Tony Buffery
{{short description|British Clinical Neuro-Psychologist}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Tony Buffery
| image = TonyB.jpg
| caption = Tony Buffery (2005)
| birth_name = Anthony Walter Harold Buffery
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1939|9|9|df=y}}
| birth_place = Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2015|12|26|1939|9|9|df=y}}
| occupation = Actor, Comedian, Educator, Psychologist
}}
Anthony Walter Harold Buffery (9 September 1939 – 26 December 2015) was a British actor, comedian, and writer who also had a career in academic psychology.{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=M9FAAAAAIBAJ&pg=2876,3874314&dq=anthony-buffery&hl=en |first=Peter |last=Robson |title=Game for a Laugh |work=Evening Times |date=1983-07-20 |accessdate=2013-10-24}}
Career
Buffery studied at the University of Hull before undertaking a PhD at University of Cambridge. He got his start in the Cambridge Footlights, but his place in the London Footlights Revue was taken over by Graham Chapman (later of Monty Python) when Buffery chose an academic career over one in entertainment.{{cite book|last=Morgan|title=Monty Python Speaks!: The Complete Oral History of Monty Python|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uG9NJXEH_XIC|date=1 June 1999|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0-380-80479-5|chapter=1: Pre-Phython}}{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/morgan-python.html |title=Monty Python Speaks! |work=New York Times |date= |accessdate=2013-10-24}}
I do remember that in one year – probably 1967 – Clive [James] did a two-man show with Tony Buffery... who had been part of the 1963 Footlights show Cambridge Circus which featured John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie, and David Hatch, but who as a committed graduate student had not gone with it on its professional tour to the West End and elsewhere. He was – probably still is – an astonishingly funny man not least physically, and I know that Clive always admired him no end.
— Pete Atkin, 03 Sep 2006{{cite web|url=http://www.peteatkin.com/cgi-bin/mv/YaBB.cgi?board=Chums;action=print;num=1148937849 |title=Midnight Voices |publisher=Peteatkin.com |date= |accessdate=2013-10-24}}{{Unreliable source?|date=October 2013}}
As a member of the Footlights, Buffery contributed to the writing, music, and/or performance of many of the troupe's productions in the 1960s, including:
- "This Way Out" (1965–66)
- "My Girl Herbert" (1964–65)
- "Stuff What Dreams are Made Of" (1963–64)
- "A Clump of Plinths" (1962–63)
- "Double Take" (1961–62)[http://footlights.org/1960.html ] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080417010549/http://footlights.org/1960.html |date=April 17, 2008 }}
Buffery also appeared in the 1967 Comedy series Twice a Fortnight along with Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie, and Jonathan Lynn.{{cite book|last=Wilmut|authorlink=Roger Wilmut|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PzxaAAAAMAAJ|title=From fringe to flying circus: celebrating a unique generation of comedy, 1960-1980|year=1980|publisher=Eyre Methuen|isbn=978-0-413-46950-2}}
In the late 1960s, Buffery was a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.{{Cite book|last=James|first=Clive|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7ZvoiHv0Be8C&q=Tony+Buffery+corpus+christi+cambridge&pg=PT188|title=May Week Was In June: More Unreliable Memoirs|date=2009-09-30|publisher=Pan Macmillan|isbn=978-0-330-47434-4|language=en}} He was a senior research officer at Oxford University between 1970 and 1974, and then held lectureships at the University of London and the University of Melbourne, and in hospitals and units in the United States, through the 1970s and 1980s. His academic work as a neuropsychologist included developing computer programs to assist people's recoveries from strokes and brain injuries.
Buffery married Maria Kowalska in 2006, and the couple moved to Kowalska's homeland of Poland, where Buffery spent some time teaching English. He died in December 2015 at the age of 76.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/26/tony-buffery-obituary|title=Tony Buffery obituary|first=Joanna|last=Ferguson|work=The Guardian|date=26 January 2016|accessdate=18 July 2020}}
Bibliography
- {{cite book|title=Cambridge Circus|year=1993|publisher=EMI|isbn=978-0-901401-36-6}} (with John Cleese)