TV Authors

Lionel Hardcastle – author of My Life in Kenya

Check out the episode “The Book Signing” on As Time Goes By - Series 1&2 - Disc 3 (1992)

A novel about life in Africa and not a mention of Judy the Chimp and Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion from Daktari or even Kimba; Lionel Hardcastle’s memoir is more the stuff of post-war colonial life on a coffee plantation. Fate conspires to reunite Lionel with his pre-war love Jean after he hires her daughter to type up the final draft of his manuscript. This episode sees a nervous Lionel and Jean preparing for the launch of his book. Previously, at a lecture to promote the book, Lionel’s agent Alistair’s inflatable elephant stunt has seen a veritable stampede of animal activists who mistakenly think Lionel was an ivory hunter. Will Alistair’s stacking of the book launch crowd with hired autograph hunters produce a similar debacle?

Jessica Fletcher – mystery writer

Check out the episode “Magnum on Ice: Part 2” on Murder, She Wrote - Season 3 - Disc 6 (1986)

When not solving crime, Thomas Magnum’s job is as security at the Hawaiian estate of never seen paperback writer Robin Masters; so when estate manager Higgins and an old editor buddy of Masters, Pamela Bates, are run off the road, Magnum offers to investigate. Magnum’s offer is rebuffed by the editor, though. She prefers to call in her own investigator from out of town – from Cabot Cove, Maine. The retired English teacher turned sleuth turns out to be Jessica Fletcher, and we have a classic 1980’s two part crossover between hit shows Magnum PI and Murder She Wrote. Magnum doesn’t have time to get his moustache and Detroit Tigers baseball cap out of joint; he will have to accept Jessica’s help himself when he’s framed for two murders.

Patrick Glover – crime novelist

Check out the episode “I Should Have Danced All Night” on Father, Dear Father - Series 1 (1972)

Misunderstandings arising from overheard conversations with the local parish’s ladies auxiliary in the drawing room; suddenly it’s an embarrassed ‘more tea, vicar’ and applause over rolling credits while the cast hams and improvises until it all fades to black. Father, Dear Father is pretty much your traditional British theatre bedroom farce brought to the small screen. You also get series lead Patrick Glover (Patrick Cargill), the author of sordid crime thrillers. Patrick, despite his ‘fuddy duddy’ protestations, appears to embrace the social and sexual revolution his gorgeous blonde daughters Anna and Karen are living out – at least a lot more than other so-called ‘liberal 60s TV fathers’ of the day. Patrick’s wardrobe, usually cravat combined with a blazer or smoking jacket of sorts, is also very Carnaby Street. This episode is an example of the aforementioned pure farce; Anna and Karen’s friend Steven (Richard O’Sullivan, later Robin in Man About the House and Robin’s Nest) suspects Patrick of being the menacing ‘Hampstead Heath Romeo’. You just know they’ll be a rational explanation for it all. Look out also for a younger June Whitfield (Gran Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous), and for Patrick’s giant St Bernard, H. G. Wells, named after his favourite author.

Cosmo Kramer – author of a coffee table book about coffee tables

Check out the episode “The Opposite” on Seinfeld - Season 5 - Disc 3 (1990)

Kramer: I'm starting the book tour! First stop - Regis and Kathie Lee!

Jerry: You're going on Regis and Kathie Lee?

Kramer: Oh, you better believe it.

Jerry: I'll loan you my puffy shirt.

Rebuffed when Elaine wouldn’t mention his latest scheme to her boss at Pendant Publishing, Mr. Lippman, Kramer took it upon himself to sew the seed of his latest venture to Lippman when he sold him the cigar store Indian. In this episode Kramer is preparing for an appearance on Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee to promote his ingenious coffee table book about coffee tables. Kramer’s book, which even folds out into a mini coffee table, is up there with his other gems including his idea for beach scented cologne (later pilfered by Calvin Klein). How long Kramer’s TV appearance lasts ultimately comes down to the standard of quality of the network’s house coffee. At least he doesn’t humiliate himself by wearing his friend’s designer puffy pirate shirt, like Jerry did when he went on the Today show with Bryant Gumble.

Kimberley Taylor – young prodigy writes suburban satire (under pseudonym of cousin Campbell Todd)

Check out the episode “Cause and Effect” on Always Greener - Season 2: Vol. 2 - Disc 2 (2002)

Cosmo Kramer isn’t the only TV author to go on TV to promote his book. In the Australian drama Always Greener there is a nice bit of cross-promotion by the show’s producers, the Seven Network. Two cousins from the fictional show, Kim Taylor and Campbell Todd, make a mocked-up appearance on the real-life Channel Seven breakfast program Sunrise. Why are the TWO cousins appearing on the show? That’s part of the plotline. The show itself is a sea change dramedy where a brother moves his family from Sydney to his sister’s family home in country New South Wales, while the sister swaps in the other direction. Kim Taylor, part of the family now living in the country, writes a book based very firmly on the real lives of the families and their acquaintances; names have been changed, but the characters are still very recognisable – hence her decision to let her cousin Campbell Todd claim the work as his own. Kim’s mum and dad also make a telly appearance on the fictional regional morning program Good Morning Warrigong defending their daughters’ right to pen the book. Abe Forsythe is amusing as Campbell, assuming the mantle of tortured artist, beret and all.

