Griff Rhys Jones
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Griff Rhys Jones (born 16 November 1953) is a British comedian, writer and actor. He came to national attention in the 1980s when he starred with Mel Smith in a number of comedy sketch shows on British TV.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Griffith Rhys Jones was born in Cardiff, Wales, the son of a doctor. Moving with his father's work, he attended Primary School in Midhurst, Sussex, junior school in Harlow, Essex and Secondary School at Brentwood School, in Brentwood, Essex.[1] While the family was resident in Essex, his father had a boat in West Mersea, which they would sail around the coast of Suffolk and into The Broads.[2]
While at Brentwood School he met Charlie Bean (Executive Director of the Bank of England) and Douglas Adams, the writer of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He was part of a group whose antics led to them being referred to as "The Clique" by the school's headmaster. After a short spell working as a petrol-pump attendant, he gained a gap-year job on the P&O ship Uganda, working for a company organising school trips. In his autobiography Semi-Detached (see below) he describes how he was charged with helping to look after 600 Canadian schoolgirls, followed by a similar number of younger Scottish schoolchildren, and refers to the experience as being like "St Trinians at sea".[3] He wrote to eight of the Canadians afterwards, and lost his virginity to one of them, named Jill.[4]
Rhys Jones followed Bean and Adams to Cambridge, reading History and English at Emmanuel College. While at University, Jones joined the prestigious Cambridge Footlights Club (of which he became Vice-President in 1976). He was also president of the ADC (Amateur Dramatics Club) during his time at Cambridge. At this time, his ambitions were focused on the theatre, particularly directing.
After University, he started appearing in numerous comedy programmes, initially with Clive Anderson, and also producing Rowan Atkinson's show Atkinson's People for the BBC. Although not appearing in the pilot show, producer John Lloyd was asked by the BBC to replace original team member Chris Langham in the 1980s sketch show Not the Nine O'Clock News. Rhys Jones says that the reason he got the part was not due to his appearance in initial shows, or his talent, but because Lloyd was dating his sister at the time. Rhys Jones became a regular from the commissioned second series, alongside Atkinson, Mel Smith and Pamela Stephenson.
[edit] Partnership with Mel Smith
After Not the Nine O'Clock News, Smith and Rhys Jones thought they would be unemployed. They decided to take action in two areas, firstly by creating and writing more material together, and secondly by starting a management company to produce their own shows as well as other performers', and hence make more money on which to live.
In 1981, Smith and Rhys Jones founded TalkBack Productions, a company which has produced many of the most significant British comedy shows of the past two decades, including Smack the Pony, Da Ali G Show, I'm Alan Partridge and Big Train. From 1984, Smith and Rhys Jones appeared in the comedy sketch series Alas Smith and Jones (the show's title being a pun on the American TV series Alias Smith and Jones). After the first series of Alas Smith And Jones, the pair appeared on the big screen in Mike Hodges' disappointing sci-fi comedy movie Morons From Outer Space. They also developed TalkBack to manage other acts, including Matt Lucas and David Walliams of Little Britain fame. In 2000, they sold the company to Thames TV for £62 million.
Smith and Jones were reunited in 2005 for a review/revival of their previous TV series in The Alas Smith And Jones Sketchbook. The BBC was criticized for using it to repeat a series of programmes without resorting to unpopular re-runs.[citation needed] Smith joked: "Obviously, Griff's got more money than me so he came to work in a Rolls Royce and I came on a bicycle. But it was great fun to do and we are firmly committed to doing something new together, because you don't chuck that sort of chemistry away. Of course, I'll have to pretend I like Restoration."[5]
[edit] Recent work
Rhys Jones was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1984 (1983 season) for Best Comedy Performance in Charley's Aunt and in 1994 (1993 season) for Best Comedy Performance for his performance in An Absolute Turkey.
Rhys Jones has developed a career as a TV presenter, beginning as the co-host on several Comic Relief shows. He is the presenter of the BBC's Restoration programme (he began filming its third series at Lincoln Cathedral on 3 June 2006), and has done a considerable amount of fundraising work for the Hackney Empire theatre conservation project. In 2004 he and Rory McGrath led a demonstration at the Senate House in Cambridge University for the purpose of saving architecture as a degree in Cambridge.
