Steve Delaney
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
comedian and character actor, best known for the fictional comedy character Count Arthur Strong, whom Delaney created and whom he plays, most notably in Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!
Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!
Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show! is a sitcom broadcast on BBC Radio 4, written by and starring Steve Delaney in the title role of Count Arthur Strong, a former variety star who has malapropisms, memory loss and other similar problems. Each episode follows the Count in his daily business and...
. Count Arthur is an elderly, pompous, mostly out-of-work deluded
Delusion
A delusion is a false belief held with absolute conviction despite superior evidence. Unlike hallucinations, delusions are always pathological...
thespian
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
from Doncaster
Doncaster
Doncaster is a town in South Yorkshire, England, and the principal settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster. The town is about from Sheffield and is popularly referred to as "Donny"...
, Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
who appears to suffer from attention deficit disorder and memory loss. He is apt to use malapropism
Malapropism
A malapropism is an act of misusing or the habitual misuse of similar sounding words, especially with humorous results. An example is Yogi Berra's statement: "Texas has a lot of electrical votes," rather than "electoral votes".-Etymology:...
s in his attempts to sound educated.
Career
Delaney created the Count in the 1980s, when he was a drama student at Central School of Speech and DramaCentral School of Speech and Drama
The Central School of Speech and Drama was founded in London in 1906 by Elsie Fogerty to offer a new form of training in speech and drama for young actors and other students...
in London and performed him at the end-of-term show, having drawn inspiration from characters he met during his childhood. However he put him to one side for several years during which he worked as an actor, appearing on television in dramas such as Juliet Bravo
Juliet Bravo
Juliet Bravo is a British television series, which ran on BBC1 between 1980 and 1985. The theme of the series concerned a female police inspector who took over control of a police station in the fictional town of Hartley in Lancashire.-Programme name:...
, The Flying Lady, Casualty
Casualty (TV series)
Casualty, stylised as Casual+y, is a British weekly television show broadcast on BBC One, and the longest-running emergency medical drama television series in the world. Created by Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin, it was first broadcast on 6 September 1986, and transmitted in the UK on BBC One. The...
, The Bill
The Bill
The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...
, All Creatures Great and Small
All Creatures Great and Small (TV serial)
All Creatures Great and Small is a popular British television series, based on the books of the British veterinary surgeon Alf Wight, who wrote under the pseudonym James Herriot.-Background:...
and Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989. It stars David Suchet as Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by LWT and is now made by ITV Studios...
.
In 1997 Delaney, at the suggestion of a former tutor from CSSD, L B Watson (now a successful TV writer), resurrected Strong for his stand-up comedy routine in clubs. The character was performed at the Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh Festival
The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
for several years and 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...
launched a series for him in 2005 entitled Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!
Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!
Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show! is a sitcom broadcast on BBC Radio 4, written by and starring Steve Delaney in the title role of Count Arthur Strong, a former variety star who has malapropisms, memory loss and other similar problems. Each episode follows the Count in his daily business and...
. A second radio series was recorded between September 2006 and January 2007 at the Komedia theatre, Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, and started to broadcast on Radio 4 at the end of February 2007. A third series began in late December 2007, still on Radio 4. A fourth began recording in the autumn of 2008, and began transmission in the 11.30am slot from January 7, 2009. A fifth was recorded in autumn 2009 airing from December of that year and series six will begin recording autumn 2010. A seventh records from November 2011 for broadcast early 2012. The series won the SONY GOLD Comedy Award, the highest accolade for radio comedy, at the Radio Academy Awards in 2009.
In 2008 he finished a second tour and Count Arthur Strong the Musical was released on DVD in 2008.
In 2009 and 2010 he again toured twice with Count Arthur Strong - The Man Behind The Smile (the banner behind him on stage, due to printing errors that often occur when he orders publicity material, displaying 'The Man Behind the Slime').
From February to April 2011 he tours with his new show, Count Arthur Strong's Command Performance. He'll also re-tours 'Command Performance from March 2012.
The character has appeared on Mark Radcliffe
Mark Radcliffe
Mark Radcliffe is an English broadcaster who has worked in various roles for the BBC since the 1980s and remains one of Britain's most recognised DJs. He is currently a presenter on BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music, where he hosts an afternoon show five times a week alongside Stuart Maconie, called...
's BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 2 is one of the BBC's national radio stations and the most popular station in the United Kingdom. Much of its daytime playlist-based programming is best described as Adult Contemporary or AOR, although the station is also noted for its specialist broadcasting of other musical genres...
show, the TV series Terrorville for Play UK, The Stand Up Show for BBC 2 and 2 series of Comedy Cuts for ITV 2 and can be seen on YouTube supporting Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a British celebrity chef, television personality, journalist, food writer and "real food" campaigner, known for his back-to-basics philosophy...
's Chicken Out! campaign, and 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...
show The Remains of Foley
Sean Foley
Sean Foley may refer to:*Seán Foley, Irish sportsman*Sean Foley , British comedian*Sean Foley , American film editor, whose credits include The Slumber Party Massacre...
& McColl
Hamish McColl
Hamish McColl is a British comedian, writer and actor. He trained at the Ecole Phillippe Gaulier, Paris and Cambridge University. With Sean Foley, he formed the double act The Right Size in 1988, creating comic theatre shows which toured all over the world. more recently he has worked as a...
. He recently completed a television pilot for BBC 2 of his own vehicle, Count Arthur Strong's Entertainment Game, written by Steve Delaney, Jeremy Dyson and Graham Linehan. Steve Delaney and Graham Linehan are currently working on a tv sitcom together for the BBC.
Within Strong's fictional world, he claims to have an illustrious history, and lots of celebrity friends, most notably Anita Harris
Anita Harris
Anita Harris is an English actress, singer and entertainer....
. He appears frequently frustrated to have been overlooked for the lead role in what he calls Bridge Up The River Kwai, and as James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
in Dr
Dr. No
Dr. No is the sixth novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 31 March 1958. The story centres on Bond's investigation into the disappearance in Jamaica of a fellow MI6 operative, Commander John Strangways and his secretary, Mary Trueblood. He...
Dolittle
Doctor Dolittle
Doctor John Dolittle is the central character of a series of children's books by Hugh Lofting starting with the 1920 The Story of Doctor Dolittle. He is a doctor who shuns human patients in favour of animals, with whom he can speak in their own languages...
.
See also
- John ShuttleworthGraham FellowsGraham David Fellows is an English comedy actor and musician, best known for creating the characters of John Shuttleworth and Jilted John.-Early life:...
, another fictional comic persona from the North of England, created by Graham FellowsGraham FellowsGraham David Fellows is an English comedy actor and musician, best known for creating the characters of John Shuttleworth and Jilted John.-Early life:...
.
External links
- Count Arthur Strong official site
- Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show! (BBC Radio 4 page)
- British Comedy Guide
- Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show! (BBC Radio 4 archive 2007)
- Steve Delaney's IMDB page