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Hugh Dennis is a comedian, writer, actor, impressionist and voice-over artist, best known for his work with comedy partner Steve Punt and for the comedy series ‘Outnumbered’ and ‘Mock the Week’. He is also a talented and captivating after dinner speaker and awards host.
Hugh Dennis, whose father was the Bishop of Saint Edmundsbury and Ipswich, grew up in Mill Hill in North London. He was educated at University College School, an independent school for boys in Hampstead, and at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, where he read geography.
He was a member of the Cambridge Footlights, but after university worked for Unilever for six years. However, with Steve Punt, whom he met at university, he carried on doing comedy, for example at London’s Comedy Store. As mentioned on an episode of ‘Have I Got News For You’ he attended University College school with Will Self where they played rugby together.
A skilled impressionist, Hugh Dennis did voices for Spitting Image and appeared with Punt as resident support comics on two TV series hosted on the BBC by Jasper Carrott.
The pair then formed half of ‘The Mary Whitehouse Experience’ on BBC Radio 1, later graduating to a television series. His radio work with Punt includes over a decade of performing Punt and Dennis, It’s Been a Bad Week and The Now Show as well as writing The Party Line (a topical political satire written and performed the day prior to transmission). On The Now Show he headlines with Punt, Mitch Benn, Laura Shavin, Jon Holmes and Marcus Brigstocke.
Hugh Dennis has performed on various TV and radio shows, including The Imaginatively Titled Punt and Dennis Show and sitcom Me, You and Him. He has guest hosted Have I Got News For You and played obnoxious GP Piers Crispin in BBC sitcom My Hero.
He is friends with Chris Morris and has had cameos on Brass Eye. He is in huge demand as a voiceover artist and he currently appears on the panel game Mock the Week, in which he frequently refers to Showaddywaddy and car insurance.
In response to a news story in 2003 about Rupert Murdoch giving jobs to his children, Hugh’s son, Freddie, then only six, made a brief appearance on The Now Show. Dennis also cycled the mountain stage of the 2007Tour de France, a fact that he discussed and was pilloried for on the fifth series of Mock the Week!
Since August 2007 Hugh Dennis has starred in the hit BBC comedy ‘Outnumbered,’ a semi-improvised sitcom based around family life which has won numerous awards and praise.
