Adrian Mole: The Complete Series [DVD]

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Mr Reginald 'Popeye' Scruton ( Freddie Jones) is Adrian and Pandora's abrasive and volatile headmaster, who is a huge admirer of the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He is an icon of our age - the ultimate awkward and lovelorn teenager. Adrian Mole is seared into the hearts of many of us and those memories will come into sharp focus this this week, which marks 40 years since he first appeared in print. Morris, Grace (13 June 2023). "Celebrity Gogglebox 2023: release date, celebs and everything we know". what to watch .com . Retrieved 30 July 2023. Bert Baxter ( Bill Fraser) is Adrian's foul-mouthed and strongly opinionated old age pensioner friend. He lives with Queenie in a bungalow, along with Bert's aggressive and unpredictable German Shepherd dog, Sabre.

Apart from the humorous events described in the diary, a lot of the book's humour originates from the unreliable narration of Mole, who naïvely, yet confidently, misinterprets events around him. Celebrities' open letter to Scotland – full text and list of signatories". The Guardian. London. 7 August 2014 . Retrieved 26 August 2014. After graduating from RADA in 1994, Mangan did not pursue lead roles on screen, preferring to take what he saw as the less limited opportunities on the stage. Between 1994 and 2000, he performed in plays throughout the UK and the West End [7] before joining the theatre company Cheek by Jowl for an international tour of Much Ado About Nothing, earning him a nomination for a National Theatre Ian Charleson Award. He worked again for director Declan Donnellan at the Royal Shakespeare Company in School for Scandal, and at the Savoy Theatre in Hay Fever. [ citation needed] Adrian never made the journey to Hollywood – yet. First a radio series, then the bestselling novel, Sue also adapted her book for a successful stage play with songs, which ran at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End between 1984-6. Three television series and the forthcoming musical adaptation leaves only the big screen as Adrian’s uncharted territory. Might Mole one day follow his fellow literary figures to Hollywood?Sian and Helen are a couple who run a removal service called "Two Gals 'n' a Van". Adrian hires them to help him move into Rat Wharf. He ignores Helen's advice against taking out store cards, inadvertently contributing to his mounting debt problems. Pauline Mole ( Julie Walters) is Adrian's mother, who leaves her husband George to live with her neighbour Mr. Lucas in Sheffield. Walters was replaced by Lulu for series two. Lucy is a nurse at Leicester Royal Infirmary, where William goes for an emergency appendix operation. She is a single mother with a three-year-old daughter named Lucinda. Lucy seems to be attracted to Adrian, and Pauline is keen to set them up together; but Adrian rejects Lucy, put off by her hairy wrists (although Pauline suggests he simply buy her a tube of Nair.) A younger generation should still be able to relate to much of what goes on – the landscape has changed a bit but the landmarks are much the same. Adrian accidentally building up a gigantic phone bill that he then has to hide from his parents must have its modern-day parallel. No doubt, the parents of a 13 ¾ year old now shake their heads at how good kids today have things compared to their own generation.

Gary Milksop is the extremely sensitive, effeminate and over-the-top member of the LRWG. He is the author of an epic (unfinished) experimental novel that he has been working on for fifteen years: his first experience of eating a Hobnob. The other members of the group are kinder to him, as Gary cries if he gets criticism. Courtney Elliot is the Mole's erudite ex-academic postman with a red-spotted bowtie and a ruffled shirt. He helped Adrian study for his GCE tests. He lends Pauline Mole a fiver when her giro fails to arrive.Mrs Parvez runs Kidcare, the nursery school that William attends. She regularly sends notes home with William, asking for money for various expenses. When William asked where birds sleep at night, Adrian and Mrs Parvez gave him different answers, and got into an argument with each other over who was right. Although Mrs Parvez disapproves of Adrian's parenting style, she has great sympathy for William; at one point getting angry when Adrian was very late and heartbroken William thought he had been abandoned. She is also a Liberal representative on the local council. It is unclear whether she is related to Adrian's friend Mohammed Parvez. Kim Savage is Peter Savage's estranged third wife. Kim has filed for a divorce against her husband, and has gone to the lengths of appearing in the middle of the night, stealing several cases of expensive champagne and left. Savage loves his wife, but disapproves of her job "re-arranging twigs and flowers". Savage once gave Kim money for elocution lessons, but she kept the money and got free lessons from her friend Joanna Lumley - explaining Lumley's lifelong ban from the restaurant. Ironically Adrian actually is a good writer, as the quality of his diaries attests, but he feels he must adopt a "high" or avant-garde literary style to be taken seriously. His novel Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland is unsurprisingly never published: the few passages included in the diaries are painful to read (though Adrian himself regards them as "magnificent"), and the first few drafts were even written without vowels. Over several books he develops a script for a white van serial killer comedy programme which the BBC is reluctant to produce. Another of his works The Restless Tadpole: an Opus is described by one potential agent as "effete crap". Mark B'astard is the estate agent who sells Adrian his Rat Wharf flat. It is when he goes to urinate that Adrian notices that you can see people's outlines when they are standing in the bathroom. Mark says to his client that it is the sort of flat he would like, but he has three children under five and Mrs. B'astard wants a garden.

