Andrew O'Connor

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Andrew O'Connor is a British actor, comedian, magician, television presenter and executive producer. He is widely - but wrongly - thought to be the son of Tom O'Connor.

[edit] Television career

Although he enjoyed a short stint as a child actor, appearing as Tom Brill in The Canal Children in 1976, he made his mark as a children's magician, and won the Magic Circle's Young Magician of the Year prize. He appeared in a number of variety shows on television, and was invited to join the cast of London Weekend Television's Copy Cats show in 1985. The show's main stars, Gary Wilmot and Bobby Davro, left the show during its first series, meaning that O'Connor became one of the lead figures. He was the only member of the cast to write for the show as well as appear in it. His own children's show, Andrew O'Connor's Joke Machine soon followed, in which he told jokes and performed magic tricks and invited children to do the same.

In 1986, he began appearing in ITV's popular Saturday morning children's series, No. 73. But shortly afterwards, he switched to the BBC to launch another Saturday morning children's series, On the Waterfront, alongside fellow ex-No. 73 host Kate Copstick.

In 1988 O'Connor also appeared regularly in short comedy sketches co-written by himself for the Observation round in ITV game show The Krypton Factor. In the same year he took over from Jeremy Beadle as the presenter of the daytime game show, Chain Letters. His career as a quiz-show host took off, and he subsequently presented Talk About, moved to Saturday night prime time in 1991 with One to Win, and returned to daytime television with The Alphabet Game. This latter show was devised and produced by O'Connor, having formed his production company, Objective.

This marked the turning point in his career, and although O'Connor has made numerous on-screen appearances since then, he has mainly been working behind the camera. He has produced numerous comedy and magic related television shows, perhaps the most notable being most of Derren Brown's programmes.

In 1994 O'Connor hosted & presented an ITV & Family Channel Game Show called Family Catchphrase, which was a spin off from Catchphrase, from 1994 until 1997, when O'Connor left & once again moved back to a daytime slot after the show and spin off ran for about 4 and a half series.

In 1996, a year before leaving Family Catchphrase, he established Objective Productions with Michael Vine. O'Connor holds the position of Chief Executive.