Peter Richardson born 15 October is an English director, screenwriter, actor and comedian. 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 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 s as the driving force behind The Comic Strip Presents The series was 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. He co-wrote and directed the s cult mockumentary comedy series Stella Street with Phil Cornwell and John Sessions. In , he directed the Comic Strip film Sex Actually. In a July interview, [ 2 ] Richardson said he is putting together a book on The Comic Strip due to come out in His parents ran a children's summer camp school. The family moved to Dartmoor when Richardson was ten. Richardson describes himself as "a Devonian, honest, cream on first every time.
At one point he was a lifeguard at a Devon swimming pool , despite having failed the swimming test, "but they still hired me as they were so short staffed. Richardson credits this as the beginning of his interest in filmmaking. This work led to him getting an agent and performing in TV plays as an extra. 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.
With the assistance of Caroline Jay, they produced a show called "Rank", inspired by the police raid of the Windsor Free Festival , which premiered at the Roundhouse Downstairs in August Planer and Richardson played all the characters in the play, which numbered around forty.
