope with his sense of anxiety. He considers that a person’s early experiences are important in shaping their aesthetic and sexuality.[16]

Following the encouragement of his art teacher, Perry decided to study art.[17] He did an art foundation course at Braintree College of Further Education from 1978 to 1979. He spent a short period of his school life at King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford (KEGS), but mainly he studied for a BA in fine art at Portsmouth College of Art and Design, graduating in 1982.[18] He had an interest in film and exhibited his first piece of pottery at a New Contemporaries show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1980. In the months following his graduation he joined The Neo Naturists, a group started by Christine Binnie to revive the "true sixties spirit – which involves living one's life more or less naked and occasionally manifesting it into a performance for which the main theme is body paint".[19] They put on events at galleries and other venues.

When he left for Portsmouth in 1979, his stepfather told him not to return home. Perry has been estranged from his mother since 1990. After graduating he lived a hand-to-mouth existence in squats.

Modern day

As of 2010 he lives in north London with his wife, the author and psychotherapist Philippa Perry.[20] They have one daughter, Florence, born in 1992.[21][22]

In 2007 Perry curated an exhibition of art by prisoners and ex-offenders entitled Insider Art at the Institute of Contemporary Arts presented by the Koestler Trust, a charity which promotes art as rehabilitation in prisons, young offenders institutions and secure psychiatric units. He described the art works as "raw and all the more powerful for that".[23] In 2011 he returned to the annual Koestler Trust exhibition, this time held at London's Southbank Centre and judged the award winners in Art by Offenders with Will Self and Emma Bridgewater.[24]

In 2015 he was appointed to succeed Kwame Kwei-Armah as chancellor of University of the Arts London.[25][26]

Perry is a keen mountain biker[27] and motorcyclist.

Perry is a supporter of the Labour Party, and has designed works of art to raise funds for the party.[28][29] In September 2015, Perry endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. Perry said he would back Corbyn as he was "doing something interesting for the political debate." He added: "I think he's gold."[30] In October 2016, he said that Jeremy Corbyn had "no chance of winning an election".[31]

Cross-dressing

Perry describes his first sexual experience at the age of seven when he tied himself up in his pyjamas.[16][17] From an early age he liked to dress in women's clothes[17] and in his teens realised that he was a transvestite.[17] At the age of 15 he moved in with his father's family in Chelmsford, where he began to go out dressed as a woman. When he was discovered by his father he said he would stop but his stepmother told everyone about it and a few months later threw him out. He returned to his mother and stepfather at Great Bardfield.

Perry frequently appears in public dressed as a woman, and he has described his female alter-ego, "Claire", variously as "a 19th century reforming matriarch, a middle-England protester for No More Art, an aero-model-maker, or an Eastern European Freedom Fighter",[18][32] and "a fortysomething woman living in a Barratt home, the kind of woman who eats ready meals and can just about sew on a button".[33] In his work Perry includes pictures of himself in women's clothes: for example Mother of All Battles (1996) is a photograph of Claire holding a gun and wearing a dress, in ethnic eastern European style, embroidered with images of war, exhibited at his 2002 Guerrilla Tactics show. One critic has called Perry "The social critic from hell".[18][32]

Perry has designed many of Claire's outfits himself. Also, fashion students at Central Saint Martins art college in London take part in an annual competition to design new dresses for Claire. An exhibition, Making Himself Claire: Grayson Perry's Dresses, was held at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, from November 2017 to February 2018.[34][35]

Work

As well as ceramics, Perry has worked in printmaking, drawing, embroidery and other textile work, film and performance. He has written a graphic novel, Cycle of Violence.

Ceramics

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam mounted a solo exhibition of his work in 2002, Guerrilla Tactics. It was partly for this work that he was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003, the first time it was given to a ceramic artist.[36]

Perry's work refers to several ceramic traditions, including Greek pottery and folk art.[37] He has said, "I like the whole iconography of pottery. It hasn't got any big pretensions to being great public works of art, and no matter how brash a statement I make, on a pot it will always have certain humility ... [F]or me the shape has to be classical invisible: then you've got a base that people can understand".[38] His vessels are made by coiling, a traditional method. Most have a complex surface employing many techniques, including "glazing, incision, embossing, and the use of photographic transfers",[39] which requires several firings. To some he adds sprigs, little relief sculptures stuck to the surface.[18] The high degree of skill required by his ceramics and their complexity distances them from craft pottery.[39] It has been said that these methods are not used for decorative effect but to give meaning.[39] Perry challenges the idea, implicit in the craft tradition, that pottery is merely decorative or utilitarian and cannot express ideas.

In his work Perry reflects upon his upbringing as a boy, his stepfather's anger and the absence of proper guidance about male conduct.[17] Perry's understanding of the roles in his family is portrayed in Using My Family, from 1998, where a teddy bear provides affection, and the contemporaneous The Guardians, which depicts his mother and stepfather.[18][32]

Much of Perry's work contains sexually explicit content. Some of his sexual imagery has been described as "obscene sadomasochistic sex scenes".[39] He also has a reputation for depicting child abuse and yet there are no works depicting sexual child abuse although We've Found the Body of your Child, 2000 hints at emotional child abuse and child neglect. In other work he juxtaposes decorative clichés like flowers with weapons and war. Perry combines various techniques as a "guerrilla tactic", using the approachable medium of pottery to provoke thought.

