40) PAUL ROSE (AKA Mr Biffo, writer and Teletext legend) - When it comes to erstwhile proponents of text on your telly we could have gone for Philip 'I hear you' Hodson or even Sam Brady The Man They Cannot Gag, but even these two pale in comparison to the one-man industry that is Paul Rose. Still most highly regarded in TVC Towers for his 10 years writing Teletext's Digitiser pages, we have fond memories of his various EMAP-baiting columns, his run-ins with the Teletext sub-editors and - of course - the giant spunking cock he plastered across our telly screens when he filed his final edition in 2003. All this in a computer-games section, by the way. Latterly, Rose has been getting quite ubiquitous, writing loads for 'proper' television. He's done some time on EastEnders (but we won't hold that against him as he did get Dirty Den to say "cunt" and also referenced Leslie Grantham's first TV role in Dr Who), the Sooty show, My Parents Are Aliens and he's currently working on a sitcom for Channel 4 via Hat Trick Productions. For those hankering after more Digitiser-style musings, however, there's still his monthly column in the always posh Edge magazine where he's been a welcome replacement for some crap Japanese pundit, er, we're told. Set on including as many subversive elements in his work as possible, gloriously indiscreet about those who piss him off in his professional life ("Five grand for four months of 22 hour days, a ban from writing for anything else, and a constant struggle to try and second-guess the producers and script editors, who appear determined to make writing your episode a living hell") and most importantly of all, a very funny writer, we're glad to say Rose has never quite traded it all in for Charlie Brooker-style visibility beyond the byline and seems prepared to admit (albeit tacitly) that no matter what the future holds we're always going to love him best for his Digitiser pages.

From Paul: "Why, lord be blessed; it's practically an honour to be so lavishly endorsed by one of my favourite organs. And just for completists' sake, let it also be known that the ill-fated, Evil Yvonne-produced CROSSROADS revamp was another Cream-friendly show I worked on. Interestingly, due to ITV's plug-pulling, I wrote several un-filmed episodes of this unjustly overlooked camp classic wannabe. Including the one that was due to follow the episode that became the notorious it-was-all-a-dream-and-Jane-Asher-really-works-in-a-supermarket ending. Oh, and apparently I've been put forward for two Childrens BAFTAs this year for MY PARENTS ARE ALIENS. For an episode which features the non-sequential lines 'My breasts look like two deflated party balloons', and 'I'm always laying eggs. Well, I assume they're eggs'. So, bound to get nominated, then."

39) ALISTAIR McGOWN (Writer, editor, designer) - Move over Dick 'principles' Fiddy, the BFI have found themselves a new vision of shy loveliness in the shape of the co-author of the best telly book released last year - Alistair McGown. Apart from liking Dark Season, The Hill and Beyond is pretty much spot on with everything it says about kids' telly, and we don't mind admitting that there are scores of programmes in it that TV Cream has never heard of, let alone watched, that are covered in commendable detail. More recently, through the BFI's Screenonline initiative (http://www.screenonline.org.uk), Alistair has been a key mover in what we reckon is perhaps the best new "official" television resource - after all anyone who can wangle it so that over 10 minutes of Penda's Fen is accessible online (provided you access the site from a library or school in the UK) is deserving of our recognition. We also have it on pretty good authority that this year's BFI Television Handbook (edited by that man again, McGown) is going to be worth a look too. Besides Alistair pitched up on Steve Wright's radio show in 2003, and that is reason enough, we reckon, to take him out to the car park and give him a damn good praising.

From Alistair: "I shall try to be shorter and less funny than The Collins [see no.14]. Suffice it to say I am delighted to have stumbled upon a peer group (well, maybe Grade's slightly outta my league). I'm currently increasingly busy on the BFI TV Yearbook - we've got a great team of contributors including people like Dick Fiddy, Tise 'big blue/red book' Vahimagi and Barrie MacDonald who used to be IBA/ITC Librarian and worked on the classic ITV/IBA Yearbooks of yore. Should be great - clearly if it's not I'll never work again. I am also presently adding the last few children's entries for screenonline (these'll be available online in good time) while waiting for the Hill and Beyond millions to roll in anyday now. If you are writing to Yvette Fielding can you ask her if she can lend me some episodes of SEAVIEW? It doesn't matter if they're on Betamax, I've got two working decks here."

