Entertainment Swindon

James Saxon

James Saxon was born in Swindon, William James Smyth on 12th June 1955. A distinguished character actor with 50 credits to his name including some of the best loved British TV series such as Lovejoy, A Touch of Frost, Poldark, Boon, Brass and Dr Who.

He began his career in British television productions in the early 1980s, and as the decade progressed he became an in-demand charismatic support actor.

He was known for the plump physique and expressive moon face that he developed in his thirties, and for his acting range, from frenetic intensity and garrulousness to refined genteel introspection. To the mid-1980s generation of British children he was known for his role as Roland Rat’s inept agent, D’Arcy DeFarcy, who would mistakenly refer to his client as “Reynard”.

Sadly Saxon passed away on 2nd July 2003.

Nick Hewer

Born in Swindon in 1944. An on-screen advisor to Sir Alan Sugar, founder of Amstrad, in BBC’s The Apprentice. Hewer’s company handled Amstrad’s PR from 1983 until the late 1990s, but the pair became friends – hence Sugar’s invitation to Hewer to join him on screen on the highly popular BBC TV series between 2005 and 2014.

Hewer was born in Swindon on 17 February 1944. His mother was Mary Patricia Hewer and his father, John David Radbourn Hewer who was a senior partner of Hewer, Spriggs and Wilson, a veterinary practice in the Old Town area of Swindon. They met when both were university students in Dublin. The family lived in Old Town and Hewer was educated at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school in County Kildare, Ireland. Hewer has two sisters and two brothers.

Hewer and the ex-Amstrad owner Alan Sugar became friends through their working relationship. As well as The Apprentice, Hewer became the hoast of the Channel 4 show Countdown on 9th January 2012. Hewer has also presented a four part BBC2 series called Farm Fixer and presented BBC1 show The Town that Never Retired and appeared on BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are.

Hewer has also appeared on the panel shows Would I Lie to You? (2011), Ask Rhod Gilbert (2011), Have I Got News for You (2011, 2012, 2014, 2016), Room 101 (2012) and Big Star’s Little Star (2015).

In 2022 Hewer and a group of six other celebrity contestants took part in BBC series Pilgrimage.

In 2023, Hewer appeared on a celebrity edition of The Weakest Link ended up being voted off in the first round.

Dean Ashton 
Born in Swindon in 1983. Premiership footballer with West Ham, who made his international debut for England against Trinidad & Tobago in June 2008. Likened to Alan Shearer and tipped to become an England regular, Ashton was unlucky with injuries, never recovering from a broken ankle sustained in a training ground tackle with Shaun Wright-Phillips in 2007, and eventually announcing his retirement from the game in 2009, aged just 26.

Sophie Grigson

Born in Swindon in 1959. Celebrity chef and a best-selling writer of cookery books. Sophie has also written food columns for several national newspapers, but has a degree in mathematics and previously worked as a production manager on pop videos.

Born Hester Grigson, she is the daughter of food writer Jane Grigson and poet/writer Geoffrey Grigson.

Diana Dors 

Born Diana Mary Fluck on 23rd October 1931 was an English actress and singer. And probably the most famous celebrity born in Swindon.

Dors came to public notice as a blonde bombshell, much in the style of Americans Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Mamie Van Doren. Dors was promoted by her first husband, Dennis Hamilton, mostly in sex film-comedies and risqué modelling. After it was revealed that Hamilton had been defrauding her, she continued to play up to her established image, and she made tabloid headlines with the parties reportedly held at her house.

Later, she showed talent as a performer on TV, in recordings, and in cabaret, and gained new public popularity as a regular chat-show guest. She also gave well-regarded film performances at different points in her career.

According to David Thomson, “Dors represented that period between the end of the war and the coming of Lady Chatterley in paperback, a time when sexuality was naughty, repressed, and fit to burst.”

Dors was born in Swindon, on 23rd October 1931 at the Haven Nursing Home. Her mother, Winifred Maud Mary Payne, was married to Albert Edward Sidney Fluck, a railway clerk. Mary had been having an affair with another man, and when she announced she was pregnant with Diana, she admitted she had no idea if the other man or her husband was the father.

Diana was educated at a small private school, Selwood House, on Bath Road, Swindon, from which she was eventually expelled.  Diana repeatedly talked and otherwise misbehaved during French lessons given by an elderly Czech Jewish refugee, who admonished her, “Pay attention. After the war, you will be able to go on holiday to France and speak with the locals.” She replied, “Who wants to go to silly old France anyway?”, at which point he threw a stick of chalk at her. She caught the chalk and threw it back at him, hitting him, for which she was expelled.

