Stephen James Merchant (born 24 November 1974) is a British Comedy Award-, BAFTA-, Emmy- and Golden Globe-award winning
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
writer, director, radio presenter, and comic actor. He may be best known as the co-writer of the popular British sitcoms
The OfficeThe Office is a British television comedy that first aired in the UK on BBC Two on 9 July 2001.Created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the programme is about day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough, Berkshire branch of the fictitious Wernham Hogg Paper Company...
, as the co-writer and a co-star of
ExtrasExtras is a British sitcom about extras working on film sets and in theatre. The series was co-produced by the BBC and HBO, and is created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, both of whom also star in it...
, and as the co-host of
The Ricky Gervais ShowThe Ricky Gervais Show is a comedy audio show in the UK starring Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington. The show started in November 2001 on Xfm, and aired in weekly periods for months at a time throughout 2002, 2003, 2004, and mid-2005. In November 2005, Guardian Unlimited offered...
in its radio (for which the show won a bronze Sony Award) and podcast forms.
Early life
Merchant was born in
BristolBristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, west of London, and east of Cardiff.With an estimated population of 416,400 for the unitary authority in mid-2007, and a surrounding urban area with an estimated 561,500 residents, it is England's sixth, and...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, the son of Jane Elaine (née Hibbs), a nursery nurse, and Ronald John Merchant, an insurance representative. He attended Hanham High School. As he has described in
Xfm LondonXfm London is a commercial radio station in the United Kingdom. The station is owned by Global Radio and broadcasts on 104.9 FM in London, on digital radio via 30 DAB multiplexes across the country, Sky Digital, Tiscali TV and Virgin Media....
shows and podcasts, Merchant was a very shy child, tending to focus more on school work as opposed to sport. His school yearbook predicted that he would enjoy success. Merchant has also described his relatively normal childhood, which is often contrasted with that of his associate
Karl PilkingtonKarl Pilkington is a Sony Award-winning English radio producer, podcaster and author, best known for producing and co-presenting The Ricky Gervais Show on London radio station Xfm from 2001 to 2005 and later in the form of podcasts...
.
Merchant is a graduate of the
University of WarwickThe University of Warwick is a British campus university located on the outskirts of Coventry, West Midlands, England. It was established in 1965 as part of a government initiative to expand access to higher education, and in 2000 Warwick Medical School was opened as part of an initiative to train...
and a former film reviewer on the student radio station,
Radio WarwickRadio Warwick or RaW is the student radio station at the University of Warwick and winner of the 2000 and 2003 BBC Radio 1 Student Radio Association Best Station awards....
where he began his broadcasting career. The station's 1995/96 yearbook tipped him for great things:
Members of Merchant's posse included film critic
James KingJames King is a British movie critic who appears regularly on BBC Radio 1 and many television shows.He currently has a film slot during Edith Bowman's show at 2:30 pm on Wednesdays and Fridays, following several years as a sparring partner to Jo Whiley. On Wednesdays he responds to listeners'...
, Dan Warren, and Geraint the Welshman. He graduated with a first class degree in Film and Literature in 1996.
Early days
Merchant once appeared on
Blockbusters. He began his career as a stand-up comedian at Bristol's Comedy Box; "The first week I did really well,’ he remembers. ‘The second week I died on my arse. I realised that stand-up was not that easy after all’". He got to be a finalist at the 1998 Daily Telegraph Open Mic awards before joining Radio Caroline as a breakfast DJ.
Merchant and long-time collaborator-friend
Ricky GervaisRicky Dene Gervais is an English comedian and actor. Gervais achieved mainstream fame with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with friend and frequent collaborator Stephen Merchant...
, made
Golden Years, a Comedy Lab pilot for
Channel 4Channel 4 is a UK public-service television broadcaster which began working on November 2, 1982. Although commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station owned now and operated by the Channel Four Television...
about a manager with a mid-life crisis who decides to go on
Stars In Your Eyes as
David BowieDavid Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. Active in five decades of popular music and frequently reinventing his music and image, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, a hero of Gervais’. The show wasn't a hit, but with the benefit of hindsight the seeds for
The Office were apparently sown here. Nonetheless, it was enough to bring Gervais a slot on the
Eleven O’Clock ShowThe 11 O'Clock Show was a satirical late-night British television comedy series on Channel 4, which featured topical sketches and commentary on news items.The series ran from 1998 - 2000, most notably while hosted by Iain Lee and Daisy Donovan...
