Paul Garner (born 1968/69) is an English comedian, writer, producer and director. [1] Garner is married to Kate, a singer songwriter who is the daughter of Chas Hodges from Chas & Dave.
Paul is married to Kate Hodges, and they have a son named Harry.
Garner started out in radio working with Jo Bunting (now producer of Have I Got News For You ) and Chris Morris ( The Day Today , Brass Eye ) at BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. [2]
Garner then contributed to Chris Morris's weekend radio show at GLR in London before their now infamous stint at BBC Radio 1 in the mid-1990s. It was on this show that Garner made his airport tannoy recordings that have since become an internet phenomenon. [3] He would go to Heathrow and get the tannoy announcer to page passengers whose names were essentially rude phrases written phonetically and disguised as foreign names. For example, "Markollig Jezvahted & Levdaroem Dabahzted" sounded like the announcer was saying "My colleague just farted and left the room the bastard". As well as "Mister Farken Buss", which sounded like "missed the fucking bus".
Also in the mid-1990s, Garner hosted his own comedy and unsigned music show on the Chiltern Radio network whilst continuing to write for and appear on various shows at BBC Radio 1 including The Zoë Ball Breakfast Show and The Mark Tonderai Show. Garner also devised, wrote and played all the parts in the spoof Australian soap 'Strewth Street' which featured every week on The Kevin Greening Show. [4]
Garner made the transition to television in the multi-award-winning satirical series Brass Eye, which he wrote for and appeared in. He was then invited to take part in a new topical late night comedy show for Channel 4 called The 11 O'Clock Show . It was here that Garner worked alongside the likes of Ricky Gervais, Sacha Baron Cohen, Mackenzie Crook, Daisy Donovan and Iain Lee. [5]
Whilst making The 11 O'Clock Show, Garner also started to collaborate with Paul Kaye on the final stages of the Dennis Pennis era. Along with Ant Hines, Garner and Kaye then wrote and developed a series of scripts for Channel 4 on which they collaborated with Ricky Gervais, Matt Lucas, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
After The 11 O'Clock Show, Garner went on to write for and/or appear in such shows as Da Ali G Show , Bo Selecta , The Harry Enfield Show , The Priory , High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman and My New Best Friend . He has also written extensively for comedian Jimmy Carr.
Garner created, wrote and starred in E4/Channel 4's The Pilot Show which lured celebrities and members of the public into appearing on what they thought were genuine TV shows such as Lapdance Island and Who Wants To Be A Spaceman? A 16-part series of The Pilot Show, (renamed BSTV ) was then made for American television with Garner once again starring in it, writing and executive producing.
Garner has also appeared as an actor in various shows such as Pulling and The Jim Jeffries Show. Most notably, Garner played the part of "Dave Millman", Sharon Horgan's police officer husband in the sitcom Angelos on Five.
In January 2008, Garner appeared on Russell Brand's Celebrity Hijack and, masquerading as a disgruntled cameraman, barricaded himself into the Big Brother house and had to be forcibly ejected by Russell and a pair of security guards.
Garner has created, written and appeared alongside Paul Kaye in two series of the award-winning MTV show Strutter . The show holds the Guinness World Record for 'The Most Number of Swear Words in a TV Show' beating the previous holder South Park . [6]
He has also worked with Marc Wootton on the Showtime series La La Land.
In 2014, Garner was convicted of demolishing a listed 17th-century outbuilding on his Hertfordshire home. [7] [8] He was ordered to pay fines of £35,120. [9]
Christopher J. Morris is an English comedian, radio presenter, actor, and filmmaker. Known for his deadpan, dark humour, surrealism, and controversial subject matter, he has been praised by the British Film Institute for his "uncompromising, moralistic drive".
Ricky Dene Gervais is an English comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director. He co-created, co-wrote, and acted in the British television sitcoms The Office (2001–2003), Extras (2005–2007), and Life's Too Short (2011–2013) with Stephen Merchant. He also created, wrote and starred in Derek (2012–2014) and After Life (2019–2022).
The 11 O'Clock Show was a satirical late-night British television comedy series on Channel 4 which featured topical sketches and commentary on news items. It ran between 30 September 1998 and 8 December 2000, most notably hosted by Iain Lee and Daisy Donovan. The show boosted the careers of the previously little-known Ricky Gervais, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jimmy Carr and Mackenzie Crook.
Stevenage is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, about 27 miles (43 km) north of London. Stevenage is east of junctions 7 and 8 of the A1(M), between Letchworth Garden City to the north and Welwyn Garden City to the south. In 1946, Stevenage was designated the United Kingdom's first New Town under the New Towns Act.
