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The Smoking Room
''The Smoking Room'' is a British television sitcom written by Brian Dooley, who won a BAFTA for the series in 2005. The first series, consisting of eight episodes, was originally transmitted on BBC Three between 29 June and 17 August 2004. The Christmas Special was first transmitted on 21 December 2004. A second series of eight episodes began airing on 26 July 2005. The first series, including the Christmas Special, was released on DVD by the BBC on 6 February 2006 and on CD in a four-disc set on 4 April 2005 (without the Christmas Special). The second series was released on 16 October 2006; a boxed set containing both series was released on the same date. A third series was not commissioned; in an interview for the BBC News website on 30 November 2006, Robert Webb (who played Robin) said in passing, "...there is no more ''Smoking Room''". England's smoking ban, which prohibits indoor smoking in workplaces, came into force on 1 July 2007, as a result of which internal smoking ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sitcom
A sitcom (short for situation comedy or situational comedy) is a genre of comedy produced for radio and television, that centers on a recurring cast of character (arts), characters as they navigate humorous situations within a consistent setting, such as a home, workplace, or community. Unlike sketch comedy, which features different characters and settings in each Sketch comedy, skit, sitcoms typically maintain plot continuity across episodes. This continuity allows for the development of storylines and characters over time, fostering audience engagement and investment in the characters' lives and relationships. History The structure and concept of a sitcom have roots in earlier forms of comedic theater, such as farces and comedy of manners. These forms relied on running gags to generate humor, but the term ''sitcom'' emerged as radio and TV adapted these principles into a new medium. The word was not commonly used until the 1950s. Early television sitcoms were often filme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Age
New Age is a range of Spirituality, spiritual or Religion, religious practices and beliefs that rapidly grew in Western world, Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclecticism, eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consider it a religious movement, its adherents typically see it as spiritual or as a unification of mind, body, and spirit, and rarely use the term ''New Age'' themselves. Scholars often call it the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest it is better seen as a Social environment, ''milieu'' or ''zeitgeist''. As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age drew heavily upon esoteric traditions such as the occultism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the work of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as Spiritualism (movement), Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy (Blavatskian), Theosophy. More immediately, it arose from mid-20th-century influen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neuroticism
Neuroticism is a personality trait associated with negative emotions. It is one of the Big Five traits. Individuals with high scores on neuroticism are more likely than average to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, shame, frustration, envy, jealousy, pessimism, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. Such people are thought to respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations, such as minor frustrations, as appearing hopelessly difficult. Their behavioral responses may include procrastination, substance use, and other maladaptive behaviors, which may temporarily aid in relieving negative emotions and in generating positive ones. People with high scores on the neuroticism index are thought to be at risk of developing common mental disorders ( mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and substance use disorders have been studied), and the sorts of symptoms once referred to as " neuroses". Individuals who score low in neu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeremy Swift
Jeremy Paul Swift (born 27 June 1960) is an English actor. He studied drama at Guildford School of Acting from 1978 to 1981 and worked almost exclusively in theatre throughout the 1980s, working with companies such as Deborah Warner's Kick Theatre company and comedy performance-art group The People Show. During this period he also appeared in numerous television commercials. In the 1990s, he acted at the National Theatre alongside David Tennant and Richard Wilson in Phyllida Lloyd's production of '' What the Butler Saw''. Swift has acted in films such as Robert Altman's murder mystery ''Gosford Park'' (2001), Michael Apted's historical drama ''Amazing Grace'' (2006), and the family adventure film ''Mary Poppins Returns'' (2018). He also appeared in '' Vanity Fair'' (1998), ''Foyle's War'' (2013-2015), ''Downton Abbey'' (2013-2015), '' The Durrells'' (2016), and ''National Treasure'' (2016). In 2021, he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flammable
A combustible material is a material that can burn (i.e., sustain a flame) in air under certain conditions. A material is flammable if it ignites easily at ambient temperatures. In other words, a combustible material ignites with some effort and a flammable material catches fire immediately on exposure to flame. The degree of flammability in air depends largely upon the volatility of the material this is related to its composition-specific vapour pressure, which is temperature dependent. The quantity of vapour produced can be enhanced by increasing the surface area of the material forming a mist or dust. Take wood as an example. Finely divided wood dust can undergo explosive flames and produce a blast wave. A piece of paper (made from pulp) catches on fire quite easily. A heavy oak desk is much harder to ignite, even though the wood fibre is the same in all three materials. Common sense (and indeed scientific consensus until the mid-1700s) would seem to suggest that mate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, the term is also often used in the show business, entertainment business to refer to Actor, actors, Musician, musicians, Singing, singers, Dance, dancers and other Performing arts#Performers, performers, in which they are known as ''Artiste'' instead. ''Artiste'' (French) is a variant used in English in this context, but this use has become rare. The use of the term "artist" to describe Writer, writers is valid, but less common, and mostly restricted to contexts such as critics' reviews; "author" is generally used instead. Dictionary definitions The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' defines the older, broader meanings of the word "artist": * A learned person or Master of Arts * One who pursues a practical science, traditionally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toffo (toffee)