. In 1997, Merchant was hired by London radio station Xfm to work with the "Head of Speech", Gervais. In 1998, Merchant left Xfm to start a production course at the
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation, usually referred to by its abbreviation as the "BBC", is the longest established and largest broadcaster in the world...
before Xfm was bought out by the Capital Radio Group.
The Office and Extras
In mid-2001, the first series of
The Office was broadcast on BBC 2. Also in 2001, Merchant and Gervais were rehired by Xfm and discovered
Karl PilkingtonKarl Pilkington is a Sony Award-winning English radio producer, podcaster and author, best known for producing and co-presenting The Ricky Gervais Show on London radio station Xfm from 2001 to 2005 and later in the form of podcasts...
.
Merchant made a cameo appearance as Oggy (also known as "The Oggmonster", although his real name is Nathan), a friend of
Gareth KeenanGareth Keenan is a fictional paper salesman on BBC's comedy The Office. He is portrayed in the series by Mackenzie Crook as a gaunt, self-important "team leader" proud of his lieutenant status in the Territorial Army, who spends his days annoying his co-workers at Wernham Hogg with his steadfast...
, in the second series of
The Office in 2002. His father, Ron Merchant, also appears as a character named "Gordon", an office handyman who becomes transfixed by the documentary cameras whenever he walks into shot.
Merchant is also an
executive producerAn executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the filmmaking or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production. Typically an executive producer handles business and legal issues. See also associate producer, co-producer, line producer...
for the
American version of The OfficeThe Office is an American mockumentary television series that airs on NBC and is developed by Greg Daniels. An adaptation of the BBC series The Office, the series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company...
. On 6 February 2006 it was announced that Merchant and Gervais were returning to
The Office to write an episode for the third season of the American version of the programme. Titled "The Convict", it premiered on 30 November 2006. In 2008, Merchant directed an episode of the American
Office entitled "Customer Survey".
The most recent Merchant-Gervais sitcom,
ExtrasExtras is a British sitcom about extras working on film sets and in theatre. The series was co-produced by the BBC and HBO, and is created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, both of whom also star in it...
, premiered on BBC2 on 21 July 2005. Merchant stars as Darren Lamb, the incompetent agent of Andy Millman (Gervais), a role for which he won a British Comedy Award in 2006 for Best TV Actor.
Other roles
In 2002 Merchant directed a one-off comedy called
The Last Chancers for
Channel 4Channel 4 is a UK public-service television broadcaster which began working on November 2, 1982. Although commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station owned now and operated by the Channel Four Television...
's
Comedy Lab strand. In 2003, he had a recurring role in
Garth Marenghi's DarkplaceGarth Marenghi's Darkplace is a comedy series made for Channel 4 by Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade. Following on from the characters' success at The Perrier Awards the show revolves around fictional horror author Garth Marenghi and his publisher Dean Learner .Darkplace is presented as a lost...
as a chef. In 2004, he worked as a Script Associate on the
Chris MorrisImage:the_it_crowd_denholm.jpg|Chris Morris in The IT CrowdChristopher Morris is an English comedian, writer, director, actor and former radio DJ.Morris began his career in radio before moving into television...
and
Charlie BrookerCharlton Brooker, commonly known as Charlie Brooker, is a British journalist, comic writer and broadcaster. His style of humour is savage and profane, with surreal elements and a consistent satirical pessimism...
sitcom
Nathan BarleyNathan Barley is a Channel 4 sitcom written by Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris, starring Nicholas Burns, Julian Barratt and Claire Keelan. The series of six weekly episodes began broadcasting on 11 February 2005 on Channel 4...
, and had a cameo in
Green WingGreen Wing is an award-winning British sitcom set in the fictional East Hampton Hospital Trust. It was created by the same team behind the sketch show Smack the Pony, led by Victoria Pile, and stars Tamsin Greig, Stephen Mangan and Julian Rhind-Tutt....
. In 2005 Merchant starred as a radio football sports commentator in the sitcom
No Skillz. In winter 2006, Merchant had a cameo role in the Fox series
2424 is an American serial action/drama television series. Broadcast by Fox in the United States and syndicated worldwide, the show first aired on November 6, 2001, with an initial 13 episodes...
. He had a non-speaking 4-second role as an analyst sitting at a computer in the sixth season opener.
