Barry Saunders

It's become a cliché in Britain to call somebody in the entertainment field a national institution – but that's exactly what Dawn French is. As both comedienne and actress (the latter in both comedy and straight parts), she has become one of the best loved entertainers in the country. Her range is not wide (unlike her dimensions – and that's the sort of joke she’d crack), but she is utterly winning in everything he does. And that quality continues in Dear Fatty, a truly entertaining memoir of an event-packed life.

John Considine plays the flamboyant Dr. Death, a thousand-year-old magician who has mastered he art of transferring souls from one body to another and thereby manages to perpetuate himself by jumping from one body to the next. Apparently the Doc is a kindred spirit since his blood is a highly-corrosive acid that can strip flesh from bone.

Fully established as a dramatic, innovative singer with astonishing appeal and energy thanks to her string of excellent '80s releases, Faithfull concluded her renaissance decade with Blazing Away, an excellent live album recorded in New York's St. Anne's Cathedral…