Labels: 2007, Barbra Paskin, BBC, Leslie Charteris, Roger Moore

4 comments for Leslie Charteris: A Saintly Centennial

Roger Moore, who starred as Simon Templar in the original TV series, celebrates the centenary of the birth of popular fiction writer Leslie Charteris, famous for his adventures featuring the character better known as The Saint. The programme includes rare interview footage of Charteris along with contributions from his family, actor Ian Ogilvy and Charteris biographer Ian Dickerson.

We are experiencing severe technical problems, and regret that many programmes are unavailable. We are working to restore normal service. See station websites for alternative links.

Labels: 2007, Barbra Paskin, BBC, Ian Dickerson, Ian Ogilvy, Leslie Charteris, Roger Moore

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Mike Reid, 'the great storyteller' and comedian, dies at the age of 67

Mike Reid, the actor and master of the politically incorrect joke, died yesterday, aged 67.

His agent, David Hahn, told the BBC that the stand-up comic was in Marbella, Spain, where he owned a villa, when he suffered a fatal heart attack while apparently in good health.

"Mike was in fine fettle. Only a couple of weeks ago we were having dinner and Mike went to see his consultant that day, had a full medical and they gave him a clean bill of health."

Reid played Frank Butcher in the BBC soap opera EastEnders and starred in the British gangster film, Snatch. Born in Hackney, London, he began his career as a stuntman, working on films such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Spartacus, as well as on The Saint as a stunt double for Roger Moore.

Rising to fame on London's comedy circuit, Reid worked as a stand-up comedian in the 1960s in clubs and cruise liners. His big break came in the seventies in a popular television series, The Comedians, that consisted of short slots by mature comedians.

Reid had a daughter by his first marriage and two sons by his second wife, Shirley Collins. Last night, Mr Hahn said of Reid's wife: "Mike was her life."

The entertainer Russ Abbot said Reid was a great story-teller who had a great sense of comic timing. "There are certain comedians who do one-liners, but Mike was a story-teller and a great deliverer," he said.

Reid's close friend and fellow comedian Frank Carson, speaking in Spain, said his death was "absolutely devastating".

Labels: 2007, Mike Reid, Roger Moore

0 comments for Mike Reid, Roger Moore's Stunt Double

Michael Westen
Michael is living every spy's worst nightmare. When a spy gets fired, he doesn't get a call from human resources and a gold watch. In Michael's case, they jeopardize his life, freeze his bank accounts, dump him in Miami, and flag him on every government list known to man. They can't take away his skills or what's in his head, so they take away his assets and his resources to make sure he can never work again. They burn him.

Now Michael has a much different mission: he must find out who issued his burn notice and why he was blacklisted so that he can put his life back together. Meanwhile, he has to fend off a suddenly hostile world of old foes gunning for him. In order to survive in Miami and fund his own personal investigation, Michael enlists the help of the only two "friends" he has: Fiona Glenanne an ex-IRA operative who also happens to be an ex-girlfriend and Sam Axe a washed-out military intelligence contact whom the feds have keeping an eye on Michael.

Fiona Glenanne
Fiona Glenanne may look like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine but she's a force to be reckoned with. She was affiliated with the IRA for 14 years, but ran afoul of her old organization because she didn't like being told what to do. She has since gone out on her own, picking up odd jobs and using her skills in explosives, lock picking, tracking, weapons, and hand-to-hand combat to make a living.
Fiona is definitely a shoot first and asks questions later kind of gal. Her fearless nature is both enticing and dangerous, as she is capable of making things go "boom" very quickly. When Michael is dumped, battered and unconscious, in Miami, Fiona is called since she is still listed as his emergency contact. They were once romantically involved but that ended years before when Michael left her without an explanation. Fiona isn't used to being rejected and the end of their relationship left her with a bruised ego.

She decides to stay in Miami to help Michael, but her reasons aren't all work related. For a woman who considers a good head-butt to be foreplay, seducing men is second nature. Although Michael's reluctant to re-kindle a very complicated relationship, Fiona is a stubborn master strategist and won't stop till she gets her way.

Sam Axe
Handsome with a good-natured grin, Sam Axe is a former Navy Seal, Military Intel Operative, and all-around Cold Warrior. In his prime he was point man on an array of armed conflicts the world over. He worked with Michael many times during those heady days. When Michael reconnects with him in Miami, Sam has embraced his post-espionage days by letting loose. Once, he loved the threadbare world of secret surveillance in the communist bloc, or forward recon in the touch-and-go Middle East.

Now, he has moved on to mojitos, Sugar Mommas and bikini watching in the bars and on the sands of South Beach. He's reliable and consistent, in the way that you can count on a former spy to dig up solid intel and execute missions with stealthy aplomb. Despite his predilection for rich divorcées and cocktails, he is an asset to Michael, even when he becomes an informant for the FBI. Though the Feds have Sam keeping an eye on Michael, he needs Sam's friendship, partnership, and expertise, now more than ever.

Labels: 2007, Burn Notice, Fiona Glenanne

2 comments for The Saint and the Burn Notice

Labels: 2007, Ian Dickerson, Leslie Charteris

1 comments for LeslieCharteris.com is back online

This year marks the centenary of the birth of popular fiction writer Leslie Charteris, best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of Simon Templar, alias The Saint.
In this special programme, actor and Saint portrayer Roger Moore explores the life and legacy of Charteris and reveals a world of adventure, torment, insecurity, failed marriages and enormous success as a thriller writer.