He also had small roles in 2007 films
Hot FuzzHot Fuzz is a 2007 British action comedy film written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright and starring Pegg and Nick Frost. The three had previously worked together on the 2004 film Shaun of the Dead as well as the television series Spaced. The film was directed by Wright and produced by Nira Park...
as Peter Ian Staker (P. I. Staker - Piss taker), a man who loses his swan and in
Run Fat Boy Run as a man with a broken leg.
Merchant will be appearing alongside Dwayne Johnson in the 2010 film
Tooth FairyFor other uses, see Tooth Fairy .Tooth Fairy is a 2004 short film about a father who forgets to leave money for his daughter from the "tooth fairy"...
.
Merchant, along with collaborator
Ricky GervaisRicky Dene Gervais is an English comedian and actor. Gervais achieved mainstream fame with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with friend and frequent collaborator Stephen Merchant...
, is currently working on a film called
Cemetery JunctionCemetery Junction is an upcoming film written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Principal photography began on 15 June 2009, and the film is set to be released on 9 April 2010....
, set in working-class England in the 1970s.
In 2009, Merchant was the voiceover in the Barclays and Waterstones adverts in the UK.
Also in 2009, on 12 November, Merchant is appearing at Friends of the Earth’s LIVEstock 2009 comedy and music event in support of the green campaign group’s Food Chain Campaign for planet-friendly farming.
In 2010, Merchant will appear in a documentary called
Weather Up Here in which he talks openly about his height issues in Northern England.
Merchant had a cameo in Ricky Gervais' 2009 film
The Invention of LyingThe Invention of Lying is a 2009 comedy film, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson. It also stars Gervais and Jennifer Garner. The film was released in the United States and United Kingdom on October 2, 2009.-Plot:...
.
Podcasts
In 2006, Merchant and long-time comedy partner Ricky Gervais recorded a series of episodes of their podcasts, assisted by
Karl PilkingtonKarl Pilkington is a Sony Award-winning English radio producer, podcaster and author, best known for producing and co-presenting The Ricky Gervais Show on London radio station Xfm from 2001 to 2005 and later in the form of podcasts...
. The podcasts were a follow-up to their award-winning radio shows on Xfm, and were rated the most downloaded podcast of all time. Following the success of the first 12 shows, offered for free, the trio went on to produce two more series. At the end of the third series, Gervais announced that they would be taking a break from podcasts, only to return weeks later, announcing three more free podcasts. Those aired at Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas 2006.
Merchant also interviewed
Jimmy FallonJames Thomas "Jimmy" Fallon, Jr. is an American comedian, actor, musician, and talk show host known for his work on Saturday Night Live...
and
Chevy ChaseCornelius Crane “Chevy” Chase is an American Emmy Award-winning comedian, writer, and television and film actor. Born into a prominent family, Chase worked as a professional musician as well as other jobs before moving towards comedy and working with the National Lampoon...
for the
Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International is an international secular non-governmental organisation which defines its mission as "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated." Founded in London in 1961, AI...
Secret Policeman's BallThe Secret Policeman's Ball 2006 was the title of the show staged as a benefit for human rights organization Amnesty International at London's Royal Albert Hall in October 2006....
podcasts in October 2006.
In August 2008, Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington recorded a set of audiobooks running over 2 hours, which were released on the 16th of September. In December 2008 Merchant, Gervais and Pilkington released the first of a new series of topical audiobooks.
6 Music show
Starting on 14 January 2007, Merchant began a radio show on BBC 6 music, running Sundays from 3:30-5:30pm. The show focused not on comedy but on music and particularly on "new music," which Steve defined as "Music you've not heard before." Steve also regularly played classic hip-hop, which he referred to as "hippity hop". Presenters and listeners suggested songs to play which Merchant then added to his playlist for future shows. Also featured on the show were long-time friends of Steve's, including his former housemate Dan Warren (a friend since university), Harry (a friend from youth in Bristol), and posh actor Rufus Gerrard-Wright (who appeared in an episode of
ExtrasExtras is a British sitcom about extras working on film sets and in theatre. The series was co-produced by the BBC and HBO, and is created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, both of whom also star in it...
). After a spring search process, Merchant and his mates selected former
Byker GroveByker Grove is a British television series which first aired between 1989 and 2006 and was created by Adele Rose. The show was broadcast at 5.10pm after Newsround on CBBC on BBC One.- Creation :...
actor Sammy T. Dobson to join them on air as their "She-J".
After 4 seasons of 'The Steve Show' the final show was broadcast on May 3, 2009.
