Barry Took
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Barry Took (June 19, 1928 – March 31, 2002) was an English comedian, writer and television presenter. He is best remembered in the UK for his weekly role as presenter of Points of View, a BBC TV programme in which viewers' letters criticising or praising the BBC were broadcast. He also presented the BBC Radio 4 programme The News Quiz for over a decade until 1995.
Took was born in London and brought up there during the war, running away from the home in Wisbech to which he had been evacuated. It was during his period of National Service that he began performing seriously, and it was also then that he met his first wife, Dorothy, known as Dot, with whom he had three children: Barry, Susan and David. He later worked as a stand-up comedian, eventually becoming a West End revue performer.
In terms of comedy writing, he was the writing partner of Marty Feldman and wrote for several seminal radio and television shows in the 1950s and 1960s, including Round the Horne and The Army Game spin-off Bootsie and Snudge. With others he co-wrote Beyond Our Ken (1958-63) for BBC Radio.
Took also went to the USA to work on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In in the late 1960s, before joining the BBC, where he introduced the constituent performers in Monty Python's Flying Circus to each other, also helping to devise The Goodies and later the innovative literacy programme On the Move which starred Bob Hoskins. He also spent a period at London Weekend Television as the company's head of comedy during the early 1970s.
There is a image of Took flashed momentarily on the screen during the BBC's introduction to it's current hit TV series Life on Mars.
[edit] Autobiography
- A Point of View (1990)