38) DANNY WALLACE (Journalist and author) - There's something about the erstwhile Join Me leader we find ourselves warming to. Sometimes we like to think it's just because Some Of The Corpses Are Amusing hate him, but that's not enough to sustain this position on alone. The increasing nineties Creaminess of Sega Power and Super Play, he having worked for both? Could make a case, but no. Just the fact his site didn't beat TVC to that Yahoo! award is one reason; a more tangible one is that now he doesn't produce inventive comedy radio (The Boosh, Ross Noble Goes Global) and Dave Gorman TV shows he's become a cult leader, for really it is a cult, who you don't want to chase down with rabid wolves, and then written a highly self-knowing but none the worse for that book about it all. He even briefly became a Richard & Judy reporter and managed not to look worthless in the process (evening, Mr McClean). We're still a bit annoyed that he didn't help Comedy Review run for longer, mind. And why are Ant & Dec thanked in the Join Me acknowledgements?

From Danny: "I was very pleased to read that the fine people at TV Cream are warming to me, and that I made it onto your Top 50 List of Media Movers and Shakers. I intend to keep up the good work, but not in a flashy way; rather, I'd like to move up your list one place at a time so as to not draw too much attention to myself. If all goes to plan, I should be at number one by the year 2042. It's something for us all to look forward to."

37) JIM SHELLEY (TV critic) - Of all the current crop of telly journalists (and the bulk of them are all-too current), Shelley is one of two (see below for the other) who continue to demand the most attention. Since joining The Mirror he's been denied the space and motivation to exercise quite as much caustic analysis and impassioned rhetoric as he wielded at The Guardian, but his ability to select targets, sustain and develop a coherent line of criticism, and wrap it all up in arresting prose flickers on, occasionally flaring up into a wonderful display of pique and pedantry. It's for his seven-year residence as "Tapehead", resident critic of Saturday's Guardian Guide, that Shelley still exercises most respect. His efforts took as foundation the same roving randomness that Clive James pioneered through his own weekly dispatches for The Observer, only Shelley had the added boon of being able to both review and preview programmes: a flexibility that allowed him to indulge in shameless long-running obsessions and feuds, which in turn prompted vociferous and comical responses (Richard E Grant leaving profane answerphone messages, Phil Redmond penning threatening legal letters and posting him a tray of rancid cream), that themselves then became the subject of future columns. Nobody wrote with as much conviction about TV as Shelley did back then; his collected Guardian criticism, Interference, remains the best document of TV in the 1990s around. His energy and emotion, of which he clearly still has loads, deserve a better outlet than The Mirror.

36) DAVID RENWICK - (Writer, Exec Producer) It wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to call Renwick the greatest living British comedy writer; certainly his CV is studded with excellent series throughout the years. TVC staffers have fond memories of the shows he wrote with Andrew Marshall, such as End of Part One, Whoops Apocalypse and Hot Metal, and would love to see them repeated on terrestrial television at some point. His solo work has been even more impressive, and One Foot In The Grave gets our vote in BBC2's Britain's Best Sitcom poll - there's not one dud episode in the set, and the audience laughed longer and louder than on any other series we know. His most recent project has been Jonathan Creek which, certainly in the early series, was one of the best things on television, and if later runs, including the most recent, weren't quite as brilliant, they were still miles ahead of anything else on Saturday night TV. Indeed, watching them after Casualty just showed how distinctive the series is, compared to the focus-grouped, high-turnover series currently making up 90% of the BBC's drama output - no doubt helped by the fact Renwick is its sole writer. The first two series (the best two, of course) have just been released on DVD, episode one accompanied by a marvellous commentary from Renwick himself. Hopefully there'll be many more excellent scripts to come from a wonderful writer - and with a bit of luck he'll be involved in that mooted Two Ronnies revival as well.

