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Tom Binns | |
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 Binns as hospital radio DJ Ivan Brackenbury, Glastonbury Festival, 2019 | |
| Born | Christopher Thomas Binns 1970 (age 53–54) Sheffield, United Kingdom |
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Christopher Thomas Binns (born 1970) is a British comedian best known for his character of Hospital Radio DJ Ivan Brackenbury. He has made multiple TV and radio appearances.
Binns was nominated at the Edinburgh Festival for the Edinburgh Comedy Award 2007 for his hospital radio DJ character Ivan Brackenbury. He has been twice nominated for the Adelaide Fringe Comedy Award, in 2010 and 2011. He was voted a Foster's Comedy God in 2010. He also was nominated for a Chortle Award in 2011 and was also named in a list of their 50 Most Memorable Gigs of the decade. He won the Best International Act at the 2013 New Zealand International Comedy Festival and was nominated for Best Comedy Show at FringeWorld, Perth in 2015 and 2016. [1]
He appears in the BBC MI5 drama Spooks (Episode 6 Series 6), [2] Series 3 of the IT Crowd on Channel 4, [3] in Knowing Me Knowing Yule with Alan Partridge , and, in character as Ivan Brackenbury, on The Jason Byrne Show. In 2017, he appeared in the comedy movie Eaten by Lions .
As Ian D Montfort he had a BBC Radio 2 series called Ian D Montfort is Unbelievable, broadcast in February 2013. [4]
Besides writing comedy for television and radio, Binns has appeared on other television shows, such as RI:SE , Bullrun, Oblivion and as a writer on Trigger Happy TV , for which he earned "best comedy moment" and "TV moment of 2001" awards. His first television appearances were Friday Night Armistice (BBC2) and Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun , and has gone on to further appear in the Channel 4-based late night sports talk show Under the Moon , with Danny Kelly where he regularly referenced his love of Sunderland AFC. He has also had stage appearances at the Bloomsbury Theatre and Garrick Theatre.
Binns has worked on Radio 1, Virgin, BRMB and GLR, Talksport UK, Hallam FM and Key 103, appearing either as himself or as hospital radio character Ivan Brackenbury. [5]
Binns is the co-writer of BBC 1's Hospital People , part of the BBC's Comedy Playhouse, in which he plays the five lead characters Ivan Brackenbury, Ian D Montfort, Susan Mitchell, Terry Boyle and Father Kenny. [6]
He has written the book How to Get Famous – A Cynical Guide.
In 1999, London-based radio station Xfm was fined £50,000 by the Radio Authority following complaints regarding the use of coarse sexual innuendo when discussing a bestial pornography video with a listener during the Tom Binns Breakfast Show. [7] Parent company Capital Radio decided not to sack Binns but in a meeting shortly after the fine was issued, the Radio Authority made it clear to Capital Radio that this would negatively affect the decision to renew the XFM licence.
In December 2009, Binns was fired from BRMB by its owners Orion Media after he cut short the Queen's Christmas Message. [8] The Message was played into his show in error instead of the expected two-minute news bulletin. Binns joked, "Two words: bore-ring". He then went on to joke that the British monarchy can't be as good for tourism as some people claim because "the French executed theirs and people still visit France" and played a George Michael record with the link "from one queen to another". [9] [10]
Binns admitted five counts of making indecent images of children and one count of possessing prohibited images when he appeared in court on 21 November 2022. Under UK law, the term "making" refers to the act of downloading or accessing images rather than creating them, even in cases where the images were downloaded incidentally and later deleted as unwanted. The making charge involved over 35,000 illicit images, which were part of a larger body of material downloaded during compulsive bulk downloads, the majority of which consisted of legal content. The possession charge pertained to only three prohibited images, which were trapped in a frozen Google account. Notably, Binns raised the alarm about this frozen account by contacting Google to investigate the issue.
The court accepted that Binns' behaviour was significantly influenced by a misprescription of medication, which induced hypersexuality and OCD-like behaviours. The material was downloaded blindly using .rar and .zip files and automated scripts, which unintentionally included illicit content. On 17 August 2023, Binns was given a combined 10-month sentence, suspended for 15 months, after the court ruled that his actions lacked sexual intent and were driven by compulsive behaviours linked to the medication.
During sentencing, Judge Shaun Smith KC addressed Binns, stating:
The judge further remarked:
He also noted:
The making charge involved 35,000 illicit images, which were part of a larger body of material downloaded during compulsive bulk downloads, the majority of which consisted of legal content. The possession charge pertained only to three prohibited images, which were trapped in a frozen Google account.
The compulsive behaviour involved downloading large amounts of material, including legal sexual images in .rar and .zip files, often through automated tools such as scripts, web crawlers, and browser extensions. Binns was not fully aware of the illicit content due to the blind nature of these downloads.
When Google froze his account prior to the investigation, Binns raised the alarm by authorizing them to review its contents to determine the cause of the freeze, inadvertently initiating the investigation. Since stopping the medication, Binns has not repeated the behaviour and has expressed deep remorse, recognizing the harm caused by the demand for such material.
In the context of UK law, "making indecent images" refers to the act of downloading or accessing illegal images, not actively creating or producing them. This includes situations where images are downloaded inadvertently or incidentally and subsequently deleted as unwanted.
Media coverage of the case predominantly emphasized the large number of illicit images involved, with reports stating that over 35,000 images were found to have been downloaded. This focus, combined with statements from the National Crime Agency (NCA), contributed to public perceptions that the sentencing was overly lenient.
Holly Triggs, an operations manager at the NCA, stated in a press release: "Tom Binns deliberately collected a huge number of indecent images of children."
This statement did not reflect the court's findings, which acknowledged mitigating factors such as the lack of sexual intent, the compulsive nature of Binns' actions, and the role of misprescribed medication. The court further recognized that these actions were out of character, driven by the adverse effects of the medication, and that Binns had demonstrated remorse and taken significant steps toward rehabilitation. Additionally, it was established that the images were deleted.
The NCA's press release and subsequent media reports often conflated the making and possession charges. While the making charge involved over 35,000 images, the possession charge pertained to only three prohibited images found in a frozen Google account. The press release did not clarify these distinctions, nor did it mention that Binns had contacted Google to investigate the account freeze, not knowing about the presence of the material.
The court accepted that Binns' behaviour was driven by compulsive downloading during a period of medication misuse. However, the predominant narrative in the media centreed on the quantity of images and omitted mitigating context, leading to widespread public misunderstanding of the case and its outcome.
Binns has received several accolades:
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