During the war, Diana dated a boy called Desmond Morris from the Boys’ High School, also on Bath Road, Swindon. Morris, who was from one of the town’s wealthier, more prominent families, used to take her aboard his rowing boat on the lake in his family’s garden. The garden and lake now comprise Queen’s Park in Swindon. In the late 1960s, Morris (a zoologist) became famous as the author of The Naked Ape and presenter of the TV series adapted from the book.

She enjoyed the cinema; her heroines from the age of eight onwards were Hollywood actresses Veronica Lake, Lana Turner, and Jean Harlow.

Towards the end of the war, Dors entered a beauty contest to find a pin-up girl for Soldier Magazine; she came in third place. This led to work as a model in art classes and she began to appear in such local theatre productions as A Weekend in Paris and Death Takes a Holiday.

Having excelled in her elocution studies, after lying about her age, at 14 she was offered a place to study at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), becoming the college’s youngest student, starting in January 1946.

Dors acted in public theatre pieces for LAMDA productions, one of which was seen by casting director Eric L’Epine Smith. He suggested Dors for what became the actor’s screen debut in the noir film The Shop at Sly Corner (1947). Dors was cast in a walk-on role that developed into a speaking part. Her pay rate was £8 per day for three days.

During the signing of contracts, in agreement with her father, she changed her contractual surname to Dors, the maiden name of her maternal grandmother; this was at the suggestion of her mother Mary.

Returning to LAMDA two weeks later, she was asked by her agent to audition for Holiday Camp (1947) by dancing a jitterbug with young actor John Blythe. Gainsborough Studios gave her the part at a rate of £10 per day for four days.

Dors’ third film was Dancing with Crime (1947), shot at Twickenham Studios opposite Richard Attenborough during the coldest winter for nearly 50 years, for which she was paid £10 per day for 15 days.

Dors’ performance attracted interest in Hollywood. In February 1956, she guest-starred on a TV special Bob Hope made in England.

In May 1956, Dors signed a contract with RKO to support George Gobel in I Married a Woman. She left Southampton on board the Queen Elizabeth for New York City and then to Hollywood. 

Dors career spanned many films with a hugely successful Hollywood career before moving back to the UK where she continued to stay in the headlines and appear on TV. Towards the end of her life, underwent surgery twice for cancerous tumours. She collapsed at her home near Windsor with acute stomach pains and died on 4th May 1984, aged 52, at the BMI Princess Margaret Hospital in Windsor from a recurrence of ovarian cancer, first diagnosed two years before.

Tim Smith

Born in Swindon in 1961. Radio presenter, who appears daily with Steve Wright, on his Radio 2 programme on weekday afternoons, and sits in for other major Radio 2 presenters when they are on leave. He is best known for presenting the show’s ‘factoids’, but has also helped with interviewing the programme’s star guests, including Sir Paul McCartney, Tom Cruise and Tony Blair.

Tom Wisdom

Born in Swindon in 1973. Heart-throb actor, known for his film, TV and stage roles. He played Tom Ferguson in Coronation Street, featured in 24 episodes of Sky TV’s Mile High, but now has a reputation as a handsome film actor, capable of work in a range of genres. He appears in Richard Curtis’s 2009 comedy about pirate radio, The Boat That Rocked.

Antony Micallef

Born in Swindon in 1975. Renowned contemporary artist who has exhibited paintings and sculptures at Tate Britain and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and other prestigious international galleries. He is best known for using cultural icons and corporate logos in his work, and his gritty and often dark style has led Micallef to be likened to Francis Bacon.

Angel Long

Born in Swindon in 1980. One of Britain’s best-known porn stars, and a presenter of late-night cable TV programmes. Her real name is Sarah Read. She has been nothing if not prolific. According to the Internet Movie Database, she featured in over 168 different movies between 2000 and 2008 – none of them with titles suitable for a family oriented website!

The tall 6ft slim, and leggy blonde Angel Long was born on 21st November 1980 in Swindon and was a county level swimmer growing up. Angel worked as a nanny and on a construction site mixing concrete and painting houses prior to her involvement in the adult entertainment industry. Long first began performing in explicit hardcore movies in her early 20s in 2001; she started out playing naughty teenagers before eventually graduating to portraying equally naughty college girls.

Long runs her own official website and more recently has been producing, directing, and starring in her own movies for the adult channel Television X.

Thaila Zucchi

Born in Swindon 19th January 1981. Pop star turned actress and TV presenter. She was a member of allSTARS*, but since 2002 has been seen in a range of different TV programmes, including Balls of Steel, The IT Crowd and comedies Star Stories and Not Going Out.

She also featured in Big Brother 8, when she posed as an Australian housemate while acting as a programme ‘mole’.