Misfits star to play Shirley Bassey in BBC biopic

Misfits star to play Shirley Bassey in BBC biopic
Misfits star to play Shirley Bassey in BBC biopic

Misfits star Ruth Negga will play Dame Shirley Bassey in a TV drama based on the singer's life. Ruth, who has also appeared in Criminal Justice, will star in the BBC Two show called Shirley Bassey: A Very British Diva. She said: "I'm thrilled to be cast in the role of Shirley Bassey and it's an absolute honour to be playing her in such an intimate story of her life." The hour-long film traces the life of the Cardiff-born singer who grew up in poverty in the city's docklands. The daughter of a British mother and Nigerian father, she left school at 15 to work in a factory and was discovered singing in working men's clubs. Her career almost ended before it began after she became pregnant at 17, but she survived the scandal of being a young unmarried mother to become a massive star, scoring hits including the themes to the James Bond films Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever. Scott & Bailey star Lesley Sharp plays Bassey's mother Eliza, and Henry Lloyd-Hughes, who plays bully Mark Donovan in The Inbetweeners, has been cast as her manager and husband Kenneth Hume. The programme is part of a season of BBC Two programmes about mixed-race life in the UK. It is the latest in a string of BBC biopics of entertainment legends. Carry On stars Hattie Jacques and Frankie Howerd have both been the subject of films and the award-winning Eric And Ernie looked at the early days of comic duo Morecambe and Wise.

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.