| John O'Farrell | |
|---|---|
| Born | 27 March 1962 Maidenhead, Berkshire, England |
| Occupation | Writer, |
| Nationality | British |
| Period | 1986–present |
| Genres | Fiction, Non-fiction |
John O'Farrell (born 27 March 1962) is a British author, broadcaster and comedy scriptwriter.
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O’Farrell grew up in Maidenhead, Berkshire[1] the youngest of three children, attending Courthouse Primary School and then Desborough Comprehensive. His father was a book dealer from Galway, Ireland. He had some success as a child actor, playing Christopher Robin in the West End at the age of ten, and appearing in the horror film From Beyond the Grave with Diana Dors and Donald Pleasence.[2] O’Farrell went on to study English and Drama at Exeter University.[3]
O'Farrell moved to London in 1985, winning a talent competition at Jongleurs, Battersea, but soon gave up stand up comedy in favour of comedy writing.[4] After turning up at the open meetings for Radio 4’s Week Ending he teamed up with Mark Burton[5] and the writing partnership got their first commission from Harry Thompson (who later named his two pet rats Burton and O’Farrell). The duo won the BBC Light Entertainment Contract Award, and contributed to a number of radio series, including Little Blighty on the Down, McKay the New and with Pete Sinclair, A Look Back at the Nineties and Look Back at the Future in which O’Farrell also performed.[6] The latter series won a British Comedy Award, a Gold Sony Radio Academy Award and a Premios Ondas.
Burton and O’Farrell were commissioned for Spitting Image in 1988 and the following year became two of the lead writers on the show. O’Farrell is credited with the idea of making John Major permanently grey.[7] They also wrote for Clive Anderson Talks Back, Nick Hancock on Room 101, Murder Most Horrid, and co-wrote some of the Heads to Heads for Alas Smith and Jones. In 1993 they left Spitting Image and became the first writers credited for the scripted parts of Have I Got News For You. Also for Hat Trick Productions they wrote a BBC1 sitcom The Peter Principle (‘The Boss’ in the US) starring Jim Broadbent. They are also credited for ‘additional dialogue’ on the Aardman film Chicken Run.[8]
In 1998, O’Farrell published Things Can Only Get Better: Eighteen Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter. The book became a number one best-seller and was nominated for the George Orwell Award and the Channel 4 Political Awards. It was adapted for BBC Radio 4 starring Jack Dee and Doon Mackichan. In September 2010 it was listed by The Economist as Britain's third best-selling political memoir since 1998, after books by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.[9]
In 1999, O'Farrell began a weekly satirical column in The Independent, soon switching to The Guardian where he remained until 2005. Three collections of his columns have been published; Global Village Idiot, I Blame the Scapegoats and I Have A Bream.[10]
In 2000 O’Farrell published his first novel, The Best A Man Can Get, which became the best-selling debut novel of 2002. It was dramatised for BBC Radio 4 starring Mark Heap and Tamsin Greig. The novel was later optioned by Paramount Pictures. Two further novels followed, This Is Your Life and May Contain Nuts, which was adapted for ITV by his former co-writer Mark Burton and starred Shirley Henderson and Darren Boyd.[8] His novels have been translated into over twenty languages, including a Japanese manga edition of The Best a Man Can Get.[11]
In 2007, he returned to non-fiction with the publication of An Utterly Impartial History of Britain, or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge which was BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week and went on to sell over 250,000 copies. This was followed in October 2009 by An Utterly Exasperated History of Modern Britain, or Sixty Years of Making the Same Stupid Mistakes as Always.
O’Farrell has contributed short stories and non-fiction pieces to a number of charity collections; Nick Hornby’s Speaking with the Angel,[12] Magic,[11] Mums, Dads and Being British edited by Gordon Brown.
His fourth novel The Man Who Forgot His Wife will be published in March 2012.
O’Farrell is an occasional guest on such programmes as Have I Got News For You, Newsnight Review, Question Time and Grumpy Old Men.[8] He has written and presented a number of TV and Radio documentaries such as Losing My Maidenhead and Paranoid Parenting for BBC1, and Dreaming of Toad Hall[13] Turn Over Your Papers Now and The Grand Masquerade for Radio 4. (O’Farrell’s radio programme The Grand Masquerade on the Kit Williams treasure hunt book resulted with the mysterious golden hare re-surfacing twenty years after it disappeared.)[14]
Other TV and radio appearances include Crime Team, What the Papers Say, The News Quiz, Heresy, Quote Unquote, The Write Stuff, What the Dickens, The 11 O’clock Show, We’ve Been Here Before and Clive Anderson’s Chat Room.
In September 2006, O'Farrell launched the news satire website NewsBiscuit to create a new outlet for British comedy on the internet.[15] The site also develops new writing using a submissions board where readers can rate each other's material and suggest rewrites or edits. A collection of some of the best stories were published in 2008 as Isle of Wight to Get Ceefax.[16] A number of the writers have gone on to write for BBC Radio after developing their material on NewsBiscuit.[17]
A life long member of the Labour Party, O'Farrell is still politically active, having successfully campaigned for a new state secondary school in his part of South London, Lambeth Academy, where he has been chair of governors since it opened in 2004. He stood as a no-hope Labour candidate in the 2001 general election in his home town of Maidenhead, which was the subject of the BBC documentary Losing My Maidenhead. O'Farrell insists he has never had any serious political ambitions and that he will not be standing anywhere again. During the 2005 general election his comic emails to Labour Party members raised hundreds of thousands of pounds. In April 2007 he conducted the first ever interview of a serving Prime Minister on the internet.[18] He has also written jokes for Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and other senior Labour figures.[19]
O'Farrell is married with two children. He and his family live in Clapham in South London and holiday in West Cork.[20]
He supports Fulham FC[21] and revealed in the club fanzine that the characters in each of his novels are named after players from a particular Fulham team.[22]
O'Farrell met his wife Jackie when she worked in BBC Radio Comedy. She was the Production Assistant who had to sit on stage beside Humphrey Lyttleton during I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, and O'Farrell joked "I married the lovely Samantha!"[23]