35) DAVE GREEN (Half the team behind http://www.ntk.net) - Something of a hero to our friends at Gorilla Salad and publisher of the internet's own "sarcastic weekly technology newsletter", there was a time when we at TV Cream believed that 'Dave Green' was an Alan Smithee-type byline for anonymous web journalists. Then we saw the Collins/Maconie-for-nerds schtick he and Danny O'Brien perfected for shows on London cable station Channel One television, and we distinctly remember a party at Dennis Publishing (attended, bizarrely, by Letitia Dean) possibly in his honour, so we had to admit that he probably existed after all. Of course, since then, he's turned up at every do we've ever been to, including birthday bashes for various popular websites, and is usually to be seen wearing one or more of the subscriber-designed NTK t-shirts - the ones that feature the slogan "in jokes for outcasts" (and, boy, do we understand the meaning of that here at TV Cream!). That all the profits from such merchandise go to worthy causes is admirable in itself, but the main reason Dave makes our list is much more self-serving. For his weekly electronic mailshot has not only introduced us to the delights of TV Go Home (Radio Times parody that attracted a cult following) and Capalert (Lutherian film review site that revels rather too suspiciously in the salacious and sexy), but has also stood up for your very own TV Cream on the various occasions that it has been savagely plagiarised by lazy tabloids and a hundred retro telly shows. One time, he even managed to solicit free legal advice on our behalf (which we never took up, we hasten to add), as the Daily Mail published an uncredited Xerox of our Blue Peter feature. So, obviously, expect to read all this again in next Wednesday's edition of the paper.

From Dave: "Can I just say how proud I am to accept this on behalf of the NTK readership's cybernetically interconnected post-human ultramind, of which I am merely the most comprehensible manifestation. Plus: I/we/the-ultramind-entity are above Danny Wallace *and* Mr Biffo! Result!"

34) PETER SERAFINOWICZ and ROBERT POPPER (Comic brains, performers) - The only entrants from anybody even vaguely connected to C4's heinous 11 O'Clock Show, Popper and Serafinowicz make it onto the list, not due to our slight nepotistic tendencies (we once lent Robert Popper a video of Ace Of Wands and Dramarama) but through their own merits. Serafinowicz first came to our attention as the rugger-bugger brother in Simon Nye's best ever sitcom How Do You Want Me, and we understand that Robert Popper did some work on the aforementioned 11 O'Clock Show too. However it is of course for Look Around You that the duo make it onto our list. As a recreation of old TV it was peerless, and the jokes weren't bad too. Apparently, Lorraine Heggessey sat in a meeting with a load of BBC bods and proclaimed "Umm... Am I the only one who doesn't get this?" (Yes Lorraine!) Happily she failed in her attempt to scrap a mooted second series, and we hear that Look Around You will be back later on in the year. How the programme copes with its new 30-minute format remains to be seen, but we have reason to believe that this time Popper and Serafinowicz will be looking at old kids shows such as How for inspiration so it's bound to be a laff riot. And that's how you get to inch your way ahead of Dave Green in a big long list of media movers and shakers!

From Robert: "Cheers ears. Thanks very much. Peter and I LOVE your site. You rock! (By the way - I was only very slightly involved in THE 11 O'CLOCK SHOW - I used to play a character who vomited on politicians. I did Gorbachev you know.)"

33) ARMANDO IANNUCCI (Comic writer, performer, director) - There are two schools of thought concerning Armando; some see him as a talented comic writer and performer who is able to take such mundane phrases as "bad cock" and turn them into a satirical statement, and others think he's simply the bloke responsible for plastering a laughter track all over - heaven forbid - a comedy programme. Okay, so the second series of I'm Alan Partridge was a bit of a disappointment as the team were forced to move to a slightly broader style of comedy in the wake of The Office nicking their seat in the laff-a-lot staff room, but Armando's own The Armando Iannucci Shows has consistently grown in retrospective popularity since its initial broadcast back in 2001. Less successful was 2003's Gash (you can hear him saying it can't you, in his slightly nasally Scottish voice, over accentuating for mild comic effect) which although not a patch on Armando's Friday/Saturday Night Armistice series was immeasurably better than The 11 O'Clock Show. We're not entirely sure what he's going to be doing next, but if it keeps David Schneider from making any more ill-judged cameo roles in second rate Hollywood comedies then he gets our vote, and besides he's never less than mildly entertaining, which in these days of Iain Lee, Jon (not Gonch) Holmes and Marcus Brigstocke is no mean achievement.

