40 Fun Facts About Kenny Everett

Which epic-length rock single did Kenny Everett play fourteen times in two days on Capital Radio in 1975?

Bohemian Rhapsody lasted 5:55, and executives warned it was too long to be a hit. Everett's repeat plays stoked listener demand for the single.

Kenny Everett voiced Charley, which kind of animal, in the 1973 Charley Says safety films for children?

A cat named Charley miaowed the lesson of each film, which a little boy called Tony then translated and explained. Everett supplied every yowl.

Which rock singer became a close friend of Kenny Everett after guesting on his Capital Radio breakfast show in 1974?

Freddie Mercury met Everett on air in 1974, and the DJ became his adviser and mentor. The two later fell out, then made peace when both were seriously ill.

The BBC sacked Kenny Everett from Radio 1 in 1970 for joking that a transport minister's wife had bribed whom?

A driving examiner was the target of the quip, made after a news item said Mary Peyton had finally passed her test after many attempts. The BBC called the remark indefensible.

Which veteran horror star played the villain opposite Kenny Everett in the spoof film Bloodbath at the House of Death?

Vincent Price was credited only as the Sinister Man, a 700-year-old Satanic priest. Everett's one starring feature sent up The Amityville Horror, Alien and The Exorcist.

Kenny Everett bounded on stage at whose youth conference during the 1983 general election campaign?

Conservative Party organisers hoped he would attract the youth vote, and his slogans drew loud applause. Everett later said he regretted the appearance.

Which future classical-crossover soprano first found fame as a dancer on The Kenny Everett Video Show?

Sarah Brightman was 18 when she sang lead on a 1978 disco hit by the show's dance troupe, a number six single about a starship trooper.

Kenny Everett left ITV in 1981 unhappy that his show was scheduled against which BBC1 Thursday-night fixture?

Top of the Pops went out at the same time on Thursday evenings and hit his ratings. Everett knew the chart show well, having presented it seven times in 1973.

On which BBC panel game did Kenny Everett bend the host's wand-like microphone without warning in 1979?

Blankety Blank armed Wogan with a long thin microphone known as Wogan's Wand, which Everett bent without warning on his first appearance in 1979.

Kenny Everett was born Maurice Cole in 1944 on which annual holiday?

Christmas Day 1944 was his birthday in Seaforth on Merseyside. His first shows for Radio London went out the week he turned 20.

Kenny Everett's ageing rocker Sid Snot kept trying, and failing, to flip what into his mouth?

Cigarettes kept missing until Everett finally caught one mid-sketch, to general delight. As Sid he also reached the UK top ten in 1983 with the novelty single Snot Rap.

Which Kenny Everett character was a blonde American B-movie actress, played in full drag with his beard left on?

Cupid Stunt gushed about her trashy film projects on a spoof chat show, ending each sketch with an extravagant recrossing of her legs. She was created after Everett joined the BBC.

Kenny Everett's bearded Hollywood starlet told her on-set tales to a cardboard cut-out of which chat show host?

Michael Parkinson's cardboard stand-in was later replaced by Terry Wogan, shown as a skeleton in a suit. Her lurid stories featured male stars such as Burt Reynolds.

Kenny Everett played the lecherous Frenchman Marcel Wave wearing an absurdly oversized false what?

A false latex chin gave Marcel Wave his look. He was one of the characters Everett carried from ITV to the BBC, despite a copyright claim from his old employer.

Kenny Everett's outraged City gent Angry of Mayfair banged the camera's lens hood with what before storming off?

An umbrella did the banging. He then turned to leave, revealing women's lingerie where the back of his suit should have been.

Kenny Everett's mock preacher Brother Lee Love waved which enormously oversized foam rubber body parts?

Hands of foam rubber went with Everett to a political rally in 1983, where he bounded on stage wearing them. The preacher was one of the characters he took from ITV to the BBC.

Kenny Everett's US Army parody General Cheeseburger wore medals and grenades on his comically oversized what?

Shoulders of absurd width carried the general's decorations. His monologues were seen as a satire on American foreign policy.

Kenny Everett's accident-prone presenter Reg Prescott injured himself each week while demonstrating what on television?

DIY tips went wrong every time, with Reg visibly wounding himself on his own tools. He became a firm favourite with viewers of the BBC series.

Kenny Everett's character Verity Treacle, who took viewers' requests to kill off famous people, held which job?

Agony aunt Verity Treacle was one of the new faces written for Everett's BBC series. The programme repeatedly drew around 12 to 13 million viewers an episode.

What kind of rebel was Gizzard Puke, the character Kenny Everett created at the BBC to replace Sid Snot?

A punk with orange hair, Gizzard Puke was devised when Everett's old ITV employer claimed copyright on his characters. Sid returned on the BBC all the same.

