David Mitchell (comedian)
David James Stuart Mitchell is a British comedian, actor, and writer. He rose to prominence alongside Robert Webb as part of the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb. The duo starred in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, in which Mitchell plays Mark Corrigan. He won the British Academy Television Award for Best Comedy Performance in 2009 for his performance. Mitchell and Webb have written and starred in several sketch shows including Bruiser, The Mitchell and Webb Situation, That Mitchell and Webb Sound, That Mitchell and Webb Look, and Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping. They have also starred in the British version of Apple's "Get a Mac" ad campaign. Their first film, Magicians, was released in 2007. They starred in the short-lived TV series Ambassadors in 2013, and in the Channel 4 comedy-drama Back from 2017 to 2021.
Mitchell starred as Owen in the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Think the Unthinkable, as Dr. James Vine in the BBC One sitcom Jam & Jerusalem, and as William Shakespeare in the BBC Two historical comedy Upstart Crow. He has starred in the BBC One detective comedy-drama Ludwig since 2024. He is a frequent participant on panel shows, as a team captain on Would I Lie to You?, the host of The Unbelievable Truth on BBC Radio 4, and the former host of The Bubble and Was It Something I Said?; as well as guesting on other panel shows including QI, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, Mock the Week, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, and Have I Got News for You. He was also a co-host of the comedy news-show 10 O'Clock Live. As a writer, he contributes opinion pieces to the newspapers The Observer and The Guardian.
Early life
David James Stuart Mitchell was born in Salisbury on 14 July 1974, the son of hotel managers Kathryn Grey and Ian Douglas Mitchell. As his mother is Welsh, hailing from Swansea, and his father was born to a family that was originally Scottish, he considers himself British rather than specifically English. He would explore his ancestry in a 2009 episode of Who Do You Think You Are? and discover his connection to the Gaelic scholars John Forbes and Alexander Robert Forbes. In 1977, when Mitchell was two years old, his parents left their jobs to give lectures on hotel management as this gave them more time with him. He has a younger brother named Daniel.Mitchell's family moved to Oxford, where his parents became lecturers at Oxford Polytechnic. He attended the independent private New College School. In a 2006 interview with The Independent, he recalled his childhood dreams: "When I was at school I either wanted to be a comedian-stroke-actor or prime minister. But I didn't admit that to other people, I said I wanted to be a barrister and that made my parents very happy. I didn't admit I wanted to be a comedian until I came to university, met a lot of other people who wanted to be comedians, and realised it was an okay thing to say." From the age of 13, Mitchell was educated at Abingdon School, a public school. Having always been top of the class at primary school and prep school, he realised after moving to Abingdon that there were plenty of people more intelligent than him, so he turned his attention to debating and drama "where had a chance of being the best".
Mitchell often took part in plays "largely because got to play cards backstage". His roles mainly consisted of small minute-long parts until he won the role of Rabbit in an adaptation of Winnie-the-Pooh. This was the first time that he was "consciously aware was doing a performance" and that this "was better, even, than playing cards". He had been "obsessed" with comedy writing since his school days as he "always felt that doing a joke was the cleverest thing" and "would intrinsically prefer a parody of something to the actual thing itself".
As part of his gap year, he worked as a "general dogsbody" at Oxford University Press, in their English Language teaching division.
He was rejected by Merton College, Oxford, then went to Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1993, where he studied history. There, he began performing with the Cambridge Footlights, of which he became president for the 1995–1996 academic year. In his first year at university, he met Robert Webb during rehearsals for a Footlights production of Cinderella in 1993, and the two men soon established a comedy partnership. According to Mitchell, these factors had a detrimental effect on his academic performance at university and he attained a 2:2 in his final exams.
Career
Early work and ''Peep Show''
Before his break into comedy, Mitchell worked as an usher at the Lyric Hammersmith theatre, and in the cloakroom of TFI Friday among other jobs.Mitchell's first project with Webb was in January 1995, a show about a nuclear apocalypse entitled Innocent Millions Dead or Dying: A Wry Look at the Post-Apocalyptic Age. Webb later described it as being "fucking terrible". After leaving university he and Webb began performing a number of two-man shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.
As a result of their performances at the Edinburgh Fringe, the duo were given the chance to write for Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller and for series two of Big Train. After minor work on The Jack Docherty Show and Comedy Nation, their first break into television acting was in 2000, on the short-lived BBC sketch show Bruiser, which they primarily wrote, and starred in. The show also featured future Academy Award and BAFTA winner Olivia Colman, who would become a regular cast member of Mitchell and Webb projects, and Martin Freeman, later of The Office fame. Other cast members included Matthew Holness and Charlotte Hudson. Additional material for the show was provided by various people, including Ricky Gervais and James Bachman.
In 2001 the two men were commissioned for a sketch show of their own, entitled The Mitchell and Webb Situation, which ran for six episodes on the now-defunct channel Play UK. The show was reasonably well received. Wessex Scenes Darren Richman said: "What the series lacked in budget, it made up for in magnificent material," and went on to call it "far superior to the vastly overrated Little Britain" and "perhaps the greatest forgotten sketch show of modern times". Eureka! TV, which released The Mitchell and Webb Situation on DVD in 2005, said that the show "gushes forth an hilarious stream of surreal and quirkily inventive sketches," as well as calling it a "cult success". In the interview with Wessex Scene, Mitchell stated that he was "more proud of the way it turned out than annoyed that it was only aired on a small channel".
