Simon Brett
Encyclopedia
Simon Brett is a prolific writer of whodunnits. The son of a chartered surveyor, he was educated at Dulwich College
and Wadham College, Oxford
, where he got a first-class honours degree in English. He then joined the BBC as a trainee and worked for BBC Radio
and London Weekend Television
before devoting most of his time to writing from the late 1970s. He is married with three children and lives in Arundel
, West Sussex, England. He is the current president of the Detection Club
.
, Brett produced the first episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
, as well as many episodes of cult comedy series The Burkiss Way
, comedy series I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
and comedy panel game Just a Minute
. In the mid-1990s, Brett wrote and hosted Foul Play, a radio panel game in which well-known writers of detective fiction were challenged to solve a dramatised mystery. Moving into television, Brett was responsible for producing End of Part One
and the television revival of The Glums for LWT.
More recently, he has become an sitcom writer, most notably with BBC Radio 4
's After Henry and No Commitments
and Smelling of Roses
. After Henry was later produced on television
for ITV
. He has written episodes of the BBC radio detective drama Baldi
(2000)
" tradition of detective fiction, entertaining the reader through humour, eccentric characters and intricate plot twists. He has also written several mystery plays and some non-series novels, of which A Shock to the System
(1984) is probably best known due to the filmed version starring Michael Caine
as the business executive who takes revenge after being passed over for promotion.
Cast, In Order of Disappearance and So Much Blood were both adapted as serials for Radio 2 with Francis Matthews
in the lead role in the 1980s.
More recently, Bill Nighy
has played Charles Paris in a series of BBC Radio productions. The first, an adaptation of So Much Blood for the Saturday Play in 1999, was recorded on location at its Edinburgh Fringe setting. A Series of Murders followed as another Saturday Play in 2004, leading into a number of half-hour serials which began with Sicken and So Die (2006) and continued with Murder Unprompted (2007) and The Dead Side of the Mike (2008), with So Much Blood apparently happening between the last two serials. These serials have all been updated, and adapted to deal with continuity problems caused by the adaptations being made out of order compared with the books, with later adaptations featuring more far-ranging changes to the actual mystery.
The latest serial, Cast In Order of Disappearance, again starring Nighy as Paris, began airing on Friday 29 January 2010 on BBC Radio 4
. On 26 February its slot wil be taken for three weeks by an original series from Brett, while a three-hour I Did It My Way programme showcasing Brett's work will be rebroadcast by BBC Radio 7 on Saturday 20 February, including a repeat of A Series of Murders.
). It is the place of residence of amateur sleuths Carole Seddon, a retired civil servant and her neighbour, Jude Nichols, whose origins are obscure. Twelve Fethering mysteries have been published so far:
Dulwich College
Dulwich College is an independent school for boys in Dulwich, southeast London, England. The college was founded in 1619 by Edward Alleyn, a successful Elizabethan actor, with the original purpose of educating 12 poor scholars as the foundation of "God's Gift". It currently has about 1,600 boys,...
and Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College, Oxford
Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, located at the southern end of Parks Road in central Oxford. It was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, wealthy Somerset landowners, during the reign of King James I...
, where he got a first-class honours degree in English. He then joined the BBC as a trainee and worked for BBC Radio
BBC Radio
BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...
and London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
before devoting most of his time to writing from the late 1970s. He is married with three children and lives in Arundel
Arundel
Arundel is a market town and civil parish in the South Downs of West Sussex in the south of England. It lies south southwest of London, west of Brighton, and east of the county town of Chichester. Other nearby towns include Worthing east southeast, Littlehampton to the south and Bognor Regis to...
, West Sussex, England. He is the current president of the Detection Club
Detection Club
The Detection Club was formed in 1930 by a group of British mystery writers, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Freeman Wills Crofts, Arthur Morrison, John Rhode, Jessie Rickard, Baroness Emma Orczy, R. Austin Freeman, G.D.H. Cole, Margaret Cole, E.C. Bentley, and H.C. Bailey. Anthony...
.
Radio and television career
While with the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, Brett produced the first episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
, as well as many episodes of cult comedy series The Burkiss Way
The Burkiss Way
The Burkiss Way was a BBC Radio 4 sketch comedy series broadcast from August 1976 to November 1980. It was written by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, with additional material in early episodes by John Mason, Colin Bostock-Smith, Douglas Adams, John Lloyd and others. The show starred Denise...
, comedy series I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, sometimes abbreviated to ISIHAC or Clue, is a BBC radio comedy panel game broadcast since 11 April 1972 at the rate of one or two series each year , transmitted on BBC Radio 4, with occasional repeats on BBC Radio 4 Extra and the BBC's World Service...
and comedy panel game Just a Minute
Just a Minute
Just a Minute is a BBC Radio 4 radio comedy panel game chaired by Nicholas Parsons. Its first transmission on Radio 4 was on 22 December 1967, three months after the station's launch. The Radio 4 programme won a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award in 2003....
. In the mid-1990s, Brett wrote and hosted Foul Play, a radio panel game in which well-known writers of detective fiction were challenged to solve a dramatised mystery. Moving into television, Brett was responsible for producing End of Part One
End of Part One
End of Part One was a British television comedy sketch show written by David Renwick and Andrew Marshall and produced by Simon Brett, it was made by London Weekend Television. It ran for two series on ITV, from 1979 to 1980 and was an attempt at a TV version of The Burkiss Way...
and the television revival of The Glums for LWT.