Jason King – author of the Mark Caine adventure novels

Check out the episode “If It's Got to Go, It's Got to Go” on Jason King - The Complete Chapters: Special Edition - Disc 4 (1971)

Jason King: A bit too early for coffee; I'll have a Scotch

Think Jason King, think Austin Powers! Spinning off from the swinging sixties spy show, Department S., King (played by Peter Wyngarde) writes thrillers featuring his fictional Bond style hero Mark Caine; but King just can’t help getting in trouble with cute women in strange locales. Here he’s off to a health spa full of hot chicks in Munich. One of the first he meets is Nylene, played by Patrick Glover’s daughter Anna in Father, Dear Father, Natasha Pyne. She warns Jason there’s murder in the health spa, but the evil Dr Litz (John Le Mesurier, Sergeant Wilson from Dad’s Army) and the Camp Commandant Sister Dryker get to her first. Worth checking out just to see Yootha Joyce (Mildred Roper from George and Mildred) as the dominatrix style Sister Dryker – maybe if she had role-played as this character in George and Mildred, George’s libido may have risen.

Philip E. Marlow - Chandleresque novelist

Check out The Singing Detective - Disc 1 (1986)

Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun',

Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun',

Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun',

Oh, hear the word of the Lord.

In Dennis Potter’s noirish mystery musical, crime writer Philip E Marlow lies in hospital receiving treatment for the psoriasis that leaves his skin covered in sores. The story itself revolves around three worlds; Marlow hallucinating in pain and escaping to the fantasy world of his Chandleresque novel ‘The Singing Detective’, the day to day world of the hospital itself, and flashbacks to Marlow’s childhood in London during World War II – in particular his mother’s suicide, and the haunting memory of the time he let another student, Mark Binney, take the blame for Marlow’s own crime of crapping on a teacher’s desk. Potter again uses his surreal dramatic device, first used in his earlier work Pennies From Heaven, of characters breaking into song at any moment. Innocent 1940s songs like The Teddy Bears’ Picnic, Dry Bones and Cruising Down the River are transformed and eerily add to the overall sense of darkness and foreboding. Michael Gambon stars as Marlow, with Minder’s Detective Chisholm (Patrick Malahide) playing three characters including the grown up Binney.

H.G. Wells – futurist novelist

Check out Doctor Who - Time Lash (1985)

There goes a dog-fish, chased by a cat-fish, in flew a sea robin, watch out for that piranha, there goes a narwhal, here comes a bikini whale! (Rock Lobster, The B-52s)

Throughout his various incarnations, the Doctor has often name-dropped his encounters with famous people over the ages including Don Bradman; so it shouldn’t be a surprise when here he meets a yet to be published H.G. Wells (The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds) – the evidence is there at the end of the episode when the character Herbert hands the Doctor his card which reads “Herbert George Wells”. The Doctor originally finds Herbert back in Scotland in 1885 when the Doctor’s chasing Vena from the planet Karfel. Unless the Doctor returns Vena to Karfel, his assistant Peri will be turned into a Morlox (a lizard like creature). Look out for when the Doctor ultimately banishes the evil half Karfelon-half Morlox ruler, the Borad, through his own Time Lash to twelfth century Scotland – the inference being the Borad is what we now know as the Loch Ness Monster.

Norman Mailer – real life Pulitzer Prize winner!

Check out the episode "Norman Mailer, I'm Pregnant!" on Gilmore Girls - Season 5 - Disc 2 (2004)

Sppkie: Norman Mailer, I'm pregnant!

Norman: Congratulations.

So the plot calls for a well known author using Lorelai Gilmore’s ‘Dragonfly Inn’ to conduct interviews with journalists. All the author orders is iced tea. This irks chef Sookie who’s upset at already not serving enough meals. You want to cast Pulitzer Prize winning writer Norman Mailer, but he says no; never mind, offer the role of the journalist interviewing the author to Mailer’s actor son Stephen, and suddenly Norman changes his mind and accepts the gig. You have an author cameo full of cred that fits nicely in with Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s intended ‘read a book, read the classics; I know you are cute, but you can still wear lipstick and read Dickens’ demographic. All you need to do is watch and try to guess which character makes the exhortation to the late American icon from whence the episode gets its title.

Germaine Greer – feminist author icon

Check out the episode five on Extras - Season 2 - Disc 1 (2006)

TV’s the last place you’d probably expect to find feminist author and academic (and Steve Irwin fan) Germaine Greer. Delve into Germaine’s telly CV though and it’s not just late night existentialism forums with Clive James; she’s made a cameo alongside Richard E Grant, Sylvia Anderson (Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds) and Suzi Quatro in the Absolutely Fabulous episode when Eddy has the hallucinogenic dream while under anaesthetic; and let’s not forget Germaine’s fifteen minutes of fame in the 2005 edition of the UK’s Celebrity Big Brother! When she walked from the house after just five days she cited excuses including psychological cruelty, bullying from the producers, filthy living conditions, and the publicity seeking antics of her fellow housemates. Celebrity Big Brother contestants are publicity seekers? Gee Germaine, who would ever have thought?!? Here in Extras she pops up not once but twice in the ‘Andy Millman gay kiss’ episode.