Ram John Holder

Ram John Holder

Born: January 1, 1934
in Georgetown, British Guiana
Guyanese actor and musician, Ram John Holder started his professional life as a folk singer in New York in the early '60s before moving to the UK to work as a musician and later an actor for Pearl Connor's Negro Theatre Workshop. His big break was as the effeminate dancer Marcus in the 1969 film Two Gentlemen Sharing and he's worked in film and TV ever since, most notably as the loveable Porkpie in Channel 4 sitcom Desmond's (1989-1994) and the shortlived spin-off Porkpie

Movies for Ram John Holder...

Your Christmas or Mine 2
Title: Your Christmas or Mine 2
Character: Grandad
Released: December 7, 2023
Type: Movie
They've swapped Christmas – again. Can Hayley and James' relationship survive another turbulent family Christmas or has their future together gone off-piste?!
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Your Christmas or Mine?
Title: Your Christmas or Mine?
Character: Grandad
Released: December 2, 2022
Type: Movie
Students Hayley and James are young and in love. After saying goodbye for Christmas at a London train station, they both make the same mad split-second decision to swap trains and surprise each other. Passing each other in the station, they are completely unaware that they have just swapped Christmases.
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City of Tiny Lights
Title: City of Tiny Lights
Character: Trinidad Pete
Released: September 12, 2016
Type: Movie
In the teeming, multicultural metropolis of modern-day London, a seemingly straightforward missing-person case launches a down-at-heel private eye into a dangerous world of religious fanaticism and political intrigue.
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Song for Marion
Title: Song for Marion
Character: Charlie
Released: September 15, 2012
Type: Movie
Arthur is a grumpy pensioner who can't understand why his wife Marion would want to embarrass herself singing silly songs with her unconventional local choir. But choir director Elizabeth sees something special in the reluctant Arthur and refuses to give up on him. As she coaxes him out of his shell, Arthur realizes that it is never too late to change.
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Title: Death in Paradise
Character: Nelson Myers
Released: October 25, 2011
Type: TV
A brilliant but idiosyncratic British detective and his resourceful local team solve baffling murder mysteries on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint-Marie.
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Title: White Van Man
Character: Uncle Phil
Released: March 22, 2011
Type: TV
The incredible misadventures of two handymen on the road and the extraordinary people they meet along the way.
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Title: Beautiful People
Character: Big Barry
Released: October 2, 2008
Type: TV
Beautiful People is a British comedy drama television series based on the memoirs of Barneys creative director Simon Doonan. The series takes place in Reading, Berkshire, in 1997, where thirteen-year-old Simon Doonan and his best friend Kylie dream of escaping their dreary suburban surroundings and moving to cosmopolitan London "to live amongst the beautiful people." The first episode aired on BBC Two on 2 October 2008 and recorded overnight ratings of 1.5 million viewers and positive critical reaction. Episodes are self-contained, but do follow a loose story arc throughout the course of each series. The second and final series finished airing on 18 December 2009.
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Joy Division
Title: Joy Division
Character: Neville
Released: November 17, 2006
Type: Movie
A teenage orphan fights against the Red Army at the end of WWII and in the aftermath is 'adopted' by a Commissar. Years later he is sent to London during the Cold war to work for the KGB, where he questions his life.
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Title: Hex
Released: October 17, 2004
Type: TV
The show opens with a girl who yearns to be popular and liked in her school. She wishes she was in the "in-crowd", however, she goes about unnoticed in school everyday. The only girl who truly notices her is her best friend Thelma. For some strange reason though, Cassie feels like she is being followed by a man. This is only the beginning of her problem...
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The Calcium Kid
Title: The Calcium Kid
Character: Jamaican Barber
Released: April 30, 2004
Type: Movie
When milkman Jimmy Connelly accidentally puts Britain's contender for the World title out of action, he is propelled from amateur boxer to the world stage and announced as the replacement contender for the championship fight.
