Simon Munnery

Simon Munnery is an English comedian.

Simon Munnery
Munnery performing at The Stand, Edinburgh, in 2022
Born1967 (age 55–56)
Middlesex, England
MediumStand up, television, radio
NationalityEnglish
GenresAlternative comedy, satire, surreal comedy
Subject(s)Politics

Munnery performs mainly to an alternative audience but has pierced the mainstream both with his BBC Radio 1 show in 1997 and his BBC2 television series Attention Scum! in 2001.[1] His stand-up is often satirical and political and almost always surreal. He has performed as characters Alan Parker: Urban Warrior and The League Against Tedium.

Munnery's experimental style is reflected in his makeshift, often elaborate props. As "The League" he often wore a hat crafted from a kettle, epaulets that contained working model tanks, and shoes covered in roses. In Buckethead he played a character who performed the entire show with a metal bucket over his head.

Early life

Born in Middlesex, Munnery grew up in Bedmond[2] and was educated at Watford Grammar School for Boys, where he earned four A Levels.[3] He read natural sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge but soon lost interest in science and joined the Footlights. In 1987, he became vice-president with Peter Bradshaw as president.[4] After graduating with "a very high third", he did various menial jobs before making his big break into comedy.[5] He has described praise of his work as implying his work occupies a place between "unfunny comedy" and "shit art".[6]

Munnery had a short-lived career as a video game programmer. His most famous title was a version of Asteroids for the Commodore International VIC-20 (a game that Jeff Minter once described as a "pile of wank").[7] He also authored several games for the ZX81 (Road Race, Breakout and Space Invaders) and the ZX Spectrum. The VIC-20 games he wrote were Asteroids, Cosmiads and Scramble.

Career

Stand-up comedy

While at university, Munnery took part in a stand-up double-act called God and Jesus with Stephen Cheeke. He also worked (along with Steve Coogan, Patrick Marber, Richard Herring and Stewart Lee) at the Edinburgh Festival in a piece called The Dum Show.

Munnery was brought to the attention of a comedy community as the compere of a post-alternative comedy cabaret called Cluub Zarathustra performed originally in London and later at the Edinburgh Festival.[8] Cluub Zarathustra featured Stewart Lee, Kevin Eldon, Sally Phillips, Johnny Vegas, Julian Barratt, Richard Herring, Roger Mann, Jason Freeman and the music of Richard Thomas and Loré Lixenberg.[9][10] A television pilot was made of Cluub Zarathustra for Channel 4 in 1996, but was never broadcast. It became the subject of a book by Robert Wringham in 2012.[11][12]

Munnery's Edinburgh Fringe shows include Trilogy, Buckethead and Simon Munnery's Annual General Meeting.

Munnery at Chapter Arts Centre in 2007

His 2006 Edinburgh Fringe show, AGM, included the opportunity for the audience to raise questions to discuss as group (such as "is there a God?"). The experience would often continue after the main show, when he takes the audience on tours around town, taking in art galleries, drinks and visits to other shows.

In 2010, Munnery hosted a Bright Club event at the Bloomsbury Theatre.[13]

In 2018, Munnery performed at Bluedot Festival at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire, UK

Television

Futurtv ("Not 'Future TV', oh no. It can't be 'Future TV' – it's right now!") was a BBC production for UK Play from 1999. There were 13 15-minute episodes. As well as Simon Munnery, it included Kombat Opera Presents (Loré Lixenberg and Richard Thomas) and a selection of pop videos.

Munnery wrote and hosted the 1999 TV comedy game show, Either/Or.

Attention Scum! was a television series produced for the BBC and directed by Stewart Lee, which aired from February 2001. It starred Munnery as 'The League Against Tedium', a character who drove around the United Kingdom in an adapted transit van, preaching to the masses with the help of an opera singer (Loré Lixenberg), a sedated vampire (Richard Thomas), and a monkey (Munnery's wife Janet).

Munnery also appeared in sketches in the first series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle in 2009, and in Lee's The Alternative Comedy Experience for Comedy Central.

Radio

During the 1990s he made several series for BBC Radio 1, one based around his League Against Tedium character. Others were vehicles for his Alan Parker character, including Alan Parker, Alan Parker's 29 Minutes of Truth, and Alan Parker, Road Warrior for which he won the Sony Radio Award.

