Simon Bird (born 1984) is an English actor, writer and stand up comedian best known for playing Will McKenzie in E4’s BAFTA-nominated comedy The Inbetweeners.
He won the 2008 British Comedy Award for Best Male Newcomer, and is the youngest male winner of any award in the event's 18 year history. He was also nominated for Best Comedy Performance at the 2008 Royal Television Society Awards.
Bird was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, and went on to study English at Queens’ College, Cambridge.
In his final year at Cambridge, 2005–06, he was club president of the Cambridge Footlights where he regularly wrote and performed. With Footlights he co-wrote and performed in two National Tour Shows. He also co-wrote the 2005 pantomime, Great Expectations and wrote the Harry Porter prize-winning play Daddy's Dead.
While completing an MA in Cultural & Critical Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, Bird set up the sketch comedy group The House of Windsor with Joe Thomas (who plays Simon Cooper in The Inbetweeners) and Jonny Sweet. They performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007 and in 2008 (with a show called The Meeting, described as a site-specific comedy installation set in an actual boardroom, which received national media attention and a clutch of five-star reviews). Bird and Thomas were also regulars on series 1 & 2 of the The Weekly Show, a podcast for Channel 4 Radio (2006-7).
Bird also performs stand-up comedy, and took part in Chortle's national student comedy awards in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, coming second in his final attempt. (He was a finalist in 2006, and was disqualified for deliberately breaking the rules in 2007.) [1] [2]
Additionally, he was the voice over for PC World's August 2009 advertising campaign.
He is best friends with his The Inbetweeners (2008) co-star Joe Thomas and is a fan of Crystal Palace FC