Kenny Everett's vain spaceman Captain Kremmen was written as a send-up of which comic-strip space hero?

Dan Dare was the idol Kremmen grew up wanting to copy. Everett gave his own hero bionic veins and a detachable big toe that turned into a space cannon.

Which Manchester animation company made the Captain Kremmen cartoons shown on The Kenny Everett Video Show?

Cosgrove Hall animated Kremmen for the first three series, shortly before creating Danger Mouse. The fourth series switched to live-action sketches instead.

Before Captain Kremmen became a cartoon on Kenny Everett's ITV show, the character had begun life in what form?

A radio serial on Capital Radio launched Kremmen in 1976, written and performed by Everett himself. A daily newspaper strip followed in the Evening Standard two years later.

Which future stand-up comedian voiced an alien as a boy in Kenny Everett's 1984 film, which his father directed?

Michael McIntyre is the son of Ray Cameron, who directed the horror spoof and co-wrote Everett's TV shows. He revealed in his autobiography that he was the voice of E.T.

Which future feminist author co-presented Granada's 1968 slapstick series Nice Time alongside Kenny Everett?

Germaine Greer made the series two years before The Female Eunuch made her a household name. Surviving outtakes show her bathing in milk delivered by Everett as a milkman.

What happened to the pictures drawn by Kenny Everett's silent mime character Maurice Mimer?

They became real objects, the central gag of the Maurice Mimer sketches. The mime artist was among the new characters devised after Everett's switch to the BBC.

Which dance troupe performed risqué routines as the resident dancers on The Kenny Everett Video Show?

Hot Gossip had spent two years developing their act in a London nightclub before television made them famous. Their costumes were daring for an early-evening slot.

Which choreographer, later a Strictly Come Dancing judge, created the dance troupe featured on Kenny Everett's ITV show?

Arlene Phillips began forming the troupe in 1974 and designed its costumes as well as its routines. The show's director David Mallet invited her dancers on.

Which Brazilian-born actress co-starred with Kenny Everett on his BBC sketch show and later wrote a memoir about him?

Cleo Rocos has said she was asked to audition while lunching at the BBC with the director of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which she had played a green-skinned alien.

Which comedy writer, a long-serving panellist on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, co-wrote Kenny Everett's television shows?

Barry Cryer wrote for Everett on both ITV and the BBC. He also co-wrote the comedian's horror spoof film and appears in it briefly as a police inspector.

Kenny Everett began his career in 1964 on Radio London, a station that broadcast from where?

A ship in the North Sea carried the station, anchored three and a half miles off Frinton-on-Sea in Essex. Its DJs presented live from the hold at the rear of the vessel.

Radio London first sacked Kenny Everett in 1965 after he mocked what kind of sponsored programme on air?

A religious show from American evangelists paid the station well, and its producers threatened to withdraw their contract over his remarks. He was rehired in June 1966.

Which station hired Kenny Everett in 1966 for an Audio Show, only to become another employer that dismissed him?

Radio Luxembourg took him on between his two spells at Radio London, which had sacked him the previous November. He was back at his old station by June.

Which band did Kenny Everett follow around the United States in August 1966, sending daily reports back to Radio London?

The Beatles were making their final concert tour. Everett phoned his reports to a colleague in Harwich, who taped them for a half-hour show sponsored by a sweet maker.

Which fellow DJ formed a hit double act with Kenny Everett on Radio London and later on Capital Radio's breakfast show?

Dave Cash and Everett revived their 1960s partnership in January 1974, when Capital switched to a pop format. The pair had also released a comedy single on Decca in 1965.

A popular run of Kenny Everett's Capital Radio shows, released as an album in 1978, celebrated which records?

The world's worst discs, by Everett's reckoning, filled his World's Worst Record Show. He was equally vocal about music he loved, such as the songs of Chris Rainbow.

After the BBC reinstated him in 1973, Kenny Everett recorded his weekly Radio 1 show at home in which country?

Wales was his base: he taped the programme at his home in Llandovery, and it went out on Sunday afternoons. Within months he had left for the new Capital Radio.

On which BBC Radio 4 panel game was Kenny Everett made to talk about marbles for ninety seconds?

Just a Minute normally asks panellists to speak for sixty seconds. Chairman Nicholas Parsons stretched the round as a practical joke on Everett's only appearance, in 1980.

Kenny Everett was the unseen announcer on which ITV game show hosted by Bob Monkhouse from 1975 to 1979?

Celebrity Squares was built on noughts and crosses. Almost every episode of that first run was wiped, though Monkhouse kept 40 in his own video collection.

Kenny Everett's semi-fictitious 1982 autobiography is titled The Custard Stops at which Hertfordshire town?

Hatfield rounds off the title. The book mixed fact with invention, and an authorised biography, Hello Darlings!, did not appear until 2013.