Tapestries

Perry created the 15 m x 3 m The Walthamstow Tapestry in 2009. The large woven tapestry bears hundreds of brand names surrounding large figures in the stages of life from birth to death.[40][41]

Perry's 2012 TV documentary series All In The Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, about class "taste" variables, included him making large tapestries, called The Vanity of Small Differences.[8] Their format was inspired by William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress. Of the tapestries, Perry says,

The Vanity of Small Differences consists of six tapestries that tell the story of Tim Rakewell. Some of the characters, incidents and objects I have included I encountered whilst filming All in the Best Possible Taste. The tapestries tell a story of class mobility. I think nothing has such a strong influence on our aesthetic taste as the social class we grow up in.[42]

The sketches were translated using Adobe Photoshop to design the finished images and the tapestries were woven on a computer controlled loom.[42]

Perry produced a pair of large-scale tapestries for A House for Essex, called The Essex House Tapestries: The Life of Julie Cope in 2015.[43]

A House for Essex ("Julie's House") (2012–2015)

In 2015 the external work was completed on a holiday home in Wrabness, Essex,[44] created by Perry working with Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT). It overlooks the River Stour, after a commission from Living Architecture, the charity founded by the philosopher Alain de Botton, and is known as both A House for Essex, and "Julie's House." The house encapsulates the story of Julie May Cope, a fictional Essex woman,[45] "Born in a flood-struck Canvey Island in 1953 and mown down last year by a curry delivery driver in Colchester".[46] Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Ellis Woodman said, "Sporting a livery of green and white ceramic tiles, telephone-box red joinery and a gold roof, it is not easy to miss. ... Decoration is everywhere: from the external tiles embossed with motifs referencing Julie's rock-chick youth to extravagant tapestries recording her life's full narrative. Perry has contributed ceramic sculptures, modelled on Irish Sheelanagigs, which celebrate her as a kind of latter-day earth mother while the delivery driver's moped has even been repurposed as a chandelier suspended above the double-height living room."[46]

Perry made a variety of artwork used inside the house, depicting Julie Cope's life. He made a series of large-scale tapestries, The Essex House Tapestries: The Life of Julie Cope, which include "A Perfect Match" (2015) and "In Its Familiarity, Golden" (2015), and for the bedrooms, "Julie and Rob" (2013) and "Julie and Dave" (2015). He also wrote an essay, "The Ballad of Julie Cope" (2015) and created a series of black and white woodcuts, Six Snapshots of Julie (2015).[47] The work was shown in an exhibition, Grayson Perry: The Life of Julie Cope, at Firstsite in Colchester, Essex, from January to February 2018.[48]

Media

Television

In 2005, Perry presented a Channel 4 documentary, Why Men Wear Frocks, in which he examined transvestism and masculinity at the start of the 21st century. Perry talked about his own life as a transvestite and the effect it had on him and his family, frankly discussing its difficulties and pleasures. The documentary won a Royal Television Society award for best network production.[49]

He was the subject of a The South Bank Show episode in 2006[50] and the subject of an Imagine documentary broadcast in November 2011.[51]

His three-part series for Channel 4, All In The Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, was broadcast in June 2012. The series analysed the ideas of taste held by the different social classes of the UK. Perry explores both male and female culture in each social class and what they buy, in three parts: "Working Class Taste," "Middle Class Taste," and "Upper Class Taste." At the same time, he photographs, then illustrates his experiences and the people, transcribing them into large tapestries, entitled The Vanity of Small Differences.

In 2014, Perry presented a three-part documentary series for Channel 4, Who Are You?, on identity. In it he creates diverse portraits for the National Portrait Gallery, London, of ex-MP Chris Huhne, Rylan Clark-Neal from The X Factor, a Muslim convert and a young transgender man.[52][53]

In 2016, he presented a series exploring masculinity for Channel 4, Grayson Perry: All Man.[54]

In 2018, Perry explored Rites of Passage in a four-part documentary series on Channel 4.[55][56] The documentary series focused on death, marriage, birth, and coming of age as Perry compared the way people in the UK dealt with these themes compared to others around the world. Each episode culminated in Perry helping those in the UK to create ceremonies that were appropriate to their own situations.

His television and radio appearances also include BBC's Question Time, Hard Talk, Desert Island Discs, Have I Got News for You and QI.

Writing and lectures

Perry was an arts correspondent for The Times, writing a weekly column until October 2007.[57][58]

Perry gave the 2013 BBC Reith Lectures. In a series of talks titled Playing to the Gallery,[59] he considered the state of art in the 21st century. The individual lectures, titled "Democracy Has Bad Taste", "Beating the Bounds", "Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!" and "I Found Myself in the Art World", were broadcast in October and November 2013 on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. He expanded the lectures into a book, Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to Be Understood (2014).

He guest edited an issue of New Statesman in 2014, entitled "The Great White Male Issue".[60]

In 2017 Perry gave the inaugural Orwell Lecture in the North for The Orwell Foundation, entitled "I've read all the academic texts on empathy".[61][62]

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Guerrilla Tactics, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 2002; Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre, London, September–November 2002.[5][63]

The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, 2006[8]

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Kanazawa, Japan, 2007[8]

The Walthamstow Tapestry, Victoria Miro Gallery II, London, 2009. A 15 m x 3 m tapestry.[40][64]

The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, British Museum, London, October 2011 – February 2012.[6][65][66] Artefacts from the museum's collection selected by Perry and 25 new works by him.[67]

