JOHN LLOYD

JOHN LLOYD was born in 1951. He was educated at The King’s School, Canterbury and Trinity College, Cambridge where he read Law. He has been married to Sarah for 20 years. They have three children — Harry, Coco and Booty — and live in Oxfordshire.

John is a director, producer, writer and presenter. He is currently the Series Producer of BBC1’s QI and the presenter of The Museum of Curiosity on Radio Four. His speciality is inventing enduring new formats.

Two of the radio shows that he started in the seventies - The News Quiz and Quote...Unquote - are all still running today, over thirty years later.

He co-wrote the first series of both The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy and To The Manor Born, both of which started on radio. In 1979 he moved to television where he created Spitting Image, Not the Nine O’Clock News, Blackadder and QI.

At its peak during the third series (the last that John produced) ITV’s Spitting Image was No 3 in the ratings, with an audience regularly attaining 15 million. BBC2’s Not the Nine O-Clock News was shown only once on BBC1. It got an audience of 17million. In its day, BBC1’s To the Manor Born was the most highly rated series on British television ever. It peaked at 27 million viewers.

The Not The Nine O’Clock News stage show Not in Front of the Audience which John co-directed, co-produced and co-wrote sold out for every night of its runs in Oxford and at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

BBC1’s Have I Got News For You (which has been running for 19 years) is based on The News Quiz. John helped devise it and was the chairman of the pilot. He also had the original idea for Mr. Bean.

In addition to Blackadder: the Whole Damn Dynasty, John has co-written or edited the following books:

Not, Not 1982, Not 1983, Not the Royal Wedding, Not the General Election, The Appallingly Disrespectful Spitting Image Book, Spitting Images, The Meaning of Liff, The Deeper Meaning of Liff, The QI Book of General Ignorance, The QI Book of Animal Ignorance, The Noticeably Stouter Book of General Ignorance, Advanced Banter: The QI Book of Quotations and The QI ‘E’ and ‘F’ Annuals.

Between them, these books have sold around 6 million copies. The Meaning of Liff has been continuously in print for 26 years. The Book of General Ignorance has been translated into 29 languages and is the fourth best-selling book on Amazon.co.uk since the company began.

John has been directing commercials on and off for 22 years, 15 of them full time. These include Barclaycard with Rowan Atkinson, Dime Bar and Worthington E with Harry Enfield, Red Rock Cider with Leslie Nielsen, Holsten Pils with Jeff Goldblum, Norwich Union with John Cleese, Abbey National with Alan Davies and Kelloggs Crunchy Oatbakes with William Shatner.

John has won countless awards all over the world including a Grammy, three RTS awards, four International Emmies and ten BAFTAs, including ‘lifetime’ awards from BAFTA and the Royal Television Society.

At the Ace Awards (the principal US cable TV awards) the rules had to be changed because Blackadder kept winning in the US domestic category despite being a foreign import. John’s Grammy was for the only pop video he has ever written and directed, Genesis’ Land of Confusion. It won many other awards as well as being voted MTV’s “Best Pop Video of All Time”.

The Barclaycard commercials with Rowan Atkinson, which John devised, co-wrote and directed, were recently voted the most effective series of advertisements in the history of British television.

In 1992, for the first and only time in its history, BAFTA held a ceremony especially for television commercials. John won six awards that night. Due to this strange anomaly he has more BAFTAs than anyone else in the world, narrowly beating Judi Dench (9) and Woody Allen (8).

Despite all this, John is an incredibly modest fellow. Possibly the most modest fellow in Europe, he has been nominated an incredible 128 times for the Modest Fellow of the Year Awards. Modestly, however, he has declined to accept.