User:Bob Sinfield

BOB SINFIELD is an actor, author, broadcaster and scriptwriter, specialising in comedy.

EARLY LIFE Born 1956 in Cornwall and originally named Robert Patrick Pugh, he attended Redruth Grammar School (1967-74) and studied Theatre Arts at the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, Kent (1976-79).

WRITING Contributed sketches to topical radio shows The News Huddlines (BBC Radio 2, 1979-82) and Week Ending (BBC Radio 4, 1979-83) before switching to TV for two series each of Three of a Kind and Carrott’s Lib (both BBC1, 1982-3), then in 1984 for The Lenny Henry Show (BBC1, series 1) and Pushing Up Daisies (Channel 4). Was script editor for Rory Bremner’s debut series, Now…Something Else (BBC2, 1986) but returned to radio to adapt his own stage play The Iron Curtain Call (Radio 4, 1986). For the same network, he wrote six half-hour plays under the umbrella title of The Senses (1990) which starred, among others, Joan Sims, Geoffrey Palmer, Rodney Bewes and Celia Imrie. In the 1990s, he scripted docudramas for Radio 2 on Lorenz Hart (winning a Sony Radio Award for Best Production of 1994), Glenn Miller, Valentino, Houdini, the Dorsey brothers and the World War One Christmas truce, as well as a six-part dramatisation of A.G. Macdonell’s comic novel England, Their England (1995), narrated by Leslie Phillips. Sinfield collaborated with Bob Monkhouse on scripts for the four-part Bob Hope Story (Radio 2, 1999), followed by The Oscars: 70 Odd Years (2001) and The Monkhouse Archive (2002). In 2008, his first book was published: a comedy-thriller called Ready Steady Crook, written in collaboration with TV director Tom Poole. The sequel, Simply Dead, appeared two years later and was followed by non-fiction works The Gag Trade (2011), Gentleman of Jazz (2014), The Great Unwatched (2016) and Monkhouse Encore (2018).

BROADCASTING Sinfield’s early radio engagements were as a newspaper reviewer on BBC Radio 2 programmes Round Midnight, Nightcap and Night Ride (1983-89). He compered series for the same station on subjects ranging from gospel music to the history of topical songs and was an occasional reporter, reviewer and presenter on the Radio 4 arts strand Kaleidoscope and Radio 3’s Jazz Legends and Jazz Line-Up. At various times between 1990 and 2015, he worked as a DJ for the London-based Jazz FM and hosted the inflight comedy channels on Cathay Pacific, Air New Zealand and Virgin Atlantic. His own series, Doctor Sin’s Laughter Zone (Oneword Radio) was the first original comedy sketch show on a UK digital radio station, running for three years from 2002.

ACTING Radio 4 roles include assorted characters such as Grabber, Peason and Barry Norman in Simon Brett’s Molesworth sitcom series (1987), Edgar Wallace in Sweet Tea And Cigarettes (2004), Ronald Knox in The Riot That Never Was (2005) and John Stuart Mill in The Utility Man (2006). He also appeared in sketches on Adrian Juste’s comedy and music shows (Radio 1 and BFBS, 1988-96). On stage, he has played at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (various years from 1983 to 2012), the Aarhus Comedy Festival (Denmark, 1988), the Port Eliot Lit Fest (Cornwall, 2006/7) and the Brighton Fringe (2009 and 2014) in a number of revues and solo shows, including a recreation of a routine by the 1950s American ‘hipster’ Lord Buckley. From 2012 onwards, Sinfield has specialised in portraying historical figures for the Spectrum Drama company, notably Thomas Edison at the Science Museum, Charles Darwin at Down House and Samuel Pepys at the Painted Hall in Greenwich. In 2017, he joined the after-dinner speaking circuit and has toured the UK, giving none-too-serious talks on broadcasting, comedy and jazz.