BBC Comedy Lab - Bios
Andrew Whitehouse
Andrew currently runs Interactive Drama and Entertainment's eTV team. His role covers enhanced TV services for all drama, entertainment and comedy output, from both in-house production areas and indies. He produced the ground-breaking set of interactive TV games for CBeebies, as well as exec'ing Spooks Interactive and Shakespeare Stories. He co-produced Attack of the Graske - the interactive episode of Doctor Who which accompanied the special episode last Christmas. He also exec's drama programme enhancements on the web, and is currently working on pilot projects for emerging interactive platforms.
Ariane Sherine
Ariane Sherine is a 25-year-old London-based comedy writer. She's written for Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps (BBC2/BBC3), Countdown (Channel 4), The New Worst Witch (ITV1) and The Story of Tracy Beaker (BBC1), and recently co-wrote the BBC interactive comedy-drama Wannabes (ID&E). She's also written album reviews for the NME and full-length articles for New Woman. And they were all a lot, lot funnier than this paragraph.
Claudia Griffiths
I've been working in iD&E as an Assistant Producer since April this year and have currently worked on Eurovision 2006 our interactive Karaoke service and Rimokon: The Big TV Quiz a Video On Demand pilot. I previously spent 3 months working as a Coordinator in the International Unit, booking Satellite feeds and organising crews and studio's all over the world. And before that I worked in New Media Central for about 2 years as part of the enhanced TV team, producing interactive applications from the technical side, such as Spooks, Dr Who, World Athletics, CBBC Gymnastics and Ancient Egypt. I've also worked for Chart Show channels and a University in the U.A.E.
Ed Morrish
Ed Morrish joined the BBC in 2000 as a messageboard host/moderator. In 2002, he was given a Radio Entertainment producer traineeship. He graduated to full producer in 2003, and has now made over a hundred programmes for Radio 4 and BBC7.
Emily Angle
I'm the Senior Content Producer for bbc.co.uk/comedy and Comedy Soup. I've worked in the BBC for a respectable number of years on educational and community projects including GCSE Bitesize, the Digital Curriculum pilot, Book of the Future and Get Writing. I'm interested in seeing if interactive collaborative comedy can work, and my pet peeve is bad metadata.
Jamie Cason
Jamie Cason is an Executive Producer for BBC Comedy, providing strategic direction and editorial leadership for interactive and digital Comedy.
Jamie joined the BBC in 2000 as Editor of the drama and comedy categories of bbc.co.uk. He was promoted to Interactive Executive in 2002 with responsibility for developing services on interactive TV and mobile platforms in addition to the internet.
In 2006 he joined the Comedy department in order to develop cross-platform activity in the light of the BBC Creative Future strategy.
Jamie's achievements include developing, writing and executive producing the iBAFTA-nominated Spooks website as well as being executive producer of iBAFTA award-winning Celebdaq. In 2004 he created Taggerz, an online animated series about graffiti artists for 1Xtra. He is the executive producer of the interactive drama, Wannabes, due for launch on bbc.co.uk in September 2006. Prior to joining the BBC, five years ago, Jamie worked for a variety of theatre companies and productions as a marketing and press agent, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, the London International Festival of Theatre and numerous West End shows. He wrote for Wired UK as a freelance journalist and has performed as a stand-up comedian.
Jamie holds a degree in Modern History from Oxford University. His passions are comedy, jazz, Ipswich Town Football Club, his wife and children. Not necessarily in that order.
Jim Poyser
i wrote comedy for radio 4 (have written 6 series), then was a producer for them for 4 years, then ran the script department of shameless, now work as a development producer at bbc comedy north. i live in manchester... er.... married with 2 kids...
Jon Mountague
I'm currently heading up BBC Comedy North in Manchester with a brief to develop narrative comedy out of the north. Three years into the project and our hits include BAFTA nominated 'Funland' (BBC3/2), 'Ideal' (BBC3/2) and 'I'm With Stupid' - a new series tx-ing in September of this year. The show has already won an RTS Award for Best Comedy. Our pilot 'The Visit' - set in a prison visiting room, has been commissioned for a series and will be made early next year. We've also produced shows for network Radio 4 and are currently heavily involved in 'Funny Hunt', the BBC's user generated content trawl for comedy innovators.