The Vanity of Small Differences, Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens, Sunderland, UK, June–September 2013;[1] Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, UK, October 2013 – January 2014; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, UK, Birmingham, February–May 2014; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK, May–July 2014; Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds, UK, August–October 2014; Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey, May–July 2015; Cer Modern, Ankara, Turkey, September–November 2015; Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, UK, January–April 2016; Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry, UK, April–July 2016; Croome, Worcester, UK, July–September 2016; The Beaney, Canterbury, UK, October–December 2016; Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives, Kyiv, Ukraine, February–March 2017; Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia, April–May 2017; National Gallery, Pristina, Kosovo, June–June 2017; Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, Bosnia, July–August 2017; Museum of Contemporary Art of Republic of Srpska, Banja Luka, Bosnia, September–October 2017; National Gallery, Tirana, Albania, November–December 2017. 6 large-scale tapestries, 8 prints and 3 films (All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry) "which explore the British fascination with taste and class."[8]

Provincial Punk, Turner Contemporary, Margate, May–September 2015. A survey exhibition, with ceramics, prints, tapestries and short films.[2][68][69]

Julie Cope's Grand Tour: The Story of a Life by Grayson Perry, a Crafts Council UK touring exhibition:[43] Banbury Museum, Banbury, March–May 2017;[70] New Brewery Arts, Cirencester, May–July 2017.[71] A pair of large-scale tapestries (The Essex House Tapestries: The Life of Julie Cope) made for A House for Essex, and audio recording of Perry's essay "The Ballad of Julie Cope" (2015).[43]

Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!, Serpentine Gallery, London, June–September 2017;[7][72] Arnolfini, Bristol, UK, September–December 2017.[73] Included "Leave" and "Remain" pots as well as work inspired by his All Man TV series.

Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years, The Holburne Museum, Bath, UK, 24 January–25 May 2020; This was the first exhibition to survey Perry’s earliest forays into the art world, reintroducing the creative works he made between 1982 and 1994. The show was also unusual for the fact that many of the 70 items on display had been crowd-sourced from across the UK, following an appeal to the public in 2018.[74]

Group exhibitions

New Contemporaries, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1980.[citation needed]

New Labour, Saatchi Gallery, 2001.[75]

6 tapestries in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2013.[76]

Progress, Foundling Museum, London, June–September 2014. Included Perry's The Vanity of Small Differences tapestry series shown with David Hockney's A Rake's Progress, Yinka Shonibare's Diary of a Victorian Dandy, work from Jessie Brennan and William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress.[77] To mark the 250th anniversary of Hogarth's death.

Publications

Publications by Perry

Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl. New York City: Vintage, 2007. An autobiography by Perry and Wendy Jones, constructed from taped interviews. ISBN 978-0099485162.

Cycle of Violence. Atlas, 2012. ISBN 978-1900565615. A graphic novel.

Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to Be Understood. Particular, 2014. London: Penguin, 2016; ISBN 978-0-141-97961-8. Based on his BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures. Text with some illustration.

The Descent of Man. London: Allen Lane, 2016. ISBN 978-0241236277. A discussion of modern masculinity with autobiographical elements.

Sketchbooks. London: Penguin, 2016. ISBN 978-1846149054. Illustrations of Perry's sketches.

Publication edited by Perry

Unpopular Culture: Grayson Perry Selects from the Arts Council Collection. London: Hayward, 2008. ISBN 9781853322679. Postwar British paintings, sculpture and photography selected from the Arts Council Collection.

Catalogues of Perry's work

Guerilla Tactics. Rotterdam: NAi Uitgevers; Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2002. ISBN 978-90-5662-250-3. Illustrations of Perry's work with essays by Marjan Boot, Louisa Buck, and Andrew Wilson, and a preface by Rudi Fuchs.

The Charms of Lincolnshire: 4 February–7 May 2006. Lincoln, UK: The Collection, 2006. ISBN 978-0953923854.

Grayson Perry. London: Thames & Hudson, 2010. ISBN 978-0-500-28911-2. Edited and with texts by Jacky Klein, and illustrations of about 150 of Perry's works with extensive quoted commentaries by him.

Updated and expanded edition. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013. Reprinted, 2016; ISBN 978-0-500-29080-4. With illustrations of 175 of Perry's works.

The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. British Museum, 2011. ISBN 978-0714118208. Published to accompany an exhibition at the British Museum. Illustrations of works by Perry as well as of objects selected by him from the Museum, and an introduction by Perry.

The Vanity of Small Differences. London: Hayward, 2013. ISBN 978-1853323157. Illustrations of six tapestries by Perry, each with commentary. With essays by Suzanne Moore and Perry.

Grayson Perry: My Pretty Little Art Career. Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2016. Published to accompany a retrospective exhibition.

The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!. London: Penguin, 2017. ISBN 978-1846149634. Published to accompany an exhibition. Illustrations of recent work by Perry, with commentary on each and an introduction by him.

Julie Cope's Grand Tour: The Story of a Life by Grayson Perry: a Crafts Council Touring Exhibition. London: Crafts Council, 2017. ISBN 978-1-903713-52-5. Illustrations of tapestries. With a foreword by Annie Warburton, an introduction by Annabelle Campbell, and essays by Joe Hill, Justine Boussard, and Angela McShane. Published to accompany an exhibition.[78]

Postcards

Playing to the Gallery Postcards: Thirty-six Postcards About Art. London: Particular Books, 2015. ISBN 978-1846148712.

Vanities Notecard Set of 6. Details from the tapestries "The Vanity of Small Differences: Expulsion from Number 8 Eden Close, 2012" and "The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal, 2012." London: Royal Academy of Arts.

Art Quality Gauge and Gift Shop Notecard Set of 6. London: Royal Academy of Arts.

The Vanity of Small Differences. London: British Council, 2015. ISBN 978-0863557606.

Television programmes and DVDs

Why Men Wear Frocks (2005) – produced by Twofour for Channel 4, directed by Neil Crombie. Also on DVD.