Mitchell and Webb's next project came in 2003, with starring roles in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, as flatmates Mark Corrigan and Jeremy Usbourne respectively. The show originated from writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's failed attempt to complete a team-written sitcom for the BBC; they had an old script that they wanted to revive and Mitchell and Webb helped out, with it eventually evolving into Peep Show. Despite low viewing figures the show was received to wide critical acclaim. The British Sitcom Guide called it "without a doubt one of the best sitcoms of the decade". Ricky Gervais has been cited as saying: "The last thing I got genuinely excited about on British TV was Peep Show, which I thought was the best sitcom since Father Ted." The BBC hailed Mitchell's performance in the series, stating that: "As Mark Corrigan, David reached out to all those middle-aged men in a twentysomething's body, who believe drugs are boring and systems are necessary if society is to function at all." Mitchell has stated that he empathises with Mark and enjoys playing him and that he "agrees with many of opinions". Peep Show aired for nine series, which makes it the longest-running sitcom in Channel 4 history.
In 2009, Mitchell won the British Academy Television Award for Best Comedy Performance for his work on Peep Show, after having lost in the same category the year before. He was nominated again in 2010. He won the award "Best Television Comedy Actor" at the 2007 British Comedy Awards, and the pair shared the 2007 Royal Television Society Award for "Comedy Performance". They were also jointly nominated for "Best Television Comedy Actor" at the 2006 British Comedy Awards. Peep Show itself has also won the BAFTA for "Best situation comedy" in 2008, and the British Comedy Award for "Best TV comedy" in 2006, and retained it the following year. It also won "Best TV Comedy" at the South Bank Show Awards, and claimed a Golden Rose in 2004.
Other Mitchell and Webb projects
After the success of Peep Show, Mitchell and Webb returned to sketch comedy with their BBC Radio 4 sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Sound, which ran for five series. The show was adapted for television and became That Mitchell and Webb Look. Producer Gareth Edwards described it as "the shortest pitch ever written". The show ran for four series. Towards the end of 2006 the pair made their first tour, with a show called The Two Faces of Mitchell and Webb. The tour was criticised as just "a succession of largely unrelated scenes" by The Guardians Brian Logan, who gave it a rating of two stars.That Mitchell and Webb Look won them the BAFTA for Best Comedy Programme or Series at the 2007 awards, and they earned a further nomination for it in 2009. It was nominated for two British Comedy Awards in 2006: Britain's Best New TV Comedy and the Highland Spring People's Choice. Their stage tour The Two Faces of Mitchell and Webb was nominated for the British Comedy Award for Best Stage Comedy, and That Mitchell and Webb Sound won a Sony Silver Award.
Their first film, Magicians, was released on 18 May 2007. It was directed by Andrew O'Connor and written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain. Mitchell played the role of a magician named Harry. Later in 2007, the pair recorded a pilot BBC Radio 2 sitcom entitled Daydream Believers, in which Mitchell played Ray, a science-fiction writer. The show was previously a one-off television pilot from Channel 4's Comedy Lab, and also starred Mitchell and Webb.
Mitchell and Webb's first comedy book, This Mitchell and Webb Book, was published in 2009. A second book was planned for 2010. They also wrote and filmed Playing Shop, a comedy television pilot for BBC2 about two men who operate a business out of their shed. Although the BBC commissioners were happy with it, Mitchell and Webb scrapped it themselves, as they felt it was too similar to Peep Show. A new pilot had been commissioned, but the plan was later shelved. Mitchell and Webb voiced a robotic duo in the Doctor Who episode "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" in 2012.
In 2007 the duo fronted the UK version of Apple Inc.'s "Get a Mac" adverts, with Mitchell playing PC. The adverts received much criticism. Writing in The Guardian, Charlie Brooker claimed that the use of Mitchell and Webb in the adverts was a curious choice. He compared the characters of PC and Mac in the adverts to those of Mark and Jeremy in Peep Show, stating that "when you see the ads, you think, 'PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers.'" The British Sitcom Guide also criticised the pair for "selling their souls". One journalist called the adverts "worse than not funny", and accused Mitchell and Webb of "an act of grave betrayal" for taking corporate work. In an interview with The Telegraph, Robert Webb responded to the duo's critics, stating that "when someone asks, 'Do you want to do some funny ads for not many days in the year and be paid more than you would be for an entire series of Peep Show?' the answer, obviously, is, 'Yeah, that's fine.'" In the same interview, Mitchell also said: "I don't see what is morally inconsistent with a comedian doing an advert. It's all right to sell computers, isn't it? Unless you think that capitalism is evil – which I don't. It's not like we're helping to flog a baby-killing machine."
In 2005, the duo were placed ninth on a list of the United Kingdom's best television talent, and were named twelfth in a Radio Times list of the most powerful people in television comedy.