About Spede Pasanen
Pertti Olavi "Spede" Pasanen was a Finnish film director and producer, comedian, and inventor, who has been called an "all-around entertainer". During his career he directed, wrote, produced or acted in about 50 movies and participated in numerous TV productions, including the comedy Spede Show and the game-show Speden Spelit. Much of his more commercial work was in collaboration with Vesa-Matti Loiri and Simo Salminen. Pasanen's films and TV shows, often made quickly and on a low budget, usually received little critical recognition but were popular among Finnish audiences from the 1960s onwards. He was the owner of his own film production company, Filmituotanto Spede Pasanen Ky. Pasanen was ranked 17th at the Suuret suomalaiset competition show broadcast by Yleisradio. On the first try Aune Ala-Tuuhonen, a secretary of the entertainment board and an experienced entertainment scriptwriter, was hired instead of Pasanen. Pasanen sent another application which was almost completely identical to his first one, and attached a note "my folder is already there". Pasanen and actor Leo Jokela also created the break-out character G. Much of his more commercial work was in collaboration with Vesa-Matti Loiri (whose most popular character created by Pasanen was Uuno Turhapuro; first in TV sketches and then in a long-lasting series of motion pictures) and Simo Salminen.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.