The South Bank Show (2006) – episode 678, season 31. Documentary exploring the life and works of Perry, directed by Robert Bee.

Grayson Perry and the Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman (2011) – 8 episodes broadcast on BBC One, directed by Neil Crombie and produced by Alan Yentob for Imagine. Follows Perry for more than two years as he prepares for an exhibition at the British Museum, selecting artefacts from the museum's collection and producing new work.[67] Also on DVD.

Spare Time – produced by Seneca Productions for More4, directed by Neil Crombie. About British peoples' hobbies.[3] Also on DVD.

All In The Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry (2012) – three-part series produced by Channel 4, directed by Neil Crombie. About British peoples' taste.[3] Perry is shown working on his series of tapestries The Vanity of Small Differences. Also on DVD.

Who Are You? (2014) – three-part documentary series for Channel 4, directed by Neil Crombie.

Grayson Perry's Dream House (2015) – for Channel 4, directed by Neil Crombie. On A House for Essex ("Julie's House").[79][80]

Born Risky: Grayson Perry (2016) – four-part series for Channel 4, directed by Keith McCarthy.

Grayson Perry: All Man (2016) – three-part series for Channel 4: 2 episodes directed by Neil Crombie, 1 episode directed by Crombie and Arthur Cary.

Grayson Perry: Divided Britain (2017) – for Channel 4, directed by Neil Crombie. Perry "calls on a public divided by Brexit to inspire his pots for Leave and Remain".[81][82][83][84][85]

Grayson Perry: Rites of Passage (2018) for Channel 4.

Films made by Perry

Bungalow Depression (1981) – 3 mins, Standard 8 mm film

The Green Witch and Merry Diana (1984) – 20 mins, Super 8 film

The Poor Girl (1985) – 47 mins, Super 8 film

Awards

2003: Turner Prize[36]

2005: Royal Television Society award for best network production for Why Men Wear Frocks (2005)[49]

2012: Visual Arts award, South Bank Sky Arts Awards, for The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman at the British Museum.[86]

2013: Appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to contemporary art.[87][88][89]

Collections

British Council Collection and the Arts Council Collection: The Vanity of Small Differences series of tapestries[8]

Crafts Council, London: Mad Kid's Bedroom Wall Pot (1996)[9] and two tapestries from The Essex House Tapestries: The Life of Julie Cope (2015) ("A Perfect Match" (2015) and "In Its Familiarity, Golden" (2015))[43][47]

Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, UK: Comfort Blanket tapestry[90]

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam[10]

Tate, London[11]

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Dennis Rodman

Dennis Rodman

Dennis Keith Rodman (born May 13, 1961)[3] is an American retired professional basketball player. Rodman played for the Detroit Pistons, San Antonio Spurs, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers, and Dallas Mavericks in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was nicknamed "the Worm" and is famous for his fierce defensive and rebounding abilities.

Rodman played at the small forward position in his early years before becoming a power forward. He earned NBA All-Defensive First Team honors seven times and won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award twice. He also led the NBA in rebounds per game for a record seven consecutive years and won five NBA championships. His biography at NBA.com states that he is "arguably the best rebounding forward in NBA history". On April 1, 2011, the Pistons retired Rodman's No. 10 jersey,[4] and he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later that year.[5]

Rodman experienced an unhappy childhood and was shy and introverted in his early years. After aborting a suicide attempt in 1993, he reinvented himself as a "bad boy" and became notorious for numerous controversial antics. He repeatedly dyed his hair in artificial colors, had many piercings and tattoos, and regularly disrupted games by clashing with opposing players and officials. He famously wore a wedding dress to promote his 1996 autobiography Bad As I Wanna Be. Rodman pursued a high-profile affair with singer Madonna and was briefly married to actress Carmen Electra. Rodman also attracted international attention for his visits to North Korea and his subsequent befriending of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in 2013.

In addition to being a retired professional basketball player, Rodman is a retired part-time professional wrestler and actor. He was a member of the nWo and fought alongside Hulk Hogan at two Bash at the Beach events. In professional wrestling, Rodman was the first ever winner of the Celebrity Championship Wrestling tournament. He had his own TV show, The Rodman World Tour, and had lead roles in the action films Double Team (1997) and Simon Sez (1999). Both films were critically panned, with the former earning Rodman a triple Razzie Award. He appeared in several reality TV series and was the winner of the $222,000 main prize of the 2004 edition of Celebrity Mole.

Early life and college career

Rodman was born in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of Shirley and Philander Rodman, Jr., an Air Force enlisted member, who later fought in the Vietnam War. When he was young, his father left his family, eventually settling in the Philippines.[6] Rodman has many brothers and sisters: according to his father, he has either 26 or 28 siblings on his father's side. However, Rodman himself has stated that he is the oldest of a total of 47 children.[6][7][8]

After his father left, Shirley took many odd jobs to support the family, up to four at the same time.[9] In his 1997 biography Bad As I Wanna Be, he expresses his feelings for his father: "I haven't seen my father in more than 30 years, so what's there to miss ... I just look at it like this: Some man brought me into this world. That doesn't mean I have a father".[6] He would not meet his father again until 2012.[10]

Rodman and his two sisters, Debra and Kim,[11] grew up in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas,[12] at the time one of the most impoverished areas of the city.[13] Rodman was so attached to his mother that he refused to move when she sent him to a nursery when he was four years old. According to Rodman, his mom was more interested in his two sisters, who were both considered more talented than he was in basketball, and made him a laughing stock whenever he tagged along with them. He felt generally "overwhelmed" by the all-female household.[14] Debra and Kim would go on to become All-Americans at Louisiana Tech and Stephen F. Austin, respectively. Debra won two national titles with the Lady Techsters.[11]

