Stella Street

Celebrities in Surbiton

Stella Street was originally screened on BBC2 from 1998 to 2001. The show followed the antics of a group of American and British celebrities who all happen to live on Stella Street in Surbiton. The main characters in the episodes are played by Scottish comedian John Sessions and Phil Cornwell. The characters themselves are impressions of famous celebrities such as Marlon Brando, Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson and, idiosyncratically, UK football pundit Jimmy Hill.

For example, Stella Street's Jack Nicholson is an inveterate womaniser, drug taker and has a tacky line in Hawaian shirts. Michael Caine is seen as an awkward wanna-be cognoscente in horn-rimmed glasses and a shock of ginger hair. Dirk Bogarde is a posh buffoon only interested in his rose garden and Country Life magazine. Joe Pesci is portrayed in the light of his most well known roles in violent gangster films, while Jimmy Hill inevitably looks dull when talking about the FA Cup Final to plainly disinterested greater celebrities.

Sessions and Cornwell also play other non-celebrity roles including old-world housekeeper, and lifelong Stella Street resident Mrs Huggett, couple-from-hell Pam and Graham Slurry, dopey builder Dean Barraclough and the potentially murderous gardener Len.

A new fifth series is planned for 2008, to be shown on the BBC.