Toffo was a British brand of toffee, produced by Mackintosh's. They came individually wrapped, in a roll, and were available in plain, mint, and assorted (apple, chocolate, strawberry, pineapple, banana, and mint) flavours. It was one of its main brands along with Polo, Quality Street, Toffee Crisp, Fox's Glacier Mints, and Caramac. Its original advertising slogan was "a man's gotta chew what a man's gotta chew". Production was taken over by Rowntree Mackintosh Confectionery after Rowntree's merged with Mackintosh's in 1969. Toffo was discontinued in 2005 before being resurrected by Nestlé, in a small 19.2g tube, produced in the United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E .... References {{Reflist Food brands of the United Kingdom Defunct brands Brit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emotional Blackmail
The term emotional blackmail was popularized by psychotherapist Susan Forward about controlling people in relationships and the theory that fear, obligation and guilt (FOG) are the transactional dynamics at play between the controller and the person being controlled. Understanding these dynamics is useful to anyone trying to extricate themself from the controlling behavior of another person and deal with their own compulsions to do things that are uncomfortable, undesirable, burdensome, or self-sacrificing for others. General The first documented use of "emotional blackmail" appeared in 1947 in the ''Journal of the National Association of Deans of Women'' in the article "Discipline and Group Psychology". The term was used to describe one type of problematic classroom control model often used by teachers. Esther Vilar, an Argentine physician and anti-feminist writer, also used the term "emotional blackmail" in the early 1970s to describe a parenting strategy observed among som ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring a Christian martyrs, martyr named Saint Valentine, Valentine, and through later folk traditions it has also become a significant cultural, religious and commercial celebration of Romance (love), romance and love in many regions of the world. There are a number of martyrdom stories associated with various Saint Valentines connected to February 14, including an account of the imprisonment of Saint Valentine of Rome for ministering to Christians Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, persecuted under the Roman Empire in the third century. According to an early tradition, Saint Valentine restored sight to the blind daughter of his jailer. Numerous later additions to the legend have better related it to the theme of love: tradition maintains that Saint Valentine performed weddings for Christian soldie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pornographic
Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolved from cave paintings, some forty millennia ago, to modern-day virtual reality presentations. A general distinction of adults-only sexual content is made, classifying it as pornography or erotica. The oldest artifacts considered pornographic were discovered in Germany in 2008 and are dated to be at least 35,000 years old. Human enchantment with sexual imagery representations has been a constant throughout history. However, the reception of such imagery varied according to the historical, cultural, and national contexts. The Indian Sanskrit text ''Kama Sutra'' (3rd century CE) contained prose, poetry, and illustrations regarding sexual behavior, and the book was celebrated; while the British English text ''Fanny Hill'' (1748), considered "the first original En ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sex Life
In human sexuality, a sex life is a sector of a person's day-to-day existence which may involve sexual activity or represent the absence of sexual activity. In general parlance, the term can have many sub-meanings and social layers, but generally includes the following: * The individual is able to, on an either regular or semi-regular basis, enter into voluntarily agreed and consensual situations involving partnered sexual activity, i.e. an activity other than ''solo'' masturbation. This would inherently mean there is at least one other person per situation, with or without sexual activity, and regardless of whether or not these situations are sexually monogamous; i.e., a "sex life" can be had just as easily with a long-term sexual partner as it can with multiple partners in rapid succession over a lifetime. The idea of a 'regularly or semi-regularly' sex life varies, but categorizing an individual who is involuntarily celibate (as opposed to voluntary abstinence) as having a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred West
Frederick Walter Stephen West (29 September 1941 – 1 January 1995) was an English serial killer, who committed at least twelve murders between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire, England—the majority with his second wife, Rose West. The victims were girls and young women. At least eight of the murders involved the Wests' sexual gratification and included rape, bondage, torture, and mutilation; the victims' dismembered bodies were typically buried in the cellar or garden of the West residence in Gloucester, which became known as the "House of Horrors". Fred is known to have committed at least two murders on his own; Rose is known to have murdered Fred's stepdaughter, Charmaine. The couple were arrested and charged in 1994. Fred fatally asphyxiated himself while detained on remand at HM Prison Birmingham on 1 January 1995, at which time he and Rose were jointly charged with nine murders, and he with three further murders. In November 1995, Rose was convicted of ten murders ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