While attending South Oak Cliff High School, Rodman was a gym class student of future Texas A&M basketball coach Gary Blair.[15] Blair coached Rodman's sisters Debra and Kim, winning three state championships.[16] However, Rodman was not considered an athletic standout. According to Rodman, he was "unable to hit a layup" and was listed in the high school basketball teams, but was either benched or cut from the squads. Measuring only 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) as a freshman in high school,[9] he also failed to make the football teams and was "totally devastated".[14] After finishing school, Rodman worked as an overnight janitor at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. He then experienced a sudden growth spurt and decided to try basketball again[17] despite becoming even more withdrawn because he felt odd in his own body.[14]

A family friend tipped off the head coach of Cooke County College (now North Central Texas College) in Gainesville, Texas. In his single semester there, he averaged 17.6 points and 13.3 rebounds, before flunking out due to poor academic performance.[9] After his short stint in Gainesville, he transferred to Southeastern Oklahoma State University, an NAIA school. There, Rodman was a three-time NAIA All-American and led the NAIA in rebounding twice (1985, 1986). In three seasons there (1983–1986), he averaged 25.7 points and 15.7 rebounds,[18] led the NAIA in rebounding twice and registered a .637 field goal percentage.[17] At the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, a pre-draft camp for NBA hopefuls, he won Most Valuable Player honors and caught the attention of the Detroit Pistons.[9]

During college Rodman worked at a summer youth basketball camp, where he befriended camper Bryne Rich, who was shy and withdrawn due to a hunting accident in which he mistakenly shot and killed his best friend. The two became almost inseparable and formed a close bond. Rich invited Rodman to his rural Oklahoma home; at first, Rodman was not well-received by the Riches because he was black. But the Riches were so grateful to him for bringing their son out of his shell that they were able to set aside their prejudices.[19] Although Rodman had severe family and personal issues himself, he "adopted" the Riches as his own in 1982 and went from the city life to "driving a tractor and messing with cows".[19] Though Rodman credited the Riches as his "surrogate family" that helped him through college, as of 2013 he had stopped communicating with the Rich family for reasons unknown to them.[20]

Professional basketball career

Detroit Pistons

1986–1989

Rodman made himself eligible for the 1986 NBA draft. He was drafted by the Detroit Pistons as the third pick in the second round (27th overall), joining the rugged team of coach Chuck Daly that was called "Bad Boys" for their hard-nosed approach to basketball. The squad featured Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars at the guard positions, Adrian Dantley and Sidney Green at forward, and center Bill Laimbeer. Bench players who played more than 15 minutes per game were sixth man Vinnie Johnson and the backup forwards Rick Mahorn and John Salley.[21] Rodman fit well into this ensemble, providing 6.5 points, 4.7 rebounds and some tough defense in 15.0 minutes of playing time per game.[18]

Winning 52 games, the Pistons comfortably entered the 1987 playoffs. They swept the Washington Bullets and soundly beat the Atlanta Hawks in five games, but bowed out in seven matches against the archrival Boston Celtics in what was called one of the physically and mentally toughest series ever. Rodman feuded with Celtics guard Dennis Johnson and taunted Johnson in the closing seconds when he waved his right hand over his own head. When the Celtics took Game Seven, Johnson went back at Rodman in the last moments of the game and mimicked his taunting gesture.[22]

After the loss, Rodman made headlines by directly accusing Celtics star Larry Bird of being overrated because he was white: "Larry Bird is overrated in a lot of areas. ... Why does he get so much publicity? Because he's white. You never hear about a black player being the greatest". Although teammate Thomas supported him, he endured harsh criticism, but avoided being called a racist because, according to him, his own girlfriend Anicka "Annie" Bakes was white.[9][14]

In the following 1987–88 season, Rodman steadily improved his stats, averaging 11.6 points and 8.7 rebounds and starting in 32 of 82 regular season games.[18] The Pistons fought their way into the 1988 NBA Finals, and took a 3–2 lead, but lost in seven games against the Los Angeles Lakers. In Game Six, the Pistons were down by one point with eight seconds to go; Dumars missed a shot, and Rodman just fell short of an offensive rebound and a putback which could have won the title. In Game Seven, L.A. led by 15 points in the fourth quarter, but Rodman's defense helped cut down the lead to six with 3:52 minutes to go and to two with one minute to go. But then, he fouled Magic Johnson, who hit a free throw, missed an ill-advised shot with 39 seconds to go, and the Pistons never recovered.[23] In that year, he and his girlfriend Annie had a daughter they named Alexis.[9]

Rodman remained a bench player during the 1988–89 season, averaging 9.0 points and 9.4 rebounds in 27 minutes, yet providing such effective defense that he was voted into the All-Defensive Team, the first of eight times in his career.[18] He also began seeing more playing time after Adrian Dantley was traded at midseason to Dallas for Mark Aguirre. In that season, the Pistons finally vanquished their playoffs bane by sweeping the Boston Celtics, then winning in six games versus the Chicago Bulls—including scoring champion Michael Jordan—and easily defeating the Lakers 4–0 in the 1989 NBA Finals. Although he was hampered by back spasms, Rodman dominated the boards, grabbing 19 rebounds in Game 3 and providing tough interior defense.[24]