The adventures of The Saint have appeared continuously since 1928, making Simon Templar the longest-running character in contemporary detective fiction. But there was more to Charteris's literary acuity than The Saint alone. He was fluent in several languages; he had a monthly column in the epicurial delight, Gourmet magazine; and he devised a pictorial sign language which he called "Paleneo" and wrote a book about it. He was also one of the earliest members of Mensa.

Despite his film-star looks, with a hint of exoticism, Charteris suffered from a long-standing insecurity about his appearance, arising from his mixed racial origin. In later years he dated some of Hollywood's most beautiful women, among them Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow.

It wasn't until 1963, when Lou Grade cast Roger Moore and filmed the first television series of The Saint, that Charteris at last felt he'd received the final seal of approbation that had eluded him for 30 years.

Among those exploring the world and psyche of Charteris are Dan Bodenheimer, who runs the official Saint website; Burl Barer, author of The History Of The Saint; and Charteris's biographer Ian Dickerson.

Labels: 2007, Barbra Paskin, BBC, Burl Barer, Ian Dickerson, Leslie Charteris, Roger Moore

1 comments for Leslie Charteris - A Saintly Centennial on BBC

This, then, involved an Office; because as everyone knows no business executive can execute properly without an Office. Wherefore we made ourselves heirs to a heavily mortgaged piece of real estate of sufficiently white elephant proportions to carry the gaudy howdah which we felt our new role in life demanded of us. It has been suggested to us that you might be interested in knowing what this environment is really like.

This exotic mausoleum occupies most of a short block on a Hollywood boulevard otherwise distinguished by hand laundries and hamburger stands. It is a one story building, partly because we are selling most of our spare stories, and partly because we cannot afford insurance for all the visitors who might otherwise fall or be helped down the stairs.

At one end of this building is a large barn known as the Shipping Room, which for some unaccountable reason is usually stacked to the ceiling with large quantities of Saint books which we are still waiting for various characters to buy.

Northwards of this is the main entrance, fronted by a spacious and studiously uncomfortable reception room, where writers, entrepreneurs, and general creditors endeavor to struggle past a receptionist whom we have thoughtfully protected with a sheet of bullet-proof glass. Those who are lucky or persistent enough to gain entrance to the interior, would find on their right the studio of Milt Neil, the artist already referred to, who with the help of three or four assistants turns out our book jackets and other illustrations, as well as plenty of other work of his own. This is a very convenient arrangement for us, but results in a considerable loss of man-hours when he is working on pin-up calendars with live models.

Turning your back on this temptation, you might progress to an open section known as the Slave Market, where the most beautiful girls in the world pound typewriters to perpetuate incomparable manuscripts, or adding machines to keep abreast of our incoming debts.

Opening off this Elysian backwater are a number of black doors with enormous brass handles, resembling bank vaults in every respect except the amount of money cached behind them. These portals admit to various offices occupied by the male bees, or drones, in this hive, or dive.

These are mainly paneled in redwood, fluorescently lighted, healthily ventilated, equipped with bookshelves and restful couches, and swept out once a week. In subsequent letters we may tell you more about their occupants. On this first cursory once-over, you may be informed that one of them contains two gentlemen named Cleve Cartmill and Roby Wentz, who are the mainstays of our Editorial Department, while another harbors our office manager and general panjandrum, Mr. Robert Black, whose perpetually worried expression is probably due to a congenital inability to get used to coping with visiting sheriffs.

A third vault is actually the sanctum sanctorum, or Saint's Den. This over-sized chamber, as befits the hideout of the master mind, contains more bookshelves and more books (mostly by Charteris) than any of the others. It also has a victrola equipped to play radio transcriptions, a radio with short-wave facilities to give adequate warning of police raids, and a piano which has probably been played worse than any similar instrument in the country. Through this Grand Central station passes more busy traffic than any other section of the building, except one.

This section is fortunately next door to my office and is strictly a structural liability. But it always did seem to me that if anyone has to work for a living he might as well have some simple comforts with it.

This other room therefore is a bar. Not one of those converted closets, but a nice big room decorated for mental relief in South Sea island style, with straw matting on the floor, woven bamboo on the walls, and tarred fishnet draped across the ceiling, in which several petrified starfish seem to have become inextricably entangled.

In this sanctuary our braintrust and preferred visitors congregate, first thing in the morning for coffee, at noon for the first cocktails justified by the elevation of the sun across our drooping yardarms, at the end of the day for post mortems, relaxation, and more plans to be disappointed in tomorrow... and since you have let me talk myself into it, that is where I am going now, since this letter is already long enough and I have to save a few items for next week.

Labels: 2007, Hollywood, Leslie Charteris, Saint Enterprises

1 comments for The Saint Enterprises Office in 1946 Hollywood

Labels: 2007, DVD, Roger Moore, The Fiction-Makers

1 comments for Volcano Seven Synopsis of The Fiction-Makers

If you have a mobile telephone that can play MIDI files as ring tones, there is a nice one of The Return of The Saint theme from 1978. And don't forget that the The Return Of The Saint - The Complete Series starring Ian Ogilvy as The Saint is now available on DVD (region 2)!

Labels: 2007, Ian Ogilvy, Return of The Saint

2 comments for Return of The Saint Mobile Ringtone

Labels: 2007, Bill Krzastek

0 comments for 'The Saint' Car Brings Man Back to Franklin Memories