Peter Richardson (English director)

Peter Richardson (born 15 October 1951) is an English director, screenwriter, actor and comedian. He founded the Comic Strip troupe of performers, which showcased his double act with Nigel Planer and launched the careers of French and Saunders, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, and Alexei Sayle. Richardson approached Channel 4 to make a series of short, self-contained one-off comedy films with this group, which led to ''The Comic Strip Presents...'', many of which were written, directed by and featured him in acting roles.

Richardson began his career as a teenager acting in Alan Bennett's '' Forty Years On''. Trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School 1971–73. He later created his own experimental theatre shows with Nigel Planer amongst others, mixing comedy and improvisation with rock music. Two of these shows, ''Rank'' and ''The Wild Boys'' toured nationally.

Although he did not reach the same level of public recognition as some of his contemporaries, Richardson was influential on British television comedy throughout the 1980s as the driving force behind ''The Comic Strip Presents...'' films, one of the first examples of alternative comedy to appear on British television. Richardson has been involved in the production of over 40 Comic Strip films and has directed 17 of them. The series won a Rose D'Or for ''The Strike'' in 1988. He developed the series into feature films; ''The Supergrass'', ''Eat the Rich'', '' The Pope Must Die'', and '' Churchill: The Hollywood Years'', none of which achieved great box office success. In the 1990s, Richardson introduced a new generation of performers, Doon Mackichan, Mark Caven, Phil Cornwell, Sara Stockbridge, George Yiasoumi and Gary Beadle, who appeared in his productions. He co-wrote and also directed the 1990s cult mockumentary comedy series '' Stella Street'' with Phil Cornwell and John Sessions. In 2004, Richardson co-founded the production company Great Western Features with Nick Smith, which is based in Totnes, Devon. In 2005, he directed the Comic Strip film ''Sex Actually''. In the 2010s, Richardson wrote and directed three more Comic Strip films, 2011's '' The Hunt for Tony Blair'', 2012's ''Five Go To Rehab'' and 2016's ''Red Top''. In a July 2021 interview, Richardson said he is putting together a book on The Comic Strip due to come out in 2022.

Early life

Richardson was born in Newton Abbot, Devon, England and lived in a house near Denbury. His parents ran a children's summer camp school. The family moved to Dartmoor when Richardson was ten. The family did not have a television, but his father had a cine camera with which they would make films. Richardson credits this as the beginning of his interest in filmmaking. He moved to London when he was seventeen, having decided he wanted to be an actor. At one point he was a lifeguard at a swimming pool.

Career

Early career

Richardson appeared as one of the schoolboys in Alan Bennett's Forty Years On. This work led to him getting an agent and performing in TV plays as an extra. He then attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. It was here in the second year he became reacquainted with Nigel Planer, who had worked at Richardson's parents' summer camp. The pair shared an interest in rock music, and wanted to mix music with a comedy show; in Richardson's words "we felt we'd like to try something like what Frank Zappa was doing on records, which was being funny but using music as well.". Around this time Richardson and Planer were heavily influenced by U.S. comedians Sal's Meat Market, an early duo of John Ratzenberger and Ray Hassett, as well as the group Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias.

With the assistance of Caroline Jay, they produced a show called "Rank", inspired by the police raid of the 1974 Windsor Free Festival, which premiered at the Roundhouse Downstairs in August 1976. Planer and Richardson played all the characters in the play, which numbered around forty. The play was well received and enabled the pair to get an Arts Council grant to take it on tour. Despite the critical acclaim, at the end of the tour Richardson and Planer found themselves with no money and had to pursue other work, with Richardson squatting in London.

After ''Rank,'' Richardson toured with a band in Italy and also helped run drama courses for children at his parents' house in Devon. One of the dramas produced from these courses became a show called ''The Wild Boys'', based on the book by William Burroughs. Richardson performed this show at the ICA in London as well as touring the show with the group Furious Pig. Through this, Richardson first met Michael White, with whom he planned to take the show into the West End, although this came to nothing. He worked as an extra on Michael Palin's Ripping Yarns' second series in 1979, appearing as a German spy pretending to be a Cornish fisherman, in Whinfrey's Last Case.

"The Outer Limits"

Richardson and Planer started performing at London's Comedy Store in 1979, calling themselves "The Outer Limits". They performed short sketches parodying different television styles, for example sitcom and American police drama. They used visual comedy and often mimed over-the-top scenes of cartoon violence. At this point, various television companies were taking note of the rapidly growing " alternative comedy" scene, BBC
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