On the Hour was a British radio programme that parodied current affairs broadcasting, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1991 and 1992. Written by Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, Steven Wells, Andrew Glover, Stewart Lee, Richard Herring and David Quantick, On the Hour starred Morris as the overzealous and self-important principal anchor. He was accompanied by a regular cast assembled by Iannucci, comprising Steve Coogan, Rebecca Front, Doon Mackichan, Patrick Marber and David Schneider, who portrayed assorted news reporters, presenters and interviewees. On the Hour featured the first appearance of Coogan's character Alan Partridge as the "Sports Desk" reporter.
Liza Tarbuck is an English actress, comedian, and television and radio presenter.
David Brent is a fictional character in the BBC television mockumentary The Office, portrayed by the show's co-creator, co-writer and co-director Ricky Gervais. Brent is a white-collar office middle-manager and the principal character of the series. He is the general manager of the Slough branch of Wernham Hogg paper merchants and the boss of most other characters in the series. Much of the comedy of the series centres on Brent's many idiosyncrasies, hypocrisies, self-delusions and overt self-promotion.
Stephen James Merchant is an English comedian, actor, director, and writer. He was the co-writer and co-director of the British TV comedy series The Office (2001–2003), and co-writer, co-director, and co-star of both Extras (2005–2007) and Life's Too Short (2011–2013) alongside Ricky Gervais. With Gervais and Karl Pilkington, he hosted The Ricky Gervais Show in its radio, podcast, audiobook, and television formats; the radio version won a bronze Sony Award. He also provided the voice of the robotic "Intelligence Dampening Sphere" Wheatley in the 2011 video game Portal 2. Merchant co-developed the Sky One travel documentary series An Idiot Abroad (2010–2012) and co-created Lip Sync Battle (2015–present).
Mackenzie Crook is an English actor, director and writer. He played Gareth Keenan in The Office, Ragetti in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Orell in the HBO series Game of Thrones, and the title role of Worzel Gummidge. He is also the creator and star of BBC Four's Detectorists (2014–2022), for which he won two BAFTA awards. He also plays major roles in TV series Britannia, as the opposite leading druids Veran and Harka.
Paul Kaye is an English comedian and actor. He is known for his portrayals of shock interviewer Dennis Pennis on The Sunday Show, New York lawyer Mike Strutter on MTV's Strutter, Thoros of Myr in HBO's Game of Thrones, and Vince the fox on the BBC comedy Mongrels.
Karl Pilkington is an English presenter, actor, voice-artist, producer and author.
Shaun Pye is an English comedian, actor, writer, and television producer, known for co-creating the animated sketch comedy Monkey Dust with Harry Thompson, and for his role as Greg Lindley-Jones on Ricky Gervais's sitcom Extras. Pye created and wrote There She Goes.
Talkback is a British television production company established in 1981 by comedy duo Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones.
Robin Ince is an English comedian, actor and writer, known for presenting the BBC radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage with physicist Brian Cox, creating Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, co-creating The Cosmic Shambles Network, and his stand-up comedy career.
The Ricky Gervais Show is a comedy radio show in the UK starring Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington, later adapted into a podcast and a television series. Although named after Gervais, it mostly revolves around the life and ideas of Karl Pilkington. The show started in August 2001 on Xfm, and aired in weekly periods for months at a time throughout 2002, 2003, 2004 and mid-2005. In November 2005, Guardian Unlimited offered the show as a podcast series of 12 shows. An animated series based on the podcast and adapted for television debuted for HBO in the United States and Channel 4 in the UK in 2010.
William James Smith is an English stand-up comedian, screenwriter, novelist, actor and producer.
Kerry Anna Godliman is an English actor and comedian. She has appeared in TV roles in Derek, Bad Move and After Life.
The Ricky Gervais Show is a comedy animated series produced for and broadcast by HBO and Channel 4. The series is an animated version of the popular British audio podcasts and audiobooks of the same name, which feature Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant along with colleague and friend Karl Pilkington, talking about various subjects behind the microphone. The TV series consists of past audio recordings of these unscripted "pointless conversations," with animation drawn in a style similar to classic era Hanna-Barbera cartoons, presenting jokes and situations in a literal context.
Frog Stone is a British writer and actor known for comedy and drama. She is known for her TV and film work, which includes creating the BBC4 comedy-drama Bucket and has worked extensively in theatre. Stone was included on the BBC 2017 Talent Hotlist.
After Life is a British black comedy-drama streaming television series created, written, produced, and directed by Ricky Gervais, who plays lead character Tony Johnson. It premiered on 8 March 2019 on Netflix. The second series premiered on 24 April 2020. The third and final series premiered on 14 January 2022.