Chris Morris

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Christopher Morris (born 5 September 1965 in Bristol) is an English comedian, writer, director, actor and former radio DJ.

Morris began his career in radio before moving into television. He found fame in the nineties fronting the spoof current affairs shows The Day Today and Brass Eye and became known for his intelligent yet often highly-controversial brand of comedy. Morris tends to stay out of the public eye and has become one of the more enigmatic figures in British comedy.

Biography

Early life

Morris grew up in Cambridgeshire; his parents were doctors. He was educated at Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit boys' boarding school in Lancashire,^[3] and studied zoology at the University of Bristol.^[4]

Radio career

On graduating, Morris took up a traineeship with BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, where he took advantage of access to editing and recording equipment to create elaborate spoofs and parodies. He also spent time in early 1987 hosting a 2–4pm afternoon show and finally ended up presenting Saturday morning show I.T.. In July 1987, he moved on to BBC Radio Bristol to present his own show "No Known Cure", and later joined, from its launch, Greater London Radio (GLR). Until 1990, he was presenting Friday night and Saturday morning shows on Radio Bristol and a Sunday morning show on GLR.

In 1991, Morris reduced his work as a mainstream disc jockey and devoted himself to comedy with his new radio project On the Hour. Working with Armando Iannucci, Patrick Marber, Richard Herring, Stewart Lee, Steve Coogan and others, he created the spoof news show on BBC Radio 4. In 1994, Morris began a weekly evening show on BBC Radio 1 alongside Peter Baynham. In the shows, Morris perfected the spoof interview style that would become a central component of his Brass Eye programme. The show's pranks left BBC bosses nonplussed, and a profanity-laden mid-afternoon show on Boxing Day was his last.^{[citation needed]}

In the same year, Morris teamed up with Peter Cook, as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, in a series of improvised conversations for BBC Radio 3, entitled Why Bother?. Morris followed this with Blue Jam, a late-night ambient music and sketch show on Radio 1, which was later reworked for television as Channel 4's Jam. He is also credited with studio/sound help for the Flight Of The Conchords 6-part Radio 2 series.

Move into television and film

In 1994, a BBC 2 television series based on On the Hour was broadcast under the name The Day Today. The Day Today made a star of Morris, and helped to launch the careers of Patrick Marber and Steve Coogan.

The black humour which had featured in On the Hour and The Day Today became more prominent in Brass Eye, another spoof current affairs television documentary, shown on Channel 4. Brass Eye became known for tricking celebrities and politicians into throwing support behind public awareness campaigns for made-up issues that were often absurd or surreal (such as a drug called cake and an elephant with its trunk stuck up its anus). In 2001, a reprise of Brass Eye on the moral panic that surrounds paedophilia led to a record-breaking number of complaints – it still remains the third highest on UK television after Celebrity Big Brother 2007 and Jerry Springer: The Opera – as well as heated discussion in the press. Many complainants, some of whom later admitted to not having seen the programme (notably Beverley Hughes, a government minister),^[5] felt the satire was directed at the victims of paedophilia, which Morris denies. Channel 4 defended the show, insisting the target was the media and its hysterical treatment of paedophilia, and not victims of crime.

Morris also wrote and directed Jam, a television reworking of his radio show Blue Jam. Darker and more unsettling than his previous work, the show explored such taboos as infant mortality, incest, anal sex, rape, suicide and sadomasochism through a series of unsettling, dreamlike sketches with a soundtrack of ambient music. This was followed by a 'remix' version, Jaaaaam.

In 2002, Morris ventured into film, directing the short My Wrongs #8245–8249 & 117, adapted from a Blue Jam monologue about a man led astray by a sinister talking dog. It was the first film project of Warp Films, a branch of Warp Records. In 2002 this won the BAFTA for best short film.^[1] In 2005 Morris worked on a sitcom entitled Nathan Barley, based on the character created by Charlie Brooker for his website TVGoHome. Co-written by Brooker and Morris, the series was broadcast on Channel 4 in early 2005.

Morris is currently directing his feature film debut, Four Lions, a satire based on a group of Islamist terrorists in the North of England which he also wrote.^[6]

Recent work

Morris was a cast member in The IT Crowd, a Channel 4 sitcom focusing on the information technology department of the fictional company Reynholm Industries. The series is written and directed by Graham Linehan (writer of Father Ted and Black Books, with whom Morris collaborated on The Day Today, Brass Eye and Jam) and produced by Ash Atalla (The Office). Morris played Denholm Reynholm, the eccentric managing director of the company. This marked the first time Morris has acted in a substantial role in a project which he hasn't developed himself and is more mainstream than his earlier work. Morris's character appeared to leave the series during episode two of the second series. His character made a brief return in the first episode of the third series.