He was the narrator of the series of short cartoons, Funnybones, for which he also sang the theme tune. Other notable television work includes two BBC documentaries re-creating the legendary British comic novel Three Men in a Boat, in which he rowed down the Thames from London to Oxford with fellow comedians Dara O'Briain and Rory McGrath.
Rhys Jones has also continued his acting career, having roles in Casualty and Marple as well as starring in Russell T. Davies's drama series Mine All Mine on ITV1. His forthcoming TV projects include a documentary series, Mountain.
A resident of East Anglia, in 2002 he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of East Anglia.[6]
[edit] Writing
In 2002, Rhys Jones started writing a book called To the Baltic with Bob, describing his adventures on the high seas with his sailing friend Bob, as they make their way to St Petersburg, port by port. In 2002 they reached Copenhagen where the boat was stored for the winter, and completed the journey in summer 2003.[6] Rhys Jones released the book in 2003, saying of the experience: "As a child you go out and play and you lose all track of time and space. It's harder and harder to attain that blissful state of absorption as you get older. I did a six-month sailing trip to St Petersburg with some mates just to get it back."[4]
His early life has been captured in his autobiography Semi-Detached published in 2006 by Penguin Books.
[edit] Personal life
Rhys Jones met his wife Jo (actually called June), a graphic designer, while working at the BBC. He has described their first meeting by saying "The day we met, I was semi-naked and she was throwing water over me." The couple have two teenage children, and live between homes in London (previously in Islington, now in a Grade I listed former office block in London’s West End) and Holbrook, Suffolk.[7] The family have a chocolate coloured Labrador called "Cadbury".[8]
Rhys Jones started running as a leisure pursuit in his early forties, and is a teetotaler: "I don't drink so going to a party can become very tedious. By about 11 o'clock everybody goes to another planet and you're not there with them, so I tend to avoid that sort of thing."[7]
Although not a hardcore follower of football he has taken time to visit Ipswich Town at events and has admitted he supported them as a child.
[edit] Quotations
- On dysfunction: "My family wasn't troubled by much dysfunction. The most hotly contested issue was probably 'Who is going to have the most peas?' Consequently, I haven't got much time for angst. Anything that happens to you is your own responsibility."[4]
- On Mel Smith: "Mel and I genuinely get on. It's like another marriage. He is very straightforward and never loses his rag. I run around in a frenzy most of the time. London cabbies will say to me, 'Your mate Mel's a miserable bastard', but he's far more grounded than me."[4]
- On talent: "We need a corrective on who is a genuine artist. I'm an opportunist. I have no talent. That's true of 99 per cent of people in the British media. Ricky Gervais or Graham and Arthur who wrote Father Ted or Armando Iannucci are God-like as they have talent. Everyone else is a drone."[4]
- On holidays: "For me real peace is lying on a river bank in summer with a sprig of grass in my mouth. I have friends who jet off to a luxury hotel. I think, 'How can you enjoy such ghastly luxury?"[4]
[edit] References
- ^ The actor and director thinks back to his school days, Headliners, 1995. Retrieved 3 March 2007.
- ^ Suffolk: Estuary English, Mail on Sunday, 2001. Retrieved 3 March 2007.
- ^ Semi-Detached, Griff Rhys Jones's autobiography, Penguin, 2006
- ^ a b c d e f This much I know: Griff Rhys Jones, The Guardian, November 5, 2006. Retrieved 3 March 2007.
- ^ Interview with Mel Smith, Metro.co.uk. Retrieved 3 March 2007.
- ^ a b My Cardiff at the Internet Archive. Retrieved 3 March 2007.
- ^ a b Clowning around with Mr Jones at BBC Entertainment, May 14, 1999. Retrieved 3 March 2007.
- ^ Restoration interview (96 KB pdf), BBC, 29 April 2004. Retrieved 3 March 2007.
[edit] External links
| Preceded by Simon Levene |
Footlights Vice President 1975–1976 |
Succeeded by Nicholas Hytner |
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | 1953 births | Living people | People from Cardiff | Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge | Cambridge Footlights | Welsh film actors | Welsh television actors | Welsh television presenters | Welsh comedians | British comedy writers | British television writers | Young Ones cast members