More recently, he has become an sitcom writer, most notably with BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
's After Henry and No Commitments
No Commitments
No Commitments is a comedy radio drama written by Simon Brett,broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It portrays the day-to-daylives of three very different sisters.-Main characters:...
and Smelling of Roses
Smelling of Roses
Smelling of Roses was a BBC Radio 4 comedy series starring Prunella Scales and written by Simon Brett. There were four series, each of six episodes, broadcast from 2000 to 2003. Scales stars as Rosie Burns, manager of her own event management business in Brighton, "In Any Event"...
. After Henry was later produced on television
After Henry (TV series)
After Henry is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 1988 to 1992. Starring Prunella Scales and Joan Sanderson, it had started on BBC Radio 4 in 1985, finishing in 1989. It was written by Simon Brett...
for ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
. He has written episodes of the BBC radio detective drama Baldi
Baldi (radio)
Baldi is a BBC Radio 4 murder mystery series whose central character is Paolo Baldi , a Franciscan priest on sabbatical, lecturing on semiotics at a university in contemporary Dublin. After helping the police as a translator for an Italian witness, he turns sleuth...
(2000)
Mystery writing career
Brett has written three series of detective novels. Most of these novels are in the "Golden AgeGolden Age of Detective Fiction
The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels produced by various authors, all following similar patterns and style.-Origins:Mademoiselle de Scudéri, by E.T.A...
" tradition of detective fiction, entertaining the reader through humour, eccentric characters and intricate plot twists. He has also written several mystery plays and some non-series novels, of which A Shock to the System
A Shock to the System
A Shock to the System is a U.S. comedy crime thriller film directed by Jan Egleson, starring Michael Caine, Swoosie Kurtz, Elizabeth McGovern, and Peter Riegert...
(1984) is probably best known due to the filmed version starring Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
as the business executive who takes revenge after being passed over for promotion.
Charles Paris
Charles Paris is an unhappily separated (but not divorced more than 30 years on), moderately successful actor with a slight drinking problem who gets entangled in all sorts of crimes, and finds himself in the role of unwilling amateur detective. There are 17 novels featuring this character:- Cast, In Order of Disappearance (1975)
- So Much Blood (1976)
- Star Trap (1977)
- An Amateur Corpse (1978)
- A Comedian Dies (1979)
- The Dead Side of the Mike (1980)
- Situation Tragedy (1981)
- Murder Unprompted (1982)
- Murder in the Title (1983)
- Not Dead, Only Resting (1984)
- Dead Giveaway (1985)
- What Bloody Man Is That? (1987)
- A Series of Murders (1989)
- Corporate Bodies (1991)
- A Reconstructed Corpse (1993)
- Sicken and So Die (1995)
- Dead Room Farce (1998)
Cast, In Order of Disappearance and So Much Blood were both adapted as serials for Radio 2 with Francis Matthews
Francis Matthews (actor)
-Early life:Matthews attended St Michael's Jesuit College, Leeds and started his acting career with Leeds repertory theatre before service in the Royal Navy.-Career:...
in the lead role in the 1980s.
More recently, Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy
William Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
has played Charles Paris in a series of BBC Radio productions. The first, an adaptation of So Much Blood for the Saturday Play in 1999, was recorded on location at its Edinburgh Fringe setting. A Series of Murders followed as another Saturday Play in 2004, leading into a number of half-hour serials which began with Sicken and So Die (2006) and continued with Murder Unprompted (2007) and The Dead Side of the Mike (2008), with So Much Blood apparently happening between the last two serials. These serials have all been updated, and adapted to deal with continuity problems caused by the adaptations being made out of order compared with the books, with later adaptations featuring more far-ranging changes to the actual mystery.
The latest serial, Cast In Order of Disappearance, again starring Nighy as Paris, began airing on Friday 29 January 2010 on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
. On 26 February its slot wil be taken for three weeks by an original series from Brett, while a three-hour I Did It My Way programme showcasing Brett's work will be rebroadcast by BBC Radio 7 on Saturday 20 February, including a repeat of A Series of Murders.
Mrs Pargeter
Mrs Pargeter is a widow with a shadowy past who, with a little help from her dead husband's friends, is able to solve uncanny mysteries. The Mrs Pargeter novels include:- A Nice Class of Corpse (1986)
- Mrs, Presumed Dead (1988)
- Mrs Pargeter's Package (1990)
- Mrs Pargeter's Pound of Flesh (1992)
- Mrs Pargeter's Plot (1996)
- Mrs Pargeter's Point of Honour (1999)
Fethering
Fethering is a fictitious village on England's south coast (adjacent to TarringTarring, West Sussex
West Tarring is a neighbourhood of the Borough of Worthing in West Sussex, England. It lies on the A2031 road northwest of the town centre. It is officially called West Tarring or, less commonly, Tarring Peverell, to differentiate it from Tarring Neville near Lewes, but is usually called just...
). It is the place of residence of amateur sleuths Carole Seddon, a retired civil servant and her neighbour, Jude Nichols, whose origins are obscure. Twelve Fethering mysteries have been published so far:
- The Body on the Beach (2000)
- Death on the Downs (2001)
- The Torso in the Town (2002)
- Murder in the Museum (2003)
- The Hanging in the Hotel (2004)
- The Witness at the Wedding (2005)
- The Stabbing in the Stables (2006)
- Death Under the Dryer (2007)
- Blood at the Bookies (2008)
- Poisoning at the Pub (2009)
- The Shooting in the Shop (2010)
- Bones Under the Beach Hut (2011)
- Guns in the Gallery (2012)
Plays
- Murder in Play (1994)
- Mr Quigley's Revenge (1995)
- Silhouette (1998)
- The Tale of Little Red Riding Hood (1998)
- Sleeping Beauty (1999)
- Putting the Kettle on (2002)
- A Bad Dream (2005)
- Quirks (2009)