Munnery has returned to radio in the early 2000s, hosting Simon Munnery's Experimental Half Hour ("experimental in that it lasts an hour") and Simon Munnery Weakly Chats on Resonance FM. He also wrote and performed two four-part Radio 4 series called "Where Did It All Go Wrong?", which were broadcast in the summer of 2003 and the spring of 2005.

In 1999, together with John Hegley, he made a comedy series for BBC Radio 4 called The Adventures of John and Tony.

Munnery featured as a "genius" on Dave Gorman's Genius show on Radio 4.

Books
  • Sit-Down Comedy (contributor to anthology, ed Malcolm Hardee & John Fleming) Ebury Press/Random House, 2003. ISBN 0-09-188924-3; ISBN 978-0-09-188924-1
  • How To Live, P.O.W, 2005. ISBN 0-9551946-2-8; ISBN 978-0-9551946-2-7 Republished by Go Faster Stripe, 2018
  • Wall & Piece, (contributor), by Banksy, Century, 2006. ISBN 1-84413-787-2; ISBN 978-1-84413-787-9
  • You Are Nothing, (interviewee), by Robert Wringham, Go Faster Stripe, 2012. ISBN 978-0-9560901-2-6

Other works

Munnery has several CDs available: Alan Parker – Blast From The Past (featuring Stewart Lee on guitar and Al Murray on drums), Simon Munnery's Experimental Half Hour (2 CD's from the Resonance FM radio show of the same name), AGM recorded live at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2003, and BucketHead: Phenomenon Anon And On and Mr Bartlett & Mr Willis (2011) written and co-performed by Kevin Eldon.

In 2007, Simon appeared as Alan Parker on a music track by The Orb called Grey Clouds, a take off of their earlier track Little Fluffy Clouds. It features on the Annie Nightingale album called Y4K on Distinct'ive Records.

Two DVDs of his work were released in 2007 – the first IAMTV, covering his Perrier Award Nominated show from the 1999 Edinburgh Fringe, was closely followed by Hello produced by Go Faster Stripe, a more recent stand-up performance.

In the 1990s, he regularly contributed a column to NME as "Alan Parker: Urban Warrior".

In 2009, Munnery starred in an award-winning animated rotoscope short, titled Yellow Belly End, co-written and directed by Philip Bacon, a student of the National Film and Television School. In the nine-minute film, Munnery appears in a bird costume and contemplates a cliff. He is credited as "Bird".

In 2017, Munnery was interviewed by fellow comedian Stuart Goldsmith for his podcast the Comedians Comedian. They discussed the inspiration for some of Munnery's ground breaking characters amongst other topics.[14]

In 2020, artist Andy Holden curated a retrospective of the artwork of Simon Munnery, titled ‘What Am I?’ It was first shown at Ex-Baldessarre, Bedford, and then toured to Stroud Valley Art Space.[15]

References
  1. Stephanie Merritt (18 February 2001). "The scum also rises". The Observer. Retrieved 17 December 2010.
  2. "Surrealism in a bucket". Harrow Times. 3 May 2005.
  3. WGSB Famous Old Boys
  4. "Munnery's the word – Arts – www.theage.com.au".
  5. "Nerdy, cool and in a league of his own". The Daily Telegraph. 31 July 1999. Archived from the original on 19 May 2014.
  6. "Simon Munnery - Venn diagrams - video Dailymotion".
  7. James Hague (March 1997). Halcyon Days. Retrieved 19 February 2014.
  8. "Cluub Zarathustra: British Comedy's Weirdest Secret". 4 September 2012.
  9. British Comedy Guide. "Cluub Zarathustra: British Comedy's best-kept secret".
  10. London News. "Simon Munnery Celebrates 30 Years in Comedy". Archived from the original on 15 February 2017.
  11. "Go Faster Stripe".
  12. "Robert Wringham – You Are Nothing". 25 June 2012.
  13. Carole Jahme (4 November 2010). "Laugh and learn at Bright Club". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 December 2010.
  14. Stuart Goldsmith (4 November 2017). "The Comedian's Comedian - 213 - Simon Munnery". YouTube. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  15. "Farty paintings and getting sozzled on gin: a seriously silly history of art and comedy colliding". The Guardian. 16 July 2020. Retrieved 22 August 2020.
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