Come Back, Cumberbatch!

People are clamouring for another series of Sherlock [calm down, dears, Mark Gatiss has already announced it is in the pipeline] but if you really want more Benedict, you can always listen to “Cabin Pressure” on Radio 4 Extra, where he is heard alongside the formidable Stephanie Cole and others.

This is a Sitcom about “an airline for whom no job is too small but many, many jobs are too difficult” BC plays Martin, a young pilot with some incompetent colleagues. It began in 2008, but Series 1 is currently being repeated on R4extra. Here’s an early clip – presumably written before he took on the Sherlock role!

Elementary!

Two more pictures- Stephanie Cole [born 1941] and Benedict’s mother, the older actress Wanda Ventham [born 1935]

One has spent her entire career specialising in elderly battleaxes – the other in playing attractive blondes. I cannot find a photo of SC looking young and sexy [nor yet one of WV looking old and haggard]

Some more trivia; The surname Carlton used at one time by Benedict and his actor father Timothy is really their middle name. It originates from their Barbados ancestors. One ancestor was called Abraham Carlton and he changed his surname to Cumberbatch by royal assent in order to inherit the family slave plantations in Barbados under the terms of his grandfather's will as there were no male descendants. The surname Cumberbatch is now carried by many of the black descendants of the slaves that lived and worked on the plantations. Barbados slaves did not have surnames but following the abolition of slavery they needed a surname in order to be baptised, married or buried in church; so many took the surname of their plantation owner.

The middle name Carlton has been carried by almost all of Benedict's ancestors since. When Ben started his acting career, he used the surname Carlton, but then was advised to keep Cumberbatch as it was more memorable. Methinks this young man would be memorable if his surname was simply Smith or Jones!