Early life
Walsh was born in Camden in London and in his early years lived in Lewisham with his mother, father and younger brother. [1] [2] [3] Throughout his entire upbringing Walsh's father was addicted to heroin and he has spoken about this experience in two of his stand up comedy specials "Kiss" and "Seann Walsh: Is Dead, Happy Now?". [4] [5]
He attended St Winifred's primary school in Lewisham before his family moved to Brighton for his mother's work. [4] [6] [7] In Brighton he attended Dorothy Stringer School [8] for high school and he left the school with one GCSE examination pass in Drama. [7] [6] [8] Whilst Walsh was attempting a GNVQ course, which would have enabled him to gain entry into the last two years of High School, he was given coursework that asked for a written description of a business and on the night before it was due Walsh had not done anything, so he emailed a friend and asked him to send his coursework to him for him to use as a template. [9] Walsh has commented that then "...all I did was every time it said "Karim's Indian restaurant" I just cut it and set it to TK Maxx, so I handed in the exact same piece of work, ah except it said TK Maxx... I got kicked out of college for that." [9] Walsh has also commented that "Comedy straightened me out. I don't know what I'd be doing if I didn't do this. I didn't pay attention at school, I got kicked out of college." [10] and also that “I was too hyper as a child. You wouldn’t have got me to do anything. I’d no interest in sitting down behind a desk. I was much more interested in smoking in the woods, which is mainly what I did.” [11]
Whilst on Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled Walsh and Tommy Tiernan both spoke about high school, " [Tommy Tiernan]: '...the school would only let me back on the condition that I wouldn't talk to any of the other students about religion.' [Walsh replying]: 'I had that with cannabis.' " [12] [13] and he has further commented on his regular cannabis use in high school, on Mel Giedroyc: Unforgivable saying "Well I was around the age when you started, ehm, you know smoking, [Mel Giedroyc]: 'the Wacky Baccy?' [Walsh]: 'The naughty leaves. And me and five friends smoked this stuff... ...we found this cupborard that um, when you opened it we discovered... that there was no back to this cupboard... so we climbed through and there was like anoher secret hall underneath the gym hall. [Maisie adams]: 'You sure you wern't high?' [Walsh]:' Well, well we got high, underneath the exam hall and so what we did was we, we have ripped cones bongs, bongs...? [Mel Giedroyc]: 'yeah Meera and I...' [Walsh]; oh yeah, you go way back with the bongs, and what we did is we, we blew the smoke through the little holes in our ceiling that went into the exam, so whilst all the other students were doing their exam they were getting bong smoke coming out of the floor and into the exam hall and we thought it would be hilarious, we thought oh they'll all fail, but ah, they were doing a philosophy exam so they got an A." [14]
Walsh has further described his time in high school, "I, just, you know just eh, [I] was a clown, and just wanted to make, all I cared about, even then, was making people laugh. Stuff like tripping over myself... egging, I egged another student... it was the last day of the year elevens, so we egged them, got suspended for that. I got suspended a lot, I got suspended like, I don't know, ten times." [9]
When Walsh was young he would regularly watch Jim Carrey films and Lee Evans stand-up specials and would repeat lines and re-enact scenarios from the films. [4] [11] When Walsh was 17 he attended a stand up comedy club in Brighton [15] [16] and this experience would later contribute to his interest in beginning stand up comedy. [4]
Before he became successful as a stand-up comedian Walsh worked at the Roundhill pub in Brighton as well as at a TK Maxx store, [8] and he was sacked from the store as one day when working there he had, had very little sleep the night before and he crawled under the coats and fell asleep. [17] [12] [14] When Seann was 15 he went on holiday to Spain and became drunk for the first time after drinking vodka and had to go to hospital to have his stomach pumped. [18]
Career
In 2006 Walsh attended a stand-up comedy course run by Jill Edwards comedy workshops and held at the Komedia comedy club in Brighton [19] and he performed his first gig in November 2006. [20] Walsh went on to become the resident host of the newcomer stand up comedy night Comic Boom, held at Komedia [19] and he won several awards early in his career including Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year (2009) [21] and Chortle Best Newcomer (2009). [22] Walsh supported Stephen K. Amos on his 2008/09 Find the Funny and 2009/10 The Feelgood Factor tours, [7] [6] as well as at the 2010 Reading and Leeds Festival . Early on in his career he was also an 'audience wrangler' performing stand up for the QI audience prior to the recording of the show. [23]
In 2009 Walsh first appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Fetival and he has commented about a panic attack that he had on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe, "The first time I did a solo show in Edinburgh, four years ago, I had a panic attack on stage. I'd always wanted to do comedy, but there was too much stress. If you had a bad gig, there was no time to recover from it, and the next night you'd have another bad gig. I'd been smoking and drinking coffee all day, and it was drink, drink, drink after each show, and that was bound to have repercussions. For some reason I walked on stage and started at the wrong point in my act. I skipped the first 10 minutes and I couldn't get back. I couldn't breathe and I had a strange feeling in my teeth and I thought I was going to die. Then I just collapsed, I fell to the floor; the show had to stop and people had to leave." [18]
Walsh performed both his 2012 show Seann to Be Wild [24] and his 2013 show The Lie-In King [25] at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as well as touring the country with both. [26] He has also performed his solo show on tour with fellow comedian Josh Widdicombe in a tour titled Ying and Young. [27] [28] From 2017 to 2018 Walsh presented a weekly show on FUBAR Radio with comedian Mark Simmons that gave a comedic view of current events in the media. [29]
For 4 series from 2014 to 2017 Walsh was a team captain on the comedy panel show Virtually Famous. [30] On the show two teams are shown viral videos from the internet and they are then asked questions about them as well having to act out tasks in the same way that they're being done in the videos [30] [31] and the format for the show was very similar to Never Mind the Buzzcocks. [31]
From 8 September 2018, Walsh participated in the sixteenth series of Strictly Come Dancing with professional dance partner Katya Jones. Early in the series, it was reported that he had become romantically involved with Jones despite both of them being in long-term relationships, and his popularity suffered as a result. [32] Walsh and Jones did an interview with Zoe Ball following the controversy, where after a televised grilling from Ball, Walsh apologised. [33] The couple were voted out in Week 6. [34] [35]
In 2019 Seann co-hosted Flinch, a gameshow for Netflix alongside Lloyd Griffith, and Desiree Burch. [36] In the show contestants are put in circumstances that are discomforting, painful and scary, with the goal being to not flinch as if they do, the contestants receive a painful consequence and the hosts, who are being represented by the contestants, receive points. [37] [38]
In 2022, Walsh participated in Series 22 of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! on ITV1, and finished in 5th place on 25 November 2022. [39]
Walsh's stand-up style has been described as "impressively universal, gag-heavy, observational". [25]
Personal life
Walsh has been in a relationship with dance teacher Grace Adderley since 2019. They live in Shepherd's Bush, London, and welcomed their first child, a daughter, in February 2023. [40] [41] He is a Queens Park Rangers fan. [42] [43]
Once Walsh became old enough to attend pubs and bars he would regularly go drinking with his friends [44] [45] commenting in 2024 that in his past "He was also frequently either 'drunk or hungover'." [46] and he has included his experiences of being drunk and having hangovers in his stand-up routines. [47] [48] [5]
In his early twenties Walsh used to regularly smoke cigarettes and in a stand up routine in 2011 he commented: "Like, I've cut down on smoking now, but up until I cut down, I was smoking over 40 a day, right that's bad. The moment I realised "Fuck it, i need to stop. I need to cut down. I need to do something." is when I ran out of breath grating cheese." [49]