32) MARK ELLEN (Founder of Word magazine) - With the amount of Q alumni floating around this list (and we're blowed as to why because half the TV Cream staff are very sniffy about that 'dad's paper') it seems neat that the magazine's creator gets a look in. Erstwhile Old Grey Whistle Test stooge and Macca stunt-double, Mark Ellen makes it onto the list by dint of the fact that Word is the only men's magazine (and let's face it, it is a men's magazine) we'll actually make the effort to look through in the newsagents, even if we still only leave with a packet of Revels. We're unconvinced about the need for three editors, mind (dangerously verging into a 'commune' mentality here) and there is a feeling that a suitable subtitle for the publication would be 'preaching to the converted' but all that aside there's been some commendable stuff here. We're thinking mainly of James Naughtie's feature on what it's like to work on the Today programme, The Collins' similar effort on writing for EastEnders, the recent huge interview with Matt Groening, that perceptive review of the rubbish Brookside DVD, the big-to-do over Let It Be Naked and welcome chats with Elvis Costello and - inevitably - Macca. So, although we're prescribing Ellen starts obsessing a little less on his navel, we can't deny he's still steering the best organ you'll see in close proximity to Nuts or FHM.

From Mark: "The Word team are lucky enough to have received quite a few accolades from various highly-positioned critics along the route but I can tell you, in all honesty, that the inclusion of their editor in TV Cream's Top 50 Media Movers and Shakers 2004 is the most recent. And more: when our tearful team discovered I'd landed the coveted Number 32 spot - above Pete Waterman, Bruce Forsyth and the entire Dr Who Restoration Team - our North London lock-up was garlanded with bunting. Thrice huzzah, TV Cream, and long may you prosper!"

31) ROB BRYDON (Writer and actor) - We first came across Brydon on Radio 5's Bi-i-i-i-i-i-i-g! Big Noise At Night! 10.10pm to midnight regional slot, co-mining a seam of mildly surreal comedy on BBC Wales' Rave. For a few years he seemed to be destined to become part of our Do You Remember All The Stuff On Radio 5 Nights? office discussions, unaware that he was turning up in voiceover form pretty much all the time, unless we caught his occasional appearances on Maconie-fronted Satire-Day show The Treatment. Then came Marion & Geoff, not just technically brave (OK, you sell a fixed camera 10-minute comedy about a divorcee) but actually subtly funny without having to resort to that most untrustworthy of comedy series epithets, 'dark'. Human Remains continued in the same shadowy vein, but it's not just wringing comedy from pathos for which Brydon gets into the list but also his portrayal of Director's Commentary's Peter De Lane - the possessor of one of TV's best ever sniggers. Truth be told the series did struggle after the initial bright flourishing of the idea, but as well as showing signs of ITV getting their entertainment act together at last it demonstrated Brydon's lightness of touch and his ability to work his shady characters into a position of being almost likeable (a touch of EL Wisty, anyone?) Also, he's one of the best value TV talent guests on the chat show circuit, not least for his spectacular Tom Jones impression ("Hurgh! Sorry, bit of a cough") We point as our evidence to when he was on Johnny Vaughan Tonight with the head of the RMT union, and during some spiel about the state of the railways Brydon solemly interjected that he wanted to make "an important point... I often get the train from Richmond to London, and the other day I saw Tom Conti, and we had a lovely chat". That was it. We'd like to see a permanent vehicle for Elvis Presley The Pop Singer next, thanks.

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