John Campbell Wells (17 November 1936 – 11 January 1998) was an English actor, writer and satirist. The son of a clergyman, Wells was born in Ashford, Kent in 1936. He was educated at Eastbourne College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. Wells started in cabaret at Oxford and began his television career as a writer on That Was The Week That Was, the 1960s weekly satire show that launched the careers of David Frost and Millicent Martin, among others, and also appeared in the television programme Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, as well as in The Secret Policeman's Other Ball. Besides making cameo appearances in films such as Casino Royale (1967) and Rentadick (1972), television dramas like Casanova (1987), an episode of Lovejoy (1991) and comedy shows like Yes Minister, he also wrote television scripts and screenplays, such as Princess Caraboo (1994).
Links To Peel
In November 1968 the satirist John Wells guested on the Night Ride programme hosted by Peel. Wells criticised the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson, accusing him of indifference to the suffering caused by the civil war in Nigeria (pictures of starving children in the rebel province of Biafra were at the time unavoidable, both in newspapers and on TV). Wilson, notoriously sensitive to media criticism, demanded an apology from the BBC, which Peel was obliged to read out on the following programme.