Ned Sherrin

Edward George "Ned" Sherrin, CBE (18 February 1931 – 1 October 2007) was an English broadcaster, author and stage director. He qualified as a barrister and then worked in independent television before joining the BBC. He appeared in a variety of radio and television satirical shows and theatre shows, some of which he also directed.

Early life

The son of Thomas Adam Sherrin, a farmer, and his wife, Dorothy Finch Drewett,^[1] Sherrin was born at Low Ham^[2] on the Somerset Levels.

He was educated at Sexey's School, in Bruton, Somerset,^[3][4] and rendered his national service in the Royal Signals,^[5] being commissioned as an officer in 1950.^[6]

Although he read law at Exeter College, Oxford, and subsequently qualified as a barrister,^[7] he became involved in theatre at Oxford and joined British television at the founding of independent television in 1956, producing shows for ATV in Birmingham.

Career

Sherrin joined the BBC in 1957 as a temporary production assistant, then began working for them as a producer in "Television Talks" in 1963.^[8] Specialising in satirical shows, he worked extensively in film production and television.

In 1962 he was responsible for the first satirical television series That Was The Week That Was^[9] starring David Frost and Millicent Martin and its successors Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life and BBC-3. His other shows and films included Up Pompeii!, Up the Front, The Cobblers of Umbridge and The Virgin Soldiers. In 1978, he also hosted We Interrupt This Week, a lively and humorous news events quiz featuring two teams of well-known journalists and columnists sparring against one another. The show was a production of WNET/Channel 13 New York.

Sherrin produced and directed numerous theatre productions in London's West End, including Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell and the landmark musical Side By Side By Sondheim. He received an Olivier Award in 1984 for directing and conceiving The Ratepayers' Iolanthe, an adaptation by Sherrin and Alistair Beaton of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Iolanthe.^[10]

On BBC Radio 4, from 1986, he presented a light entertainment show on Saturday mornings (latterly evenings) called Loose Ends,^[11][12] and Counterpoint, a quiz show about all types of music, until forced off the air when his voice succumbed to throat cancer. In his autobiography, (So, anyway), John Cleese describes Sherrin as 'money mad' and 'treacherous'.

He also toured the UK with his one-man show An Evening of Theatrical Anecdotes.^[11]

Sherrin wrote two volumes of autobiography, several books of quotations and anecdotes, as well as some fiction; and several works in collaboration with Caryl Brahms.

Personal life

Openly gay,^[13][14] he was a patron of the London Gay Symphony Orchestra,^[15] as well as the Stephen Sondheim Society of Singapore up until 1995. Sherrin was awarded a CBE in the 1997 New Year's honours list.^[16][17] He was diagnosed with unilateral vocal cord paralysis in January 2007^[18] and died of complications of throat cancer on 1 October 2007, aged 76.^[19]

Selected works

• Sherrin, Ned (1983). A small thing – like an earthquake. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 
• Sherrin, Ned; Shand, Neil (1984). 1956 and all that: a memorable history of England since the war to end all wars (Two). London: M Joseph. 
• Sherrin, Ned (1984). Cutting edge, or, "Back in the knife-box, Miss Sharp": Ned Sherrin's anthology of wit. London: J M Dent. 
• Brahms, Caryl; Sherrin, Ned (1984). Song by song: the lives and work of 14 great lyric writers. Egerton, Bolton: R Anderson Publications. 
• Brahms, Caryl; Sherrin, Ned (1986). Too dirty for the windmill. London: Constable. 
• Sherrin, Ned (1991). Ned Sherrin's theatrical anecdotes: a connoisseur's collection of legends, stories, and gossip. London: Virgin. 
• Sherrin, Ned (1993). Ned Sherrin in his anecdotage: a classic collection from the master raconteur. London: Virgin. 
• Sherrin, Ned (1995). The Oxford dictionary of humorous quotations. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press. 
• Sherrin, Ned (1996). Sherrin's year. London: Virgin. 
• Sherrin, Ned (1996). Scratch an actor. London: Sinclair-Stevenson. 
• Brahms, Caryl; Sherrin, Ned (1998). The Mitford girls: a musical. London: Warner/Chappell Music. 
• Sherrin, Ned (2004). I wish I'd said that. New York: Oxford University Press. 
• Sherrin, Ned (2005). Ned Sherrin: the autobiography. London: Little, Brown. 
• Frost, David; Sherrin, Ned (1963). That was the week that was. London: W H Allen. 

References