The Guardian reported that Morris is working on a film satirising terrorism and suicide bombers for Channel 4. The project, titled Boilerhouse (working title Four Lions) was turned down by both the BBC and Channel 4 for its controversial subject matter, but has been picked up by Film Four.^[7] Morris told The Sunday Times that the film will seek to do for Islamic terrorism what Dad's Army, the classic BBC comedy, did for the Nazis by showing them as "scary but also ridiculous".^[8] In November 2007, Morris wrote an article for The Observer in response to Ronan Bennett's article published six days earlier in The Guardian. Bennett's article, "Shame on us'", accused the novelist Martin Amis of racism. Morris's response, "The absurd world of Martin Amis", was also highly critical of Amis; although he didn't accede to Bennett's accusation of racism, Morris likened Amis to the Muslim cleric Abu Hamza (who was jailed for inciting racial hatred in 2006), suggesting that both men employ "mock erudition, vitriol and decontextualised quotes from the Koran" to incite hatred.^[9]

Morris served as script editor for the 2009 series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, working with former colleagues Stewart Lee, the actor Kevin Eldon and Armando Iannucci.

Music

Morris often co-writes and performs incidental music for his television shows, notably with Jam and the 'extended remix'^{[citation needed]} version, Jaaaaam. Morris supplied sketches for British band Saint Etienne's 1993 single "You're in a Bad Way" (the sketch 'Spongbake' appears at the end of the 4th track on the CD single). In 2000, he collaborated by mail with Amon Tobin to create the track "Bad Sex", which was released as a B-side on the Tobin single "Slowly".^[10] British band Stereolab's song "Nothing to Do with Me" from their 2001 album Sound-Dust featured various lines from Chris Morris sketches as lyrics.^[11] He has also been sampled by The Orb.^{[citation needed]}

Recognition

In 2003, Morris was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.^[12] In 2005, Channel 4 aired a show called The Comedian's Comedian in which foremost writers and performers of comedy ranked their 50 favourite acts. Morris was at number eleven.^[13]

An influential figure, he is frequently mentioned outside of his work by several colleagues including Graham Linehan, Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt.

Personal life

Morris lives in Brixton, with literary agent Jo Unwin, and has two sons, both of whom were born in Lambeth, London: Charles Peter (born 1996) and Frederick Rudolf (born 1999).^{[14] [4]} Not much is known about Morris's personal life, as he has given very few interviews. He is a very private man.

Morris can be heard as himself in a podcast for CERN.^[15]

He is brother to National Theatre associate director Tom Morris and television director Ben Morris.

Works

• Various works at BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (1986–1987) (presenter)
• It's Only TV (198?)
• No Known Cure (July 1987 – March 1990, BBC Radio Bristol) (presenter)
• Chris Morris (1988–1993, BBC GLR) (presenter)
• Loose Ends (1989, BBC Radio 4)
• Up Yer News (1990, BSB)
• The Chris Morris Christmas Show (25 December 1990, BBC Radio 1)
• On The Hour (1991–1992, BBC Radio 4) (co-writer, performer)
• Why Bother? (1994, BBC Radio 3) (performer, editor)
• The Day Today (1994, BBC 2) (co-writer, performer)
• The Chris Morris Music Show (1994, BBC Radio 1) (presenter)
• Brass Eye (1997, Channel 4) (writer, performer)
• I'm Alan Partridge (1997, BBC 2) (performer, 1 episode)
• Blue Jam (1997–1999, BBC Radio 1) (writer, director, performer, editor)
• Big Train (1999, BBC 2) various sketches. (additional director, voice actor (1 sketch))
• Second Class Male/Time To Go (1999, newspaper column for The Observer)
• Jam/Jaaaaam (2000, Channel 4) (main writer, director, performer)
• Brass Eye Special (2001, Channel 4) (writer, performer)
• The Smokehammer (2002, website)
• Absolute Atrocity Special (2002, newspaper pullout for The Observer)
• Bushwhacked (2002)
• My Wrongs #8245–8249 & 117 (2002, short film) (writer, director, voice of Rothko)
• Nathan Barley (2005, Channel 4) (writer, director)
• The IT Crowd (2006–2008, Channel 4) (performer)
• Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle (2009, BBC 2) (script editor)
• Boilerhouse/Four Lions (2009, film) (writer, director)

References

External links

• The Smokehammer, a site by Chris Morris
• BESTBAR(NONE), a spoof bar guide compiled by Chris Morris for Warp Records
• trashbat.co.ck, a website referred to throughout Nathan Barley which, notionally, is the creation of the titular character (who vocalises it “trash bat dot cock”). The .co.ck domain is as a result of the second level domain for company and the top level domain for the Cook Islands
• Christopher Morris at the Internet Movie Database
• Cook'd and Bomb'd, a site devoted to the work of Chris Morris and his collaborators
• Chris Morris: Brass Neck BBC Profile of Morris