Learning ignited a storm of controversy across the country in 1987 when he presented the Alan Bleasdale musical Are You Lonesome Tonight? a tough look at the life of Elvis Presley.
Sketches were written by Walters' frequent collaborators, including Victoria Wood, Alan Bennett, Willy Russell and Alan Bleasdale.
It has been claimed that the exodus to Channel 4 in the early 1990s of dramatists like Dennis Potter and Alan Bleasdale, who had both been responsible for series which caused outrage among Conservatives during the Milne era, had much to do with the relative lack of risk-taking at the BBC under Checkland and his successor John Birt, who was deputy director-general throughout Checkland's reign.
McGough was cast as secret service detective Edwin Woodhall in the Alan Bleasdale-written drama The Monocled Mutineer and appeared in Brookside as Charlie Dawson who at first appeared to be a friend of Heather Haversham's then husband but turned out to be a drug dealer.
Other parts include a tax inspector, Costello The Second, in Alan Bleasdale's The Muscle Market (a Boys from the Blackstuff prequel) and The Soothsayer in Herbert Wise's BBC television adaption of Julius Caesar.
The film is a British-German co-production, written by Alan Bleasdale, directed by Uwe Janson, and with Andrew Buchan, Brian Cox, Ken Duken, Morven Christie, Lindsay Duncan, Thomas Kretschmann and Franka Potente in the leading roles.
Alan Moore | Alan Lomax | Alan Alda | Alan Jackson | Alan Shearer | Alan Turing | Alan Greenspan | Alan Autry | Alan Ayckbourn | Alan Jay Lerner | Alan Ridout | Alan Bennett | Alan Arkin | Alan Thicke | Alan K. Simpson | Alan Keyes | The Alan Titchmarsh Show | Alan Whiticker | Alan Jones | Alan | Alan Watts | Alan Rickman | Alan Freed | Alan Clark | Alan Price | Alan Hovhaness | Alan Bleasdale | Alan Titchmarsh | Alan Dershowitz | Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke |