Long-ranging Tudor Marriage Lines with, strangely, Keith ‘Captain Beaky’ Michell as the larger-than-life monarch, Donald ‘Perfectly’ Pleasence as Thomas Cromwell, Charlotte Rampling as Anne Boleyn, Jane Asher as Jane Seymour, and Lynne ‘Mrs Peter Sellers’ Frederick as Catherine Howard. As mentioned on Morecambe and Wise, fact fans. Every schoolboy used to know this simple mnemonic to remember the order the wives came in – “Mrs Vennor off of ’70s sci-fi series Sky, Her with the braces off of The Night Porter, Her with the cakes off of The Stone Tape, the one who never did anything else, ever, Peter Sellers’s fourth wife, and Colin Firth’s mum off of Tumbledown.” After working through that lot, it’s small wonder Michell gave up playing rotund Tudor misogynists for a career singing whimsical ditties about quasi-military waterfowl. Michael ‘House of Horrors’ Gough and the inevitable Brian Blessed also beef up the heartily-laughing, mead-swilling, drumstick-slinging cast in the film adaptation of a BBC series.