Previously I've worked on a range of comedy shows and with performers such as Jo Brand, Angus Deayton and Clive Anderson. I'm a passionate Derby County supporter and I like crab sticks from Somerfield.
Kay Stonham
Kay Stonham is a writer performer working in tv and radio comedy/comedy drama for both adults and young people.
Her early performing credits include BBC films directed by Mike Leigh, Jonathan Miller and Mike Newell and a season at the National Theatre. She also appeared in cult BBC series 'A Very Peculiar Practice' and 'The Young Ones', Channel 4's 'Barking'
More recently she has appeared in 'People Like Us', 'Broken News', 'Dead Ringers', 'New Tricks' and 'Hustle'.
She has written for many BBC sketch shows including 'Harry Enfield and Chums', and 'Alistair McGowans Big Impression'.
On radio she created two original and critically acclaimed series 'Audio Diaries' which ran for three seasons, and 'Robin and Wendy's Wet Week-ends' in which she appeared as Wendy.
Her work for young people includes award winning young peoples sit-com 'Kerching', Granadas 'Girls in Love' and Mersey Tv's 'Grange Hill'.
Currently she is developing two series for BBC 1, and has two projects in development with Objectives TV.
Louise Burrluck
Louise is an eTV producer and joined the BBC's interactive TV department in 1999, has worked on Wimbledon and other major sporting events such as Olympics and World Cup Football through to children's narrative games on CBEEBIES and The Murder Game.
Since 2002 Louise has worked in iD&E, producing live play along interactive quizzes such as Test the Nation and The National Lottery Come and Have a Go, karaoke services for music entertainment formats and produced the BAFTA award winning Spooks Interactive TV drama. A model of this is available at bbc.co.uk/spooks
Louise also worked on The Little Britain Night alternative commentary from Matt and David last Christmas.
Matt Costello
For the Disney Channel, Matt Costello co-created ZoogDisney, the groundbreaking on-air/online weekend programming bloc. He has scripted episodes of the hit children's series, Cyberchase (PBS), and episodes of the innovative Priz Jeunesse award-wining Disney/BBC series Microsoap, written with Neil Richards. With Paul Wilson, Costello created The Sci-Fi Channel's first original program, FTL News, which ran for over six years. And, for nine years he appeared on WNYC's New York Kids show as 'The Game Guy' and Wacky, the Logic Clown.'
Matt has also been an interactive and creative consultant for many clients, including James Cameron's Titanic, the BBC and television and game companies around the world. He has given speeches on games and narrative recently for The Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Sagasnet, The Banff Arts Center, and the government of Singapore. Costello also continues to be a consultant and teacher on Gifted and Talented issues for New York schools.
Matt Costello's innovative work includes ground-breaking and award-winning novels, games, and television.
Costello wrote the critically acclaimed game The 7th Guest, which helped launch the CD-ROM era. Since then, Costello has scripted dozens of best-selling games such as Shellshock-Nam - 67 (Eidos), Bad Boys 2 (Empire) and 2005's Doom 3 of which Time Magazine said, "To play Doom 3 is to feel your skin prickle with atavistic fear. The story is delivered with unusual art." Current games for the next generation of consoles include 2007's Pirates of the Caribbean 3 for Disney.
Costello has also created award-winning games for children, including the landmark Aladdin's Mathquest with Robin Williams for Disney, as well as the award-winning A Cartoon History of the Universe (Putnam) and two games based on the hit PBS series Cyberchase.
Penguin published his latest novel last year, Missing Monday, recently optioned for television. His acclaimed horror novel Beneath Still Waters has been filmed for Lions Gate and Filmax for world-wide release in 2006/2007. His current novel, Out of Time, has been optioned by Electric Entertainment ('The Patriot', 'Independence Day'). The Island of the Skull (Pocket Books), an original prequel to Peter Jackson's 'King Kong', was released last November. Berkley will release his new suspense novel, In Dreams, next September.
