Simon Bird
Vorlage:BLP sources Vorlage:Infobox actor Simon Antony Bird (born 19 August 1984) is an English actor, writer and stand up comedian best known for playing Will McKenzie in E4’s BAFTA-winning TV comedy The Inbetweeners.
Early life
Bird was born in Guildford, Surrey. He was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Guildford. He 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. He is the son of Graham Bird, an economics lecturer at the University of Surrey.Vorlage:Citation needed.
Comedy rise
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 and 2 of 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]
Breakthrough
In 2008, Bird was cast in E4's teen comedy The Inbetweeners, along with Joe Thomas. He won a 2008 British Comedy Award for Best Male Newcomer and a 2009 British Comedy Award for Best Actor. He is the youngest male winner of any award in the event's 19 year history. He was also nominated for Best Comedy Performance at the 2008 Royal Television Society Awards, and Best Male Comedy Actor at the 2009 BAFTA Awards.
Additional work
Bird was the voice over for PC World's August 2009 advertising campaign.
Towards the end of 2009, Bird began appearing on LE TV shows including Never Mind The Buzzcocks, We Need Answers and The Weakest Link which he won.
Bird is currently appearing in a new BBC Three comedy panel show The King Is Dead, in which a well-known person is hypothetically killed off and a panel of three top celebrities go head-to-head in a series of fun quiz rounds and challenges in their bid to replace them. He created, writes and hosts alongside Nick Mohammed and Katy Wix.
Another of Bird's projects recently given the go ahead is Friday Night Dinner - a single-camera comedy, written by Robert Popper, former producer of Peep Show and co-creator of BBC2's Look Around You. It will be made by Big Talk Productions, which made Spaced, and Popper Pictures. Each episode takes place over the course of a Friday night, as twenty-something brothers Adam (Bird) and Jonny (newcomer Tom Rosenthal) go to their parents' house for their traditional Friday night dinnerVorlage:Citation needed.