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- David Webb was born in Luton, Bedfordshire in 1931. His father was the son of a local baker for whom he worked until developing baker's asthma, after which he worked for a local brewery and then, until retirement, for the Vauxhall Motors Car Company. David's mother was the daughter of a local tailor and later hat manufacturer. David trained for an acting career at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) after obtaining a scholarship there in 1952. Prior to that he was a pupil at Luton Grammar School, becoming Head Prefect before leaving in 1950 for two years' National Service as an instructor in the Royal Army Educational Corps (RAEC).
After graduating from the RADA in April 1954, David began his career with York Repertory Company for a year and subsequently played with other 'rep' companies at Scarborough and Bromley. He then toured for a year in Emile Littler's musical "Love From Judy" and after did more 'rep' at Richmond and Worthing. Following a highly successful audition for BBC Television, he was summoned by the then Head of Drama, Michael Barry, and consequently launched into television, the medium in which his career has centered ever since, and in which he has made more than 700 appearances, playing a wide variety of roles, and working for all the major programme-producing companies. He was a prominent character in the early days of Coronation Street. Worried about the dangers of typecasting, he soon moved on, and, between the 1960s and the beginning of the present century, made well over 700 appearances in television programmes. These included Upstairs, Downstairs, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Tales of the Unexpected, Doctor Who, and The Avengers. He also found time for the cinema, appearing in, among much else, The Battle of Britain. In a profession which, notoriously, has an unemployment rate of 80 per cent, he was never out of work. He was at one point so committed to television, and so prolific, that he was mocked by some of his RADA friends as a "Telly Tart." His response was a magisterial wave of the arm and the explanation: "On the telly, dear boy, you don't have to get it right first time, and the repeat fees mean you'll never run out of gin." He was right. Even at the time of his death, it was an unusual week on ITV3 when David Webb is not seen and credited in one of its many repeats from the golden age of British television.
As an ardent opponent of censorship, in 1976 David founded the National Campaign for the Reform of the Obscene Publications Acts (NCROPA) and began his long campaign against the prudes and censors of every political and religious complexion. He ran NCROPA in the capacity of Honorary Director ever since. It is a law-reform organization championing the cause of the 'freedom of expression'. At the time the laws against pornography were, in their principle and intent, very clear - it was "No Sex, Please: We're British." Pornography was defined as anything a jury could be convinced had a tendency to "deprave and corrupt." Against this, David stated his own principle to anyone who would listen: "So long as it's by and for consenting adults, nothing should be forbidden."
In June 1983 he stood as an Anti-Censorship/Reform of Obscene Publications Acts candidate against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the constituency of Finchley at the General Election, he is a past member of the Council of the British Actors' Equity Association and a member of both the National Secular Society and the British Humanist Association. David has participated in numerous TV and radio debates, interviews and 'phone-ins' on censorship and often contributes articles to various publications and undertaken speaking engagements on the issue.
In private life, David was a grand, convivial character, who loved good company, good food, good drink, and classical music. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer early in 2012, and its progress was so rapid that he had no time to stop being the man his friends had all known and loved. He faced his end with the equanimity of a true follower of Epicurus. He died peacefully and in his sleep at Trinity Hospice in Clapham at approximately 5:30pm with his dear friend Penny and goddaughter Nikki by his side. He was 81. His funeral was at Mortlake Crematorium on the 17th July 2012. - Writer
- Composer
- Music Department
Donald Ibrahím Swann (30 September 1923 - 23 March 1994) was a Welsh-born composer, musician and entertainer. He was one half of Flanders and Swann, writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders.
Donald Swann was born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales. His father, Herbert Alfredovich Swann, was a Russian doctor of English descent, from the expatriate community that started out as the Muscovy Company. His mother, Naguimé Sultán Swann (born Piszóva), was a Turkmen-Russian nurse from Ashgabat, now part of Turkmenistan. They were refugees from the Russian Revolution. Swann's great-grandfather, Alfred Trout Swan, a draper from Lincolnshire, emigrated to Russia in 1840 and married the daughter of the horologer to the Tsars. Some time later the family acquired a second 'n' to their surname. His uncle Alfred wrote the first biography of Alexander Scriabin in English.
The family moved to London, where Swann attended Dulwich College Preparatory School and Westminster School (where he first met Michael Flanders).
In 1941 Swann was awarded an exhibition to Christ Church, Oxford, to read modern languages. In 1942 he registered as a conscientious objector and served with the Friends' Ambulance Unit (a Quaker relief organisation) in Egypt, Palestine and Greece. After the war, Swann returned to Oxford to read Russian and Modern Greek.
A chance meeting between Swann and Flanders in 1948 led to the start of their professional partnership. They began writing songs and light opera, Swann writing the music and Flanders writing the words. Their songs were performed by artists such as Ian Wallace and Joyce Grenfell. They subsequently wrote two two-man revues, At the Drop of a Hat and At the Drop of Another Hat, which they performed all over the world until their partnership ended in 1967.
At the same time, Swann was maintaining a prolific musical output, writing the music for several operas and operettas, including a full-length version of C. S. Lewis's Perelandra, and a setting of J. R. R. Tolkien's poems from The Lord of the Rings to music in The Road Goes Ever On collection. In 1953-59 Swann provided music for seven plays by Henry Reed on the BBC Third Programme, generally known as the Hilda Tablet plays for one of the fictional characters, a lady composer of avant-garde "musique concrete". Besides incidental music, Swann composed for this character an opera, "Emily Butter" and several other complete works.
A lifelong friendship with Sydney Carter resulted in scores of songs, the best known being "The Youth of the Heart" which reappeared in At the Drop of A Hat, and a musical Lucy & the Hunter. After his partnership with Flanders ended, Swann continued to give solo concerts and to write for other singers. He also formed the Swann Singers and toured with them in the 1970s. Throughout the 1980s and early '90s he continued performing in various combinations with singers and colleagues and as a solo artist. In the later years of his life he 'discovered' Victorian poetry and composed some of his most profound and moving music to the words of William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Oscar Wilde and others. He wrote a number of hymn tunes which appear in modern standard hymn books.
Donald Swann was married twice; he married Janet Oxborrow in 1955 and they were divorced in 1983; his second wife was the art historian Alison Smith. In 1992 he was diagnosed with cancer. He died at in South London on 23 March 1994, survived by both wives and two children from his first marriage: Rachel and Natasha.
It is estimated that Swann wrote or set to music nearly 2,000 songs during his career.