Weston-super-Mare

Jill Wendy Dando was an English journalist, television presenter and newsreader who worked for the BBC for 14 years. She was murdered by gunshot... outside her home in Fulham, West London; her killer has never been identified. Jill Dando was born in Ashcombe House Maternity Home, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and was raised a Baptist. When she was three, it was discovered she had a hole in her heart and a blocked pulmonary artery. She had heart surgery on 12 January 1965. She was educated at Worle Infant School, Greenwood Junior School, Worle Comprehensive School, and Broadoak Sixth Form Centre, where she was head girl, and passed two A levels. She studied journalism at South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education in Cardiff. Dando was a keen thespian. She was a member of Weston-super-Mare Amateur Dramatic Society and Exeter Little Theatre Company, with whom she appeared in plays at the Barnfield Theatre. Dando was a volunteer at Sunshine Hospital Radio in Weston-super-Mare in 1979. She started her first job as a trainee reporter for the local weekly newspaper, the Weston Mercury, where her father and brother worked.
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Mandy Miller is an English child actress who made a number of films in the 1950s and is probably best remembered for her recording of the song... "Nellie the Elephant". She was christened Carmen but called Mandy by her family. Her career tended to involve serious acting roles rather than comedy, even in her first small part in The Man in the White Suit, where she was a sad-faced little girl who helped Alec Guinness escape his pursuers. She was a natural actress and put in a much praised performance in her second film, another Ealing production, Mandy , playing a deaf child whose parents did not know how to cope with bringing her up. She was also convincing in the next film, Background , along with the other two child actors in this film about a family breaking up due to an impending divorce. Like Mandy, this was a drama about a well-to-do middle class family; Valerie Hobson played her mother. She had lighter roles such as in Raising A Riot starring Kenneth More.
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Rupert Graves is an English film, television and theatre actor. He is best known for his role as DI Lestrade in the critically acclaimed television... series Sherlock. He was born in Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England, to Mary Lousilla Graves, a travel coordinator, and Richard Harding Graves, a music teacher and musician. Graves was educated at Wyvern Community School, a state comprehensive school in his home town of Weston-super-Mare, which he left at the age of fifteen. The school has since closed and re-opened as the Hans Price Academy. Graves's first job after leaving school was as a circus clown. He has appeared in over twenty-five films and over thirty-five television productions; he has also appeared on stage. During his career, he has starred alongside actress Helena Bonham Carter four times in A Room with a View, Maurice, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Revengers' Comedies. He first came to prominence in costume-drama adaptations of E. M. Forster's novels A Room with a View and Maurice , before going on to appear in films including A Handful of Dust , Different for Girls and Intimate Relations .
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Robert "Con" O'Neill is a British actor. He began his acting career at Liverpool's Everyman Youth Theatre. He was awarded the Laurence Olivier... Theatre Award in 1988 for "Best Actor in a Musical" for his performance in Willy Russell's Blood Brothers, and was nominated for Broadway's 1993 Tony Award as Best Actor for Blood Brothers, . In the 1980s he had a walk-on role in another British series 'One Summer' as unenthusiastic student Jackson. He also starred in Dancin' Thru the Dark, the film adaptation of Willy Russell's Stags and Hens. In 1992 he played Cougar Glass opposite Jude Law in the world premiere of Philip Ridley's stage play, The Fastest Clock In The Universe. In 2006 he starred as Aston in a tour of Sheffield theatres' production of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, alongside David Bradley and Nigel Harman. In 2008 he appeared in Criminal Justice a five part TV drama on the BBC, playing the part of Ralph Stone, a solicitor. He also played the part of Joe Meek in both the play and film of Meek's life, Telstar.
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Lance Dossor was a British-born concert pianist and teacher who emigrated to Australia. He was born Harry Lancelot Dossor in Weston-super-Mare,... United Kingdom, the third child of a jeweller who was also a distinguished amateur tenor. He was educated at Seaford College and matriculated at the University of London. In 1932 he obtained an open scholarship to the Royal College of Music where he studied piano with Herbert Fryer and composition with Herbert Howells. In 1936 he was awarded the Medal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians, given only every three years to the most outstanding student. He won the 1936 Franz Liszt Prize at the Vienna International Piano Competition, and in the following year the Sonata Prize and overall Fourth Prize in the 1937 International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition. In 1938 he was awarded fourth prize in the Ysaye Competition in Belgium - the first three places going to Emil Gilels, Moura Lympany and Yakov Flier. He later recounted the tale that while he was still a student, he obtained entry to a rehearsal of one of Sergei Rachmaninoff's concerts in London.
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Richard Hugh "Ritchie" Blackmore is a British guitarist and songwriter, who is known as one of the first guitarists to fuse classical music elements... with blues rock. He began his professional career as a studio session musician and was subsequently a member of Deep Purple, after which Blackmore established a successful career fronting his own band Rainbow, and later progressed to the traditional folk rock project Blackmore's Night with his wife. Blackmore was born at Allandale Nursing Home, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, South West England, but moved to Heston, Middlesex at the age of two. Although the surname Blackmore is thought to be of English origin, his father was of Welsh ancestry and his mother of English. He was 11 when he got his first guitar. His father bought it for him on certain conditions, including learning how to play properly, so he took classical guitar lessons for one year. While at school he did well at sports including the javelin. Blackmore left school at age 15 and started work as an apprentice radio mechanic at nearby Heathrow Airport. He was given guitar lessons by Big Jim Sullivan.
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