Penelope Rosemary Dwyer (24 September 1953 - 4 September 2003) was a British comedy writer and performer, noted for being a member of the Cambridge Footlights revue The Cellar Tapes which won the inaugural Perrier Comedy Awards in 1981. The other performers in The Cellar Tapes were Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry

Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...

, Hugh Laurie

Hugh Laurie

James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE , better known as Hugh Laurie , is an English actor, voice artist, comedian, writer, musician, recording artist, and director...

, Emma Thompson

Emma Thompson

Emma Thompson is a British actress, comedian and screenwriter. Her first major film role was in the 1989 romantic comedy The Tall Guy. In 1992, Thompson won multiple acting awards, including an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, for her performance in the British drama Howards End...

, Tony Slattery

Tony Slattery

Anthony Declan James "Tony" Slattery is an English actor and comedian who has appeared on British television regularly since the mid 1980s, most notably as a regular on the Channel 4 improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway? As a film actor, both comedic and serious, his credits include The...

 and Paul Shearer

Paul Shearer

Paul Shearer is a British actor who is best known as a member of the Fast Show team. His best-known roles on that programme are as a newscaster and a variety show host on the European television parody sketch 'Chanel 9'....

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Dwyer worked as a writer and performer in Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, but unlike her fellow Perrier winners chose not to pursue a full-time career in the entertainment business, instead becoming a metallurgist. She had a major role in the construction of the Channel Tunnel

Channel Tunnel

The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...

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Dwyer died in Somerset in 2003 aged 49, following a long illness.

External links

• "First Perrier winner dies - Footlights star who spurned fame", chortle.co.uk, 7 September 2003