Sharon Bott (occasionally Botts) is Adrian's second girlfriend and the mother of his first child. She is introduced in Growing Pains as the girl who "will show everything for 50p and a pound of grapes", but Adrian has an unsuccessful date with her set up by Nigel. In True Confessions, Adrian has lost his virginity with Sharon, but it is obvious that neither of them has any interest in the other beyond sex. Sharon starts putting on weight, and she is referred to as overweight in the later books. After it is proven that Adrian fathered Glenn in Cappuccino Years, Sharon re-enters Adrian's life; they maintain a good relationship as parents of Glenn. It is revealed that she has seven siblings, including an older sister, Marjorie, and younger brother, Karak. Her parents are still alive. Mr. Bott is a quiet, polite man, unlike the rest of the Bott family. As Sharon ages, she gains more and more weight until she is described as obese. A character in Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland named Sharon Slagg, based on Sharon, is mentioned. While Sharon is still seeing Adrian, she starts seeing Barry Kent on the side, leading to confusion over who Glenn's father is - a blood test revealed that Adrian was indeed the father.

Stephen Moore - George Mole

Bruce "Brainbox" Henderson is one of Adrian's friends who is good with computers. He starts the school magazine. In later books, he marries Adrian's ex-fiancée (and later sister-in-law) Marigold Flowers.

Wayne Wong is a former school friend of Adrian. As an adult he runs a Chinese restaurant (alternately named as either "Wong's" or "Imperial Dragon.") He is highly sarcastic and dislikes Marigold Flowers, who, in Wayne's words, resembles one of his pet koi carp. In 2022 Mangan narrated the documentary and clip show 'Allo 'Allo! Forty Years of Laughter on Channel 5. [34] Commander Shore: Stand by for action! We are about to launch Stingray! Marineville – I am calling "Battle Stations"! Set in the shadow of New Labour's 1997 election triumph, Adrian was an offal chef living in Soho, while Pandora had become a thrusting Labour MP, uninterested in her former beau.There’s no other place to start than with Adrian himself. Played by Northampton-born Giancarlo - Gian - Sammarco, the awkward teen was played with perfection by Gian who captured the world of Adrian, even if his glasses and ties were not part of the source material. Wayne Drabble is an arsonist who burnt down the local Scout hut. In what Adrian describes as "a daring social experiment", Wayne is put in charge of the fireworks display on the common. A 7-part radio series on BBC Radio 4 featured extracts from the book read by Nicholas Barnes. Townsend adapted the book for the stage in 1984 with music by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley. There was also a 1985 television series. Singing superstar and Eurovision winner Lulu took over the role of Pauline for the second series. It does sound like a bizarre bit of casting but the Scottish songstress had already shone on screen in movies including To Sir, with Love - a film to which she also sung the main title theme. Gladys Fordingbridge is the elderly regular host of the group. She is the only woman. Her living room is cluttered with cat hairs and photographs of distant relatives. Her poems consist entirely of sub- Pam Ayres cat poems, one of which, entitled 'Naughty Paws', managed to rhyme ' Whiskas' with 'discus'. When her poems are eventually published it gives Adrian an excuse to expel her from the group as it is 'for amateurs only'. Gladys happily leaves the club.