1989–1993

In the 1989–90 season, Detroit lost perennial defensive forward Rick Mahorn when he was taken by the Minnesota Timberwolves in that year's expansion draft and ended up on the Philadelphia 76ers when the Pistons could not reacquire him. It was feared that the loss of Mahorn – average in talent, but high on hustle and widely considered a vital cog of the "Bad Boys" teams – would diminish the Pistons' spirit, but Rodman seamlessly took over his role.[25] He went on to win his first big individual accolade. Averaging 8.8 points and 9.7 rebounds while starting in the last 43 regular season games, he established himself as the best defensive player in the game; during this period, the Pistons won 59 games, and Rodman was lauded by the NBA "for his defense and rebounding skills, which were unparalleled in the league".[17] For his feats, he won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award; he also connected on a .595 field goal percentage, best in the league.[18] In the 1990 playoffs, the Pistons beat the Bulls again, and in the 1990 NBA Finals, Detroit met the Portland Trail Blazers. Rodman suffered from an injured ankle and was often replaced by Mark Aguirre, but even without his defensive hustle, Detroit beat Portland in five games and claimed their second title.[25]

During the 1990–91 season, Rodman finally established himself as the starting small forward of the Pistons. He played such strong defense that the NBA stated he "could shut down any opposing player, from point guard to center".[17] After coming off the bench for most of his earlier years, he finally started in 77 of the 82 regular season games, averaged 8.2 points and 12.5 rebounds and won his second Defensive Player of the Year Award.[18] In the 1991 playoffs, however, the Pistons were swept by the championship-winning Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals.

It was in the 1991–92 season where Rodman made a remarkable leap in his rebounding, collecting an astounding 18.7 rebounds per game (1,530 in total), winning his first of seven consecutive rebounding crowns, along with scoring 9.8 points per game, and making his first All-NBA Team.[18] His 1,530 rebounds (the most since Wilt Chamberlain's 1,572 in the 1971–1972 season) have never been surpassed since then; the best mark not set by Rodman is by Kevin Willis, who grabbed 1,258 boards that same season.[26] Willis lamented that Rodman had an advantage in winning the rebounding title with his lack of offensive responsibilities.[27] In a March 1992 game, Rodman totaled a career high 34 rebounds.[28] However, the aging Pistons were eliminated by the up-and-coming New York Knicks in the first round of the 1992 playoffs.

Rodman experienced a tough loss when coach Chuck Daly, whom he had admired as a surrogate father, resigned in May; Rodman skipped the preseason camp and was fined $68,000.[9] The following 1992–93 season was even more tumultuous. Rodman and Annie Bakes, the mother of his daughter Alexis, were divorcing[29] after a short marriage, an experience which left him traumatized.[30] The Pistons won only 40 games and missed the 1993 playoffs entirely. One night in February 1993, Rodman was found asleep in his car with a loaded rifle. Four years later in his biography As Bad As I Wanna Be, he confessed having thought about suicide and described that night as an epiphany: "I decided that instead [of killing myself] I was gonna kill the impostor that was leading Dennis Rodman to a place he didn't want to go ... So I just said, 'I'm going to live my life the way I want to live it and be happy doing it.' At that moment I tamed [sic] my whole life around. I killed the person I didn't want to be."[13] The book was later adapted for a TV movie Bad As I Wanna Be: The Dennis Rodman Story. Although he had three years and $11.8 million remaining on his contract, Rodman demanded a trade. On October 1, 1993, the Pistons dealt him to the San Antonio Spurs.[9]

San Antonio Spurs

In the 1993–94 season, Rodman joined a Spurs team which was built around perennial All-Star center David Robinson, with a supporting cast of forwards Dale Ellis, Willie Anderson and guard Vinny Del Negro.[31] On the hardwood, Rodman now was played as a power forward and won his third straight rebounding title, averaging 17.3 boards per game, along with another All-Defensive Team call-up.[18] Living up to his promise of killing the "shy imposter" and "being himself" instead, Rodman began to show first signs of unconventional behavior: before the first game, he shaved his hair and dyed it blonde, which was followed up by stints with red, purple, blue hair and a look inspired from the film Demolition Man.[17] During the season, he headbutted Stacey King and John Stockton, refused to leave the hardwood once after being ejected, and had a highly publicized two-month affair with Madonna.[9][32] The only player to whom Rodman related was reserve center Jack Haley, who earned his trust by not being shocked after a visit to a gay bar.[33] However, despite a 55-win season, Rodman and the Spurs did not survive the first round of the 1994 playoffs and bowed out against the Utah Jazz in four games.

In the following 1994–95 season, Rodman clashed with the Spurs front office. He was suspended for the first three games, took a leave of absence on November 11, and was suspended again on December 7. He finally returned on December 10 after missing 19 games.[17] After joining the team, he suffered a shoulder separation in a motorcycle accident, limiting his season to 49 games. Normally, he would not have qualified for any season records for missing so many games, but by grabbing 823 rebounds, he just surpassed the 800-rebound limit for listing players and won his fourth straight rebounding title by averaging 16.8 boards per game and made the All-NBA Team.[17] In the 1995 playoffs, the 62-win Spurs with reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Award winner Robinson entered the Western Conference Finals and were considered favorites against the reigning champions Houston Rockets who had only won 47 games. It was thought that Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon would have a hard time asserting himself versus Robinson and Rodman, who had both been voted into the NBA All-Defensive Teams. However, neither Robinson nor Rodman, who had disrupted a playoff game against the Lakers by sitting down on the court,[17] could stop Olajuwon, who averaged 35.3 points against the elite defensive Spurs frontcourt, and helped eliminate the Spurs in six games.

