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Stephen Grant was
born on the 2nd of July 1973 in Brighton, England.1 The first son of a building sales
rep and a chemical packer, Stephen was brought up for many summers in university creches
when his parents returned to college as mature students to get their degrees, before they
went into teaching.
Half Hungarian (on his mother's side), a lot of time
was spent in Budapest during his early years, confusing the six or so languages he
was supposed to be learning, melding them into an anglo-franco-germo-hungo-mush. It was
there that Stephen got his first claim to fame, becoming the first person in the western
world to play Tetris 2, on the computer of one of the people who wrote it.
Back in Britain, Stephen began to show a concerned
interest in stage work. During the late 1950's his father Roy had been a leading role in
the West End in the King and I - and hating it, had hoped none of these
thespianic tendancies had rubbed off on his son. Aged 12 Stephen fought off hundreds of
competitors to win the South East Drama Award, and had almost entered the Shandy stage
school, before he decided to follow his parents advice and pursue his academical
qualifications first and foremost. This was despite some lucrative corporate work for Mars
which included a worrying amount of dancing and singing. It was also at this time that
Stephen started getting interested in the fledgling world of home computing.
Aged 13, Stephen released his first ever game
'Dieste', written on the ZX Spectrum. It was an adventure game set in the future. His
second game, Blowtorch Baby Bloodbath, showed a peverse sense of humour that could well
have been an indication of things to come. By the age of 16 Stephen had written 5 full
size commerical programs and was contributing to national computer magazines.
No serious performing followed until aged 17 and
doing A levels, Stephen linked up with his next door neighbour called Robin Driscoll, who
was making a small living as the writer on Alas Smith & Jones. Robin
encouraged Stephen to take his written ideas back to the stage, and with the help of a
friend, put on a half hour show called 'Pythonesque', with original sketches written in
the style of the Monty Python team. An isolated one-off success, Stephen was to not
perform live again after this for another 6 years. In that time, Robin came up with an
idea for a character called Mr Bean and moved out and up on the enormous success
that followed.
During that period, Stephen developed his
professional career as a programmer and software designer, before his more interpersonal
talents pushed him into the world of consultancy and project management.
In late 1996, aged 23, the desire to go back to a
stage started to kick in, and Stephen made a new years resolution in 1997 to try to get up
on the stage and attempt to perform stand up comedy. It was never intended to go any
further than the one off attempts that Stephen had only ever done in the past. For the
first month of the year, Stephen wrote thousands of 'jokes' with no experience of stand up
comedy. On Feb 21st 19973 at the Good Companions pub in Brighton, Stephen made his
debut solo appearance on stage to an audience of 40, half of which were friends who had
been subjected to 'living room auditions' over the previous 6 weeks. Despite the
overriding feeling of nausea throughout (for the performer, not the crowd), it went
surprisingly well. This encouraged him to go back. And back. And back. Playing only the
one venue, Stephen wrote ten minutes new material every week, and a lot of this is still
in his set today.
For his first year of standup, Stephen performed
over 150 gigs while keeping his full time job, where he was now, aged 24, a senior
employee with over 11 years programming experience. Worryingly, he was lecturing to the
Nuclear industry about year 2000 problems as a national authority while still rushing home
to get changed to go and do short spots all over the country.
In early 1998, his talents were spotted by Lisa
White, now of International Artistes, who snapped him up despite seeing him die a horrible
death at the Comedy Store that had practically made him decide to give up doing stand up
for good. During that year Stephen entered the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award, and after
winning the southern heat, had his life and exploits recorded in the highly acclaimed
documentary Edinburgh or Bust, which established his name firmly within the
comedy industry. The program followed his debut at the 1998 Edinburgh festival, which sold
out regularly and graduated his performing activities into a much more professional role.
At the festival Stephen was spotted by the BBC who
invited him to participate in their writers group. Surrounded by budding sitcom authors,
he put himself forward for the auditions for the Radio 1 breakfast show, which saw him
land a contract in 1999 to write for Zoe Ball & more recently Scott Mills.
Writing, performing and engineering became a bit too much to do simultaneously and in
September of 99 he left his computers job to pursue comedy professionally. He is a main
writer at Radio 1 and his stand up now sees him headlining clubs in London and around the
country. He still lives in Brighton and runs the Krater comedy club there, the most
popular comedy club on the South coast today. In early 2000 Stephen starts his own weekend
radio show on Surf 107.2.
1 Interesting fact: Stephen was born on exactly the
same day and year as Bolton comedian Peter Kay,
who is represented by the same agents and is very very good indeed. If you've ever met
both Peter and Stephen, it's the final evidence you would ever need that horoscopes are
bollocks.
2. Interesting fact: Tetris is the single most
popular computer game of all time, on any platform. Stephen loved it.
3. Interesting fact: This was also the date of the
first ever gig of Hackney empire winners, Hitchcock's half hour. |
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