Matt's children's series The Kids of Einstein Elementary, published by Scholastic, blends math and adventure. The first two books, The Last Dinosaur and The Titanic Cat, were released in 2005. Other works for children include Magic Everywhere (Random House) and books on puzzles and games.
Neil Richards
Background
Neil Richards worked originally as a producer and story editor in film and TV. He joined the industry as a script editor with David Puttnam's Enigma Productions. He has extensive credits as a story exec for BBC, ITV and Channel 4 in children's, drama and entertainment and has produced drama for Channel 4. He has run development and created drama slates for various independents, including Talisman, Catalyst TV etc.
As writer- TV & Radio
With New York based writer Matt Costello, Neil's first script credits were episodes of the BAFTA-winning series Microsoap. Together they then created The Glitch - an original 13-part comedy sci-fi series in development for CBBC. Matt and Neil also wrote and designed the pilot episode for The Monkey's Paw - an interactive reality adventure for BBC Scotland. Neil also scripted an episode of sci-fi series Ace Lightning for Alliance/Atlantis/BBC. In the last three years Neil has written numerous TV and radio series for BBC Education, earning a 2005 Celtic Film Festival nomination for best Edu Programme and a 2005 Children's BAFTA nomination.
As writer - Games and Interactive Narrative
In recent years Neil has concentrated on interactive media, games and iTV. With Douglas Adams he was co-writer on the Codie-Award winning PC game Starship Titanic (BAFTA nomination). This was followed by In Cold Blood - a PS1 adventure title for Revolution/Sony and Road to El Dorado for DreamWorks. He also co-wrote web-comedy Mount Kristos with Tim Wright and Rob Bevan (XPT). Released in November 2003 was Broken Sword - The Sleeping Dragon, the third in the classic adventure series which earned 3 BAFTA nominations and a prestigious GDA 'Writing Excellence' nomination. In 2004, Neil completed the script for street-racing game Juiced for Juice/Acclaim, and started scripting two as yet unannounced games for SEGA. During the last year he co-wrote Driver: Parallel Lines for Reflections/ATARI. He is also writer-designer on Broken Sword 4 for Revolution/THQ and writer on the game adaptation of The Da Vinci Code game for SONY/TAKE TWO. With Matt Costello he recently completed scripting and designing Just Cause for EIDOS/Avalanche.
Pamela Norris
I work across a range of radio comedy programmes as a Broadcast Assistant in Radio Entertainment. I'm currently working on a BBC talent comedy search, which has an interactive element, with Victoria Lloyd.
Phil Nice
I am an actor/writer working mainly, though not exclusively, in the comedy field. I've written comedy scripts for radio and TV, as well as writing and performing stand-up and a one man show called "Being Nice". During this World Cup I've had some involvement with a daily comedy podcast set up by the Daily telegraph and fronted by Kevin Day.
Recent acting credit: Broken News (BBC2) - part of Russ
Recent writing credit: Sprogs (CBBC)
Richard Turner
Script Executive, Radio Entertainment. I was a freelance comedy writer for radio and television from 1983 to 2005, when I took up my first ever proper job as a researcher for the BBC Format Entertainment Department at Television Centre. Recently, I moved over to the Radio Comedy to work as the script editor.
Tanya Hethorn
Tanya Hethorn is an Assistant eTV Producer at the BBC and joined the department in October 2004. Previous to this she worked on various documentary and history series for the BBC, Discovery & C4.
Tilusha Ghelani
Tilusha Ghelani became a producer in Radio Light Entertainment in 2002. Most recently she has produced Quote/Unquote Chain Reaction and Life in London for which she put extra clips on the website. So far, that is as interactive as her programmes have got.
Tim Green
Tim Green is an Assistant eTV Producer at the BBC and joined the department in October 2004. Previous to this he worked as a freelance Assistant Producer on various entertainment shows for BBC, ITV, C4 and C5.
Victoria Lloyd
Victoria Lloyd is a producer for BBC Radio Entertainment, and has worked on programmes for Radio 1, Radio 4 and BBC7. She is currently working on Show Me The Funny - an online search for new radio comedy talent.
