Alternative comedy and sketch comedy, consisted of Manchester University and Royal Central School graduates Ade Edmondson, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Dawn French, and Jennifer Saunders, who began to aim their talents at television. As "The Comic Strip Presents", the group made over 40 television films for both Channel 4 and BBC. Ben Elton, who had by then become the Comedy Store's next MC, was invited by Rik Mayall to join him as co-writer of BBC2's TV hit sitcom "The Young Ones". However, it was as MC of Channel 4's new comedy show "Saturday Live" that Elton found fame in his own right.
Ben Roberts (writer) 22, Roberts was successfully running his own independent public-relations counseling firm and was contributing comedy material to several Broadway musicals. In 1941, he collaborated with another young writer, Ivan Goff, on the theatrical suspense thriller "Portrait in Black". He briefly worked in films in the early 1940s, returned to the stage for six years, then settled in Hollywood permanently in 1949. All of his subsequent film efforts, as both screenwriter and producer, were in collaboration with his old friend Ivan Goff. The pair contributed to the success of such varied projects as "White Heat" (1949), "Captain Horatio Hornblower" (1951), "Shake