Matthew Holness
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Matthew Holness is an English comedian. Hailing from Whitstable in Kent, Holness read English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was vice-president of the Cambridge Footlights.
In 2000, Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight, a stage show written by Holness and Richard Ayoade, and starring Holness, Ayoade and Alice Lowe, was nominated for the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe. The show was built around Holness's spoof horror writer character Garth Marenghi, with additional parts played by Ayoade and Lowe. The sequel to Fright Knight, Garth Marenghi's Netherhead, won the Perrier Award the following year.
Garth Marenghi transferred to UK television in the 2004 Channel 4 horror comedy Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Despite critical acclaim and a cult following on the Internet the series suffered from relatively low ratings, and Holness is perhaps better known by TV audiences for his cameo as Simon (the Computer Guy) in series two of The Office. He played a similar character (among others) in the 2000 TV series Bruiser.
From 2004, Holness has played the regular character of Keith Bilk in radio series The Department, written by Chris Addison (series 1, 2), John Oliver, and Andy Zaltzman.
Holness's most recent comedy creation, Merriman Weir, a guitar-picking folk singer, can be found performing at small comedy clubs in London and around the UK. Merriman Weir has also appeared as a guest in the pilot episode of Channel 4's new comedy chat show Man to Man with Dean Learner (2005) (then known as Deano's After Dark) where he was interviewed by Garth Marenghi's publicist Dean Learner — a character created by Richard Ayoade.
Following on from the above successful pilot show, Holness and Ayoade recorded a six-part series for Channel 4 entitled "Man to Man with Dean Learner" in late May and early June at Teddington Studios, which was broadcast on terrestrial television on Friday October 20th 2006 at 11.05pm on Channel 4 and continued for 6 weeks. Holness played Dean Learner's different guests in each episode. (To note is that, although the Merriman Weir episode was recorded first, it was actually the fourth one to be broadcast in the series).
Holness is married to Becky Sixsmith and lives in Crouch End, London.
In 2006 he appeared in the BBC2 comedy programme Time Trumpet.
