Natalie Haynes | |
|---|---|
 Haynes in Waterstones, Piccadilly, London, 2022 | |
| Born | 1974 (age 49–50) Birmingham, England |
Natalie Louise Haynes (born 1974) is an English writer, broadcaster, classicist, and comedian.
Natalie Haynes | |
|---|---|
| Haynes in Waterstones, Piccadilly, London, 2022 | |
| Born | 1974 (age 49–50) Birmingham, England |
Natalie Louise Haynes (born 1974) is an English writer, broadcaster, classicist, and comedian.
Haynes was born in Birmingham, where she attended King Edward VI High School for Girls. [1] She grew up in Bournville. [2] [3] She read Classics at Christ's College, Cambridge, and was a member of Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club.
Haynes has appeared on BBC Radio 4 as a panellist on Wordaholics , We've Been Here Before, Banter , Quote... Unquote , Personality Test and Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive , and she has been an announcer on BBC Radio 4 Extra. She has contributed to the BBC 7 comedy review show Serious About Comedy and she reviews films for Front Row .
Her stand-up has featured in Front Row and Loose Ends on BBC Radio 4 and Spanking New on BBC 7. She appeared in BBC Radio 4's Pick of the Fringe in 2004 and 2005. She has also appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live's Anita Anand Show, and MacAulay and Co. on BBC Scotland.
In 2005 and 2006, Haynes wrote and presented documentaries on comic writers, for BBC Radio 4. Her subjects included the modern female writers Jessica Mitford and Dorothy Parker, and the classical male writers Aristophanes, Juvenal and Martial.
She appears as a critic on Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4. [4] On 4 February 2013, she was the star of the BBC Radio 4 programme With Great Pleasure. Her guests included the novelist Julian Barnes, who read from one of his own books. [5]
BBC Radio 4 broadcast Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics, in which, aided by experts, she makes serious and amusing remarks about historical and mythological figures from ancient Greece and Rome, from Petronius to Sappho. [6] There have been nine series, each containing four episodes of around half an hour. [7]
Series five, which was recorded from October to November 2019, [8] and broadcast on Radio 4 from 23 December 2019, [8] included programmes on Aristotle, Claudia Severa, Suetonius, and Homer's Iliad. Haynes's guests included Professor Edith Hall and Anita Anand. [9] Series six was broadcast from 17 May 2020, [10] and included episodes about "Helen of Troy" and "Penthesilea, Amazon Warrior Queen", recorded with Professor Edith Hall. Series seven was broadcast from 8 May 2021 to 8 June 2021 and included programmes on Medusa, Pandora, Jocasta, and Clytemnestra.
Haynes was a regular panellist on BBC's The Review Show and was the most-booked guest on More4's The Last Word. She appeared as a panellist on BBC 4's The Book Quiz , and on its Poetry Special alongside Andrew Motion and George Szirtes. She also appeared on Backlash, a BBC2 documentary on voluntary childlessness, wrote and performed in the STV/Assembly Television Best of the Fest in August 2005. Haynes has been a panellist on BBC Four's quiz show Mindgames, appeared on Must Try Harder on BBC Two in 2006 and was the art and literature expert on the BBC Two quiz show Knowitalls.
In August 2007, when she appeared on an episode of The Book Quiz hosted by David Baddiel, [11] she admitted researching a book on Wikipedia in order to bluff having read it. [12]
In April 2008, Haynes was a member of the stand-up comedians' team on University Challenge: The Professionals . [13] Her team lost to the Ministry of Justice, 100 points to 215. In November 2009, she appeared on BBC One's Question Time . [14]
In February 2022, Haynes was announced as the new presenter of the online revival of Time Team , alongside Gus Casely-Hayford. [15]
Haynes has been a guest contributor for The Times since October 2006, and a regular contributor to New Humanist . She has also written for The Sunday Times Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph , The Big Issue , Loaded and The Independent .
Haynes has toured (including Dublin, Berlin to Manhattan) and has performed five Edinburgh Fringe sell-out runs and national tours. She was nominated for the Best Newcomer Award at the 2002 Perrier Comedy Awards, [16] the first woman to receive this nomination. [17]
Haynes is the only comedian to have appeared at every [18] Newbury Comedy Festival.
Haynes contributed an essay to Serenity Found, a book about Joss Whedon's television show Firefly , edited by Jane Espenson, which was published in 2007 by BenBella Books. Her entries on subjects from Agatha Christie to E.F. Benson can be found in Cassell's Little Black Book of Books, published in 2007.
Her first children's novel, The Great Escape, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2007. It won a PETA Proggy award, for best animal-friendly children's book, in 2008.
Haynes has written three non-fiction books. The Ancient Guide To Modern Life, on the subject of how living well in the present requires some recourse to the ancient world, was published by Profile Books in November 2010. Her second non-fiction book, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths, was published by Picador in October 2020, and was a New York Times bestseller. [19] Margaret Atwood called it "funny" and "sharp". [20]
Haynes' first novel, Amber Fury (titled The Furies in the U.S.), was published in 2014. It was shortlisted for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year award. [21] Her second novel, Children of Jocasta, a retelling of Antigone and Oedipus Rex , was published in 2017. [22]
Haynes' third novel, A Thousand Ships (relating to the Trojan War), was published by Pan Macmillan on 4 May 2019. [23] She discussed it on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour that month. [24] A Thousand Ships was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020. [25]
Haynes' fourth novel, Stone Blind, a retelling of the myth of Medusa, was published by Pan Macmillan on 15th September 2022, [26] and an abridged version was read on BBC Radio 4 by Susannah Fielding. [27] In March 2024 the German edition of the title was shortlisted for the Young Adult Jury Award of the German Youth Literature Awards which will be awarded at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. [28]
Haynes was awarded the Classical Association Prize in 2015. [29]
Have I Got News for You (HIGNFY) is a British television panel show, produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC, which premiered on 28 September 1990. The programme focuses on two teams, one always captained by Ian Hislop and one by Paul Merton, each plus a guest panelist, answering questions on various news stories on the week prior to an episode's broadcast. However, the programme's format focuses more on the topical discussions on the subject of the news stories related to questions, and the satirical humour derived from these by the teams. This style of presentation had a profound impact on panel shows in British TV comedy, making it one of the genre's key standard-bearers.
