Stephen Grant (comedian)

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Stephen Grant is an award winning British comedian and radio presenter best-known for hosting the Krater Comedy Club at Komedia in Brighton, England, which won the Chortle Award for Best Comedy Club in the South from 2002 to 2006. Grant himself won Best Compère in 2008.

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[edit] Biography

As a stand-up comedy performer, Stephen Grant reached the finals of the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Awards, and he went on to co-star in Foot, Grant, and Mackenzie, a three-person show alongside the comedians Paul Foot and Veronica Mackenzie. Grant first came to TV prominence in 1999 when he was followed alongside comedians Jason Byrne and Adam Bloom as a main character in the Channel 4 documentary Edinburgh or Bust. The programme showed Grant, still working as a software consultant at the time, taking part in the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Awards, and in his first show at the Edinburgh Festival.

Grant entered comedy professionally as the main comedy writer for a variety of shows on BBC Radio 1 between 1999 and 2003, writing for Zoe Ball on her breakfast show before becoming the full-time writer for Scott Mills. In that time he also wrote for Sara Cox, Simon Mayo, The Dreem Teem, Clive Warren, Emma B, and John Peel, who narrated the Radio 1 Christmas Pantomime in 2002, which Grant also wrote.

In 2004, Grant became a deputising presenter on a number of shows, including breakfast, drivetime, and the evening show. He also presented the radio coverage each May for the special show covering the Brighton Festival and Fringe. In early 2005, he became the full-time comedy writer for Jamie Theakston's Breakfast Show on the British radio station Heart 106.2, leaving in Summer 2005 to pursue a radio career solely in presentation. Beginning October 2005, Grant began hosting his own radio show on BBC Southern Counties Radio on Saturday mornings.

His television work includes presenting BBC2's Stephen Grant's Journey to the Wasteland in 2001 and the documentaries The Estate We're In and The 49 Steps in 2002; and, for BBC1, The Brighton Festival and Inside Out (BBC South) in 2003, and the documentary Noise in 2004. He has written for the television shows Public Opinion (for BBC Scotland), Lily Savage Live, Live and Kicking, Radio1 TV (for BBC Choice), and OutThere, alongside Emily Booth.

[edit] Performing comedy

Grant has performed sketches or stand-up comedy on the programmes Edinburgh Nights (BBC1); Comedy Nation (BBC2); Stand Up Live (Live TV); Open Mic (C5); and Cyber Café (ITV).

His 2006 Edinburgh show, Life's Too Short, previewed in May 2006 at the Theatre Royal. In October 2006, the show played the Corn Exchange in Brighton for the Paramount Comedy Festival.

Other performances include the one-man Edinburgh show Route One (2003), his professional debut, which described a nightmare journey to buy a navigation system off eBay; and Stephen Grant, which tracked the discrepancy between commercial success and artistic integrity in the entertainment industry.

Grant has also performed a new one man show at the Komedia in Brighton, titled Attention to Detail.

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