Biografía

29 de enero de 1930 · Ealing, Londres, Inglaterra, Reino Unido

7 de marzo de 2006 · Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Inglaterra, Reino Unido (un cáncer de pulmón)

John Francis Junkin

Briefly worked as a disc-jockey for the offshore pirate Radio Caroline. He never visited the ship, recording his shows in London.

Has an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the voice of "Mr Shifter", one of the monkeys in the P.G. Tips tea advertisement, the longest running commercial on television.

Worked as a teacher before writing took over his life.

He worked as a teacher, lift attendant and laborer before turning to writing professionally.

Daughter Annabel born 1979.

"Television now seems to be made for people who sit in the Groucho Club rubbing each other's egos with a Nivea bar. It's certainly not what people want to watch. That's why they still enjoy the old comedies like Dad's Army (1968), Morecambe and Wise and Steptoe and Son (1962) . . . It strikes me that the new generation running television today has forgotten how to make people laugh.

May I confess to not being quite as upset as many people at the loss of first-class cricket by BBC Television, principally because it will give viewers a chance to see the three new series I have devised. These consist of 26 programmes on gardening, 26 on travel and 26 on cooking, with a Christmas special in which a well-known gardener is invited to take a celebrity chef to some glamorous location and cook him.