Mark Steel is an English author, broadcaster, stand-up comedian and newspaper columnist. He has made many appearances on radio and television shows as a guest panellist, and has written regular columns in The Guardian, The Independent and Daily Mirror. He presents The Mark Steel Lectures, The Mark Steel Solution, Mark Steel's in Town and the podcast What the fuck is going on?.
Andrew Neil Hamilton is a British comedian, game show panellist, television director, comedy screenwriter, radio dramatist, novelist and actor.
Linda Helen Smith was an English comedian and comedy writer. She appeared regularly on Radio 4 panel games, and was voted "Wittiest Living Person" by listeners in 2002. From 2004 to 2006 she was head of the British Humanist Association.
Christopher Nicholas Parsons was an English actor, straight man and radio and television presenter. He was the long-running presenter of the comedy radio show Just a Minute and hosted the game show Sale of the Century during the 1970s and early 1980s.
Dara Ó Briain is an Irish comedian and television presenter based in the United Kingdom. He is noted for performing stand-up comedy shows all over the world and for hosting topical panel shows such as Mock the Week, The Panel, and The Apprentice: You're Fired!. In 2009, the Irish Independent described Ó Briain as "Terry Wogan's heir apparent as Britain's 'favourite Irishman'".
Yvette Paula Fielding is an English television presenter, producer, actress, and writer. In 1987 she became the youngest presenter on Blue Peter aged 18. With her husband Karl Beattie, she presented the Most Haunted series on the Living channel, via their own production company, followed by Ghosthunting With..., establishing Fielding as 'first lady of the paranormal'. She has appeared in a wide range of other programmes, from The Wright Stuff to Through the Keyhole and I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!.
Susan Elizabeth Perkins is an English actress, broadcaster, comedian, presenter and writer. Originally coming to prominence through her comedy partnership with Mel Giedroyc in Mel and Sue, she has since become best known as a radio broadcaster and television presenter, notably of The Great British Bake Off (2010–2016), Insert Name Here (2016–2019) and Just a Minute on BBC Radio 4.
Sally Jane Lindsay is an English actress and television presenter. She rose to fame playing Shelley Unwin in the long-running ITV soap opera Coronation Street (2001–2006). Her other roles include Lisa Johnson in the Sky One comedy-drama Mount Pleasant (2011–2017), Alison Bailey in the ITV police procedural Scott & Bailey (2011–2016), and Kath Agnew in the BBC sitcom Still Open All Hours (2013–2019). Since 2021, she has starred as Jean White in Channel 5's The Madame Blanc Mysteries (2021–present), which she co-created and produces.
Helen Margaret Lederer is a British comedian, writer and actress who emerged as part of the alternative comedy boom at the beginning of the 1980s. Among her television credits are the BBC2 sketch series Naked Video and BBC One's Absolutely Fabulous, in which she played the role of Catriona.
Alun Cochrane is a British comedian, and actor. He was born in Glasgow and raised in Mirfield, West Yorkshire. He was a co-presenter on The Frank Skinner Show on Absolute Radio (2011-2022).
Jennifer Helen Brister is a British stand-up comedian, writer and actor from London.
Thomas Paul Allen is an English comedian, actor, writer and presenter. In 2005, he won the So You Think You're Funny contest at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Sarah Jane Millican is an English comedian, writer and presenter. Millican won the comedy award for Best Newcomer at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In February 2013 she was listed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Radio 4's Woman's Hour, and in the same year she married fellow comedian Gary Delaney. Her first book, How to Be Champion, was published in 2017. Millican has performed on various tours, mainly across the United Kingdom, over the years.
Holly Dione Walsh is an English comedian and comedy writer.
Sara Patricia Pascoe is an English actress, comedian, presenter and writer. She has appeared on television programmes including 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and Taskmaster for Channel 4 and QI for BBC Two.
Susan Grace Calman is a Scottish comedian, television presenter and writer.
Angela Barnes is an English stand-up comedian, mostly known for her appearances on Mock the Week.
Kiri Louise Pritchard-McLean is a Welsh comedian and writer. She has performed for several consecutive years at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and won five Chortle Awards.
Mosiah Bikila Gilligan is a British stand-up comedian, television presenter and content creator. He is known for his observational comedy. After several years of uploading comedy clips to social media, he found global success in 2017. He hosted The Lateish Show with Mo Gilligan (2019) on Channel 4. He currently co-hosts The Big Narstie Show on Channel 4, and is a judge on The Masked Singer UK since the second series in 2020, and a judge on The Masked Dancer UK since 2021. In 2022 Gilligan took a break from The Masked Dancer UK due to work conflicts, and was replaced by Peter Crouch. Played Beckett in the animated film 10 lives(2024)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
