Craig Brown (satirist)

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Craig Brown (born May 23, 1957) is a British satirist and writer probably best known for his work in Private Eye. In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.

He was educated at Eton and Bristol University and then became a freelance journalist in London, contributing to The Tatler, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, the Evening Standard (as a regular columnist), The Times (notably as parliamentary sketchwriter; these columns were compiled into a book called A Life Inside) and The Sunday Times (as TV and restaurant critic). He later continued his restaurant column in The Sunday Telegraph and has contributed a weekly book review to The Mail on Sunday.

He created the characters of Bel Littlejohn, an ultra-trendy liberal, in The Guardian, and Wallace Arnold, an extremely reactionary conservative, in The Independent on Sunday. In 2001, he took over Auberon Waugh's "Way of the World" in The Daily Telegraph following Waugh's death. However, he is probably best known for his Diary in the fortnightly satirical magazine Private Eye, in which he adopts the persona of a celebrity or other public figure. His targets have included the Queen, Jackie Collins, Bill Clinton, Martin Amis, and the publicist Max Clifford.

Brown also writes comedy shows such as Norman Ormal for TV, and his radio show This Is Craig Brown was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004. It featured comics Rory Bremner and Harry Enfield and other media personalities.

He has appeared on television as a critic on BBC2's Late Review as well as in documentaries such a Russell Davies's life of Ronald Searle.

His book 1966 and All That takes its title, and some other elements, from 1066 and All That. A Radio 4 adaptation followed in September 2006, in similar vein to This Is Craig Brown. The Tony Years is a comic overview of the years of Tony Blair's government.

[edit] Works by Brown

The Tony Years (Ebury Press, 2006), ISBN 0-09-190969-4
1966 and All That (Hodder & Stoughton, 2005), ISBN 0-340-89711-2
Craig Brown's 'Imaginary Friends': The Collected Parodies 2000-2004 (Private Eye, 2004), ISBN 1-901784-37-1
This Is Craig Brown (Ebury Press, 2003), ISBN 0-09-188807-7
The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery by Kyril Bonfiglioli, completed by Craig Brown (Black Spring Press, 1999), ISBN 0-948238-24-0
The Little Book of Chaos (Time Warner, 1998), ISBN 0-7515-2657-6
Hug Me While I Weep for I Weep for the World, by "Bel Littlejohn" (Little, Brown, 1998), ISBN 0-316-64716-0
The Hounding of John Thomas, a sequel to Lady Chatterley's Lover (Century, 1994), ISBN 0-7126-5778-9
Craig Brown's Greatest Hits (Century, 1993), ISBN 0-7126-5783-5
The Marsh-Marlowe Letters: The Correspondence of Gerald Marsh and Sir Harvey Marlowe: Volume One, 1983, "edited" by Craig Brown (Heinemann, 1984), ISBN 0-434-08885-4