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Lucky Break
Title: Lucky Break
Character: Old Billy Morris
Released: August 24, 2001
Type: Movie
Half-way through his 12-year prison sentence for an incompetent armed robbery, Jimmy Hands gets a lucky break: he's transferred to a prison from which he can probably escape. He convinces the governor to stage a musical in an old chapel next to the prison's outer wall. He rounds up volunteer actors and puts his escape plan into production. Two other barriers, besides the wall, confront him: the arrival of a nasty inmate, John Toombes, who insists on joining the escape, and Jimmy's feelings of attraction for Anabel, a social worker who agrees to appear in the play. Opening night approaches: is this Jimmy's breakout performance?
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Virtual Sexuality
Title: Virtual Sexuality
Character: Declan
Released: July 2, 1999
Type: Movie
A frustrated teenage girl creates her perfect man in a virtual reality machine and in a freak accident, gives him life.
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Title: Hetty Wainthropp Investigates
Character: Chalky White
Released: January 3, 1996
Type: TV
Instead of spending her golden years lying down, the indomitable Hetty Wainthropp found her calling late in life. Combining common sense, her husband, and her pocketbook, this senior sleuth takes on all the cases the police deem too minor.
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Title: Porkpie
Character: Augustus 'Porkpie' Grant
Released: November 13, 1995
Type: TV
Porkpie was a British sitcom on Channel 4 television starring Ram John Holder as Augustus "Porkpie" Grant. It was a spinoff from Desmond's. Porkpie kept several key characters from Desmond's and in the first episode Grant was seen standing outside the barbershop Desmond used to run, saying: "Desmond, since you died it hasn't stopped raining. I know how much you used to say it can rain in England, and it's true. Must be one of two things: either a thousand angels weeping for you, or you having a good drink up in heaven and you spilling it all over the place."
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O Mary This London
Title: O Mary This London
Character: Neville
Released: March 30, 1994
Type: Movie
Three young Dubliners go to London in search of fun, fortune and, in the case of 17-year-old Mary Kelly, an abortion. Homeless and jobless, their adventures quickly turn sour.
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Title: Heartbeat
Character: Danny Flowers
Released: April 10, 1992
Type: TV
Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.
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Missing Persons
Title: Missing Persons
Character: Chalky White
Released: May 30, 1990
Type: Movie
During a visit to childhood friend Edith, retired housewife Hetty Wainthropp discovers that Edith's husband, Frank, has a son by a previous marriage. Hetty decides to turn amateur detective to trace him. When this gives her a taste for detection, Hetty decides to set up a private detective agency.
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Title: Desmond's
Character: Augustus 'Porkpie' Grant
Released: January 5, 1989
Type: TV
Desmond's was a British television situation comedy broadcast by Channel 4 from 1989 to 1994. With 71 episodes, Desmond's became Channel 4's longest-running sitcom. The first series was shot in 1988, with the first episode broadcast in January 1989. The show was made in and set in Peckham, London, England and featured a predominantly Black British Guyanese cast. Conceived and co-written by Trix Worrell, and produced by Charlie Hanson and Humphrey Barclay, this series starred Norman Beaton as barber Desmond Ambrose. Desmond's shop was a gathering place for an assortment of local characters.
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Playing Away
Title: Playing Away
Character: Wilf
Released: January 2, 1987
Type: Movie
To mark the conclusion of their "Third World Week" celebration, a cricket team in a small English village invites a black cricket team from South London to a charity game with comical results.
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Title: Casualty
Character: Vivian House
Released: September 6, 1986
Type: TV
Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives.
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Title: Casualty
Character: George
Released: September 6, 1986
Type: TV
Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives.
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Half Moon Street
Title: Half Moon Street
Character: Lindsay Walker
Released: August 13, 1986
Type: Movie
Dr. Lauren Slaughter, a research fellow at the Arab-Anglo Institute in London is utterly frustrated by her job. To supplement her income, she starts moonlighting at the Jasmine Escort Service, where she has more control over men and money than she does at the office. On one of her 'dates', Lauren meets the politician Lord Bulbeck who is trying to mediate a peace accord between the Arabs and Israelis. Bulbeck falls in love with his escort, and unwittingly, Lauren becomes a pawn in some very dirty politics.