Rodman admitted his frequent transgressions, but asserted that he lived his own life and thus a more honest life than most other people:

I just took the chance to be my own man ... I just said: "If you don't like it, kiss my ass." ... Most people around the country, or around the world, are basically working people who want to be free, who want to be themselves. They look at me and see someone trying to do that ... I'm the guy who's showing people, hey, it's all right to be different. And I think they feel: "Let's go and see this guy entertain us."[13]

Chicago Bulls

Prior to the 1995–96 season, Rodman was traded to the Chicago Bulls of perennial scoring champion Michael Jordan for center Will Perdue to fill a large void at power forward left by Horace Grant, who left the Bulls prior to the 1994–95 season.[34][35] Given Rodman could not use the 10 jersey as the Bulls had retired it for Bob Love, and the NBA denied him the reversion 01, Rodman instead picked the number 91, whose digits add up to 10.[36] Although the trade for the already 34-year-old and volatile Rodman was considered a gamble at that time,[17] the power forward quickly adapted to his new environment, helped by the fact that his best friend Jack Haley was also traded to the Bulls. Under coach Phil Jackson, he averaged 5.5 points and 14.9 rebounds per game, winning yet another rebounding title, and was part of the great Bulls team that won 72 of 82 regular season games, an NBA record at the time.[37] About playing next to the iconic Jordan and co-star Scottie Pippen, Rodman said:

On the court, me and Michael are pretty calm and we can handle conversation. But as far as our lives go, I think he is moving in one direction and I'm going in the other. I mean, he's goin' north, I'm goin' south. And then you've got Scottie Pippen right in the middle. He's sort of the equator.[13]

Although struggling with calf problems early in the season, Rodman grabbed 20 or more rebounds 11 times and had his first triple-double against the Philadelphia 76ers on January 16, 1996 scoring 10 points and adding 21 rebounds and 10 assists; by playing his trademark tough defense, he joined Jordan and Pippen in the All-NBA Defense First Team. Ever controversial, Rodman made negative headlines after a head butt of referee Ted Bernhardt during a game in New Jersey on March 16, 1996; he was suspended for six games and fined $20,000, a punishment that was criticized as too lenient by the local press.[38]

In the 1996 playoffs, Rodman scored 7.5 points and grabbed 13.7 rebounds per game and had a large part in the six-game victory against the Seattle SuperSonics in the 1996 NBA Finals: in Game Two at home in the Bulls' United Center, he grabbed 20 rebounds, among them a record-tying 11 offensive boards, and in Game Six, again at the United Center, the power forward secured 19 rebounds and again 11 offensive boards, scored five points in a decisive 12–2 Bulls run, unnerved opposing power forward Shawn Kemp and caused Seattle coach George Karl to say: "As you evaluate the series, Dennis Rodman won two basketball games. We controlled Dennis Rodman for four games. But Game 2 and tonight, he was the reason they were successful."[39] His two games with 11 offensive rebounds each tied the NBA Finals record of Elvin Hayes.[17]

In the 1996–97 season, Rodman won his sixth rebounding title in a row with 16.7 boards per game, along with 5.7 points per game, but failed to rank another All-Defensive Team call-up.[18] However, he made more headlines for his notorious behavior. On January 15, 1997, he was involved in an incident during a game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. After tripping over cameraman Eugene Amos, Rodman kicked Amos in the groin. Though he was not assessed a technical foul at the time, he ultimately paid Amos a $200,000 settlement, and the league suspended Rodman for 11 games without pay. Thus, he effectively lost $1 million.[40] Missing another three games to suspensions, often getting technical fouls early in games[17] and missing an additional 13 matches due to knee problems, Rodman was not as effective in the 1997 playoffs, in which the Bulls reached the 1997 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz. He struggled to slow down Jazz power forward Karl Malone, but did his share to complete the six-game Bulls victory.[41]

The regular season of the 1997–98 season ended with Rodman winning his seventh consecutive rebounding title with 15.0 boards per game, along with 4.7 points per game.[18] He grabbed 20 or more rebounds 11 times, among them a 29-board outburst against the Atlanta Hawks and 15 offensive boards (along with ten defensive) versus the Los Angeles Clippers.[17] Led by the aging Jordan and Rodman (respectively 35 and 37 years old), the Bulls reached the 1998 NBA Finals, again versus the Jazz. After playing strong defense on Malone in the first three games,[42] he caused major consternation when he left his team prior to Game Four to go wrestling with Hulk Hogan. He was fined $20,000, but it was not even ten percent of what he earned with this stint.[32] However, Rodman's on-court performance remained top-notch, again shutting down Malone in Game Four until the latter scored 39 points in a Jazz Game Five win, bringing the series to 3–2 from the Bulls perspective. In Game Six, Jordan hit the decisive basket after a memorable drive on Jazz forward Bryon Russell, the Bulls won their third title in a row and Rodman his fifth ring.[42]

Rodman garnered as much publicity for his public antics. He dated Madonna and claimed she tried to conceive a child with him.[32] Shortly after, Rodman famously wore a wedding dress to promote his autobiography Bad As I Wanna Be, claiming that he was bisexual and that he was marrying himself.[32]

Twilight years

After the 1997–98 season, the Bulls started a massive rebuilding phase, largely at the behest of then-general manager Jerry Krause. Head coach Phil Jackson and several members of the team left via free agency or retirement, including Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Steve Kerr, and Jud Buechler.[43] Rodman was released by the Bulls on January 21, 1999, before the start of the lockout-shortened 1998–99 season. With his sister acting as his agent at the time, Rodman joined the Los Angeles Lakers, for a pro-rated salary for the remainder of the 1998–1999 season. With the Lakers he only played in 23 games and was released.[18]

In the 1999–2000 season, the then-38-year-old power forward was signed by the Dallas Mavericks, meaning that Rodman returned to the place where he grew up. Dallas had won 10 of 13 before his arrival, but went just 4–9 until he was waived by the Mavericks. He played 12 games, received six technical fouls, was ejected twice, and served a one-game suspension. He alienated the franchise with his erratic behavior until he was waived again.[44][45] Rodman averaged 14.3 rebounds per game, above his career average of 13.1, but he was otherwise uninterested and did not provide leadership to a team trying to qualify for their first playoffs in 10 years.[45][46] Dallas guard Steve Nash commented that Rodman "never wanted to be [a Maverick]" and therefore was unmotivated.[44]

Post-NBA career

After his NBA career, Rodman took a long break from basketball and concentrated on his film career and on wrestling.