Personal life
Merchant spent several years dating digital advertising producer Claire Jones, although their relationship reportedly ended in 2009.
Appearance
Merchant's considerable height
(6 ft 7ins or 2.01 m tall) has been a source of humour and teasing throughout his career. He made a cameo appearance in
The OfficeThe Office is a British television comedy that first aired in the UK on BBC Two on 9 July 2001.Created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the programme is about day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough, Berkshire branch of the fictitious Wernham Hogg Paper Company...
, playing a character called the Ogg-Monster, whom
David BrentDavid Brent is a fictional white-collar office middle-manager and the principal character in the BBC television mockumentary The Office, played by co-writer and director Ricky Gervais. He is the general manager of the Slough branch of the Wernham-Hogg paper merchants, and the boss to most of the...
called "a big lanky goggle-eyed freak" because of his size. His height, and also dance moves, have attracted comments from several sources. The
Daily MailThe Daily Mail is a British daily tabloid newspaper. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982. Scottish and Irish editions of the paper were launched in...
newspaper described him as a "giant
albatrossAlbatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds allied to the procellariids, storm-petrels and diving-petrels in the order Procellariiformes . They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific...
hopping on
stiltsStilts are poles, posts or pillars used to allow a person or structure to stand at a certain distance above the ground. Walking stilts are poles equipped with steps for the feet to stand on, or straps to attach them to the legs, for the purpose of walking while elevated above a normal height...
" as he danced in a London pub (although Merchant refuted this claim during an episode of the
Ricky Gervais Show, stating that he did not take to the dance floor on that occasion). Friend and collaborator
Ricky GervaisRicky Dene Gervais is an English comedian and actor. Gervais achieved mainstream fame with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with friend and frequent collaborator Stephen Merchant...
has likened him to an "upright
lizardLizards are a very large and widespread group of squamate reptiles, with nearly 5,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica as well as most oceanic island chains...
being given electro-shock treatment" and a "stick insect with glasses" or
BeakerBeaker is a Muppet character from The Muppet Show. He is the shy long-suffering assistant of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and is likewise named for a piece of laboratory equipment. Before the second season of The Muppet Show, Bunsen Honeydew worked alone on The Muppet Show. In the second season and beyond,...
from
The Muppet Show. Radio producer and co-host of Merchant,
Karl PilkingtonKarl Pilkington is a Sony Award-winning English radio producer, podcaster and author, best known for producing and co-presenting The Ricky Gervais Show on London radio station Xfm from 2001 to 2005 and later in the form of podcasts...
, has described his moves as a "bit of weird art" in the past, while British comic and broadcaster
Russell BrandRussell Edward Brand is an English comedian, actor, columnist, and presenter of radio and television.Brand achieved mainstream fame in the UK for presenting a Big Brother spin-off, Big Brother's Big Mouth, and for his radio show, among other television series and award ceremonies...
has likened him to a "graceful
grasshopperThe grasshopper is an insect of the suborder Caelifera in the order Orthoptera. To distinguish it from bush crickets or katydids, it is sometimes referred to as short-horned grasshoppers...
". Merchant has commented that he prefers to liken himself to fellow tall man and English football player,
Peter CrouchPeter James Crouch is an English international footballer who plays for Tottenham Hotspur. At 6 ft 7 in , he is the tallest man ever to play for the England national team, and was the tallest outfield player in the Premier League until Stefan Maierhofer signed for Wolves in August 2009...
who is also six foot seven inches. Merchant impersonated Crouch in a BBC sketch broadcast as part of the pre-match build-up to England's opening game at the 2006 World Cup.
External links
- Stephan Merchant's Official Website
- A google knol on Stephen Merchant
- Stephen Merchant at the Internet Movie Database
The Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, video games, and most recently, fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media...
- Steve's BBC 6Music site
- Stephen interviewed on BBC Radio Five Live
- Stephen Merchant Wiki and Forum - Pilkipedia
- 6Music homepage
- Xfm: Stephen Merchant Biography
- RaW: Radio Warwick
- Tall man, taller success story - interview in The Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Colonel Arthur B. Sleigh in June 1855 as the Daily Telegraph and Courier...
- 8 August 2005
- Interview with Barbara Ellen in The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In about the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a left-liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-History:The...
Magazine - 5 November 2006
- Radar Online interview - 11 January 2007
- Merchant stars as a radio football sports commentator in comedy sitcom 'No Skillz'