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The Passion of Remembrance
Title: The Passion of Remembrance
Character: Benjy Baptiste
Released: January 2, 1986
Type: Movie
Co-directed by Blackwood and Julien, the first full-length feature film by Sankofa Film and Video offers a radical and necessary interrogation into what constitutes 'post-colonial' identity at a time of political and social restlessness in Britain. Set within an isolated desert landscape contrasted with recognizable scenes of the intensity of family life, this vanguard work demonstrates the richness and variety of the black experience; it is a poetic and hard-hitting commentary on the complexities of race, gender and sexuality.
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My Beautiful Laundrette
Title: My Beautiful Laundrette
Character: Poet
Released: November 16, 1985
Type: Movie
A Pakistani Briton renovates a rundown laundrette with his male lover while dealing with drama within his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.
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Playboy of the West Indies
Title: Playboy of the West Indies
Character: Mac
Released: October 13, 1985
Type: Movie
Based on J. M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World. Peggy Ford runs her father's rum bar in Mayaro, a quiet fishing village in Trinidad. Nothing much happens in Mayaro until a handsome young stranger appears and insists that he has just murdered his father.
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Britannia Hospital
Title: Britannia Hospital
Character: Radical
Released: May 27, 1982
Type: Movie
Britannia Hospital, an esteemed English institution, is marking its gala anniversary with a visit by the Queen Mother herself. But when investigative reporter Mick Travis arrives to cover the celebration, he finds the hospital under siege by striking workers, ruthless unions, violent demonstrators, racist aristocrats, an African cannibal dictator, and sinister human experiments.
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Cuba
Title: Cuba
Character: Fat Sergeant
Released: December 21, 1979
Type: Movie
A British mercenary arrives in pre-Revolution Cuba to help train the corrupt General Batista's army against Castro's guerrillas while he also romances a former lover now married to an unscrupulous plantation owner.
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Roadrunner
Title: Roadrunner
Character: Trevor Ford
Released: July 5, 1977
Type: Movie
A young West Indian has to interrupt his rich international life to sort out some passport trouble at home. His lifestyle is very different from the simple one of his family in North London, leading to considerable tension.
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Pressure
Title: Pressure
Character: Brother John
Released: November 19, 1976
Type: Movie
A British-born younger son of an immigrant family from Trinidad finds himself adrift between two cultures.
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The Education of Sonny Carson
Title: The Education of Sonny Carson
Character: Preacher
Released: July 17, 1974
Type: Movie
A 1974 film based on the best-selling autobiography of Sonny Carson who joined a gang and committed petty crime before being sent to prison. After his release from prison he changes his life.
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Man Friday
Title: Man Friday
Character: Man Friday
Released: October 30, 1972
Type: Movie
Play based on the tale of Robinson Crusoe, examining the relationship between Crusoe and Man Friday, with a new twist by which both characters believe they are teaching the other.
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In the Beautiful Caribbean
Title: In the Beautiful Caribbean
Character: Bredda Ordinance
Released: February 3, 1972
Type: Movie
Play set in the Caribbean showing how life is hard and a struggle, with problems of unemployment and lack of money.
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Leo the Last
Title: Leo the Last
Character: Black Preacher
Released: September 4, 1970
Type: Movie
Prince Leo, last in the line of rulers of a long-deposed monarchy on continental Europe and jaded with the frenetic search for kicks with the European jet-set, returns to his father's London town house for rest.
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Two Gentlemen Sharing
Title: Two Gentlemen Sharing
Character: Marcus
Released: September 17, 1969
Type: Movie
An insecure Briton and a Briton of Jamaican descent share a London apartment together.
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Title: BBC Play of the Month
Character: Friday
Released: October 19, 1965
Type: TV
Play of the Month is a BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays which were usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983; the producer most associated with the Play of the Month was Cedric Messina. Some of the 121 episodes are missing from the archives, having been junked in the 1960s and 1970s. Unless stated otherwise, the indication that the play is "lost" is taken from the lostshows.com website page as of 25 May 2013.