After a longer hiatus, Rodman returned to play basketball for the Long Beach Jam of the newly formed American Basketball Association during the 2003–04 season, with hopes of being called up to the NBA midseason.[47] While he did not get that wish that season, he did help the Jam win the ABA championship in their inaugural season. He also played in Mexico, with Fuerza Regia in 2004.[48] In the following 2004–05 season, he signed with the ABA's Orange County Crush[49] and the following season with the league's Tijuana Dragons.[50] In November 2005, he played one match for Torpan Pojat of the Finland's basketball league, Korisliiga.[32][2]

The return to the NBA never materialized, but on January 26, 2006, it was announced that Rodman had signed a one-game "experiment" deal for the UK basketball team Brighton Bears of the British Basketball League to play Guildford Heat on January 28[51] and went on to play three games for the Bears.[50] In spring 2006, he played two exhibition games in the Philippines along with NBA ex-stars Darryl Dawkins, Kevin Willis, Calvin Murphy, Otis Birdsong and Alex English. On April 27, they defeated a team of former Philippine Basketball Association stars in Mandaue City, Cebu and Rodman scored five points and grabbed 18 rebounds.[52] On May 1, 2006, Rodman's team played their second game and lost to the Philippine national basketball team 110–102 at the Araneta Coliseum, where he scored three points and recorded 16 rebounds.[53]

On April 4, 2011, it was announced that Rodman would be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.[

Race Across the World

Race Across the World

Race Across the World is a British television competition programme, in which teams of two race across an area of the world to be the fastest to reach their destination using any method of transport other than a plane.[2] The programme is broadcast on BBC Two and narrated by John Hannah.[3]

The first series, consisting of six episodes, was aired from 3 March to 7 April 2019. On 9 July 2019, BBC confirmed that a second and third series has been commissioned for BBC Two.[4] It was also announced on 3 October 2019 that a celebrity spin-off series would be aired on BBC One,[5] but the production has been delayed due to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic.[6] The second series consists of nine episodes, with the opening episode broadcast on 8 March 2020

Format

The programme follows pairs of competitors racing around the world to be the first to reach the final destination. In the first series, the race started from London and finished in Singapore. The competitors cannot fly but were each given a money belt containing an amount of money equivalent to a one-way plane ticket to their final destination, which they can use to travel by land or by sea. The money pays for all the cost of the travel including food and accommodation, but they may work to earn money along the way. The competitors may not have any mobile electronic devices or credit cards at the start of the race, but were given a world map, a GPS device to track their progress and for safety as well as finding the checkpoints, and a travel guide with local job adverts, in addition to the money. In every episode, the teams were given a checkpoint they had to reach. One team may be eliminated if they come last at a pre-determined checkpoint. At each checkpoint, the racers were given a 36-hour break. The first team to reach the final destination win a cash prize of £20,000.[3]

Production

Before the race, two assistant producers conducted a recce research trip to assess the feasibility of such a journey within the budget constraints. All likely bus and train journeys were assessed beforehand. Visas were applied for the countries along all possible routes before the race as well as any necessary vaccinations for these countries.[3]

During the race, each team had two film crew members who travelled along with them. All decisions, however, were made by the racers and the crew cannot interfere with their choices. A director of photography travelled behind the teams for additional location filming. To ensure the safety of the racers, there may be local fixers and security advisers who observed the racers from a distance, and medical support vehicle also travelled an hour behind the team in some countries.[8][9]

The programme was commissioned by David Brindley and Michael Jochnowitz for BBC 2.[3]

The first series of Race Across the World first aired on BBC Two from 3 March to 7 April 2019.[2] Five pairs of racers travelled from the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London and finishing at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore. The itinerary of the race covered countries in Europe and Asia with checkpoints in Greece, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, China and Cambodia. In the first series, the contestants were each given £1,329 for the whole race, a journey of 12,000 miles which was completed in 50 days.[8] One pair withdrew in the first episode for family reasons to be replaced by Elaine and Tony, and one pair was eliminated in the second episode. The winners were Elaine and Tony.[10]

The series was the most successful debut for a factual entertainment show on BBC Two in over three years, and one of the most-watched shows of the year for the channel.[11]

Series 2 (2020)

A second series began airing on 8 March 2020 with five teams setting off from Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City in a race to the most southerly city in the world, Ushuaia in Argentina, covering a distance of 25,000 km in 2 months, passing through 7 checkpoints in Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile.[1] Each racer was given £1,453 for the whole trip, roughly £26 per day. Filming started in September 2019.

In this series, the no-fly rule was broken due to civil unrest in Ecuador which made land travel through the country unsafe - all the teams were flown from Colombia to Peru to continue the race. No one was eliminated this series after a team decided to quit the race having lost half their money. The winners were Emon and Jamiul.[12]

The number of episodes increased to nine this series, eight episodes on the race with one final reunion episode.