Peter Baynham

Peter Baynham is a Welsh screenwriter and performer.

In 1987 he moved to London with his brother and worked selling advertising space in The Guardian newspaper.

He began attending a comedy workshop, The Comedy Store.

He became a stand-up comedian, and created the character Mr Buckstead, a psychotic teacher and poet.

Baynham said the act consisted of "[talking] about the terrible things he did to his pupils".

During this period he financially supported himself with self-employment income under the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, his redundancy cheque from Merchant Navy, and a bank loan that was nominally meant for buying a car.

He earned around £20 (GBP) per gig, and made £4,500 in his first year.

To additionally support himself, he wrote sketches for the topical radio comedy Week Ending.

He earned £18 for each minute of material, and contributed around two minutes of material each week.

After four years he felt his stand-up career was not progressing, and decided to commit to radio.

He became cast for the comedy sketch radio series Fist of Fun.

Aiming to break into television, Baynham wrote one-liner jokes for a Friday night show presented by Terry Wogan.

He was unimpressed by Wogan's delivery of the jokes.

Baynham, working at the BBC offices, encountered Armando Iannucci while looking for photocopier paper.

Iannucci would introduce him to Chris Morris, who was creating the news satire The Day Today.

Although Morris was not interested in accepting more writers for the project, he was made a writer after Morris was impressed by a sketch he wrote that involved horses infesting the London Underground.

He also appears in a sketch as a reporter named Colin Poppshed who presented "Gay News", where he farcically announces the gayness of various "roads, periodic table elements, cars, and walls".

He also became a guest and contributor for the radio series The Chris Morris Music Show; he was suspended by the BBC for two weeks for conceiving a joke where Morris falsely implies on air that Michael Heseltine had died.

He appeared in a series of comedic Pot Noodle television adverts in the 1990s.

His writing work includes collaborations with comedy figures such as Armando Iannucci, Steve Coogan, Chris Morris, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Sarah Smith.

Born in Cardiff, Baynham served in the Merchant Navy after leaving school and later pursued a career in comedy — first in stand-up, and then as a writer and performer for various news and sketch comedies in radio and television while enjoying personal fame starring in Pot Noodle adverts.

He then became a writer in feature film.

In television, with Iannucci he is writer for I'm Alan Partridge, developing the character Alan Partridge as performed by Coogan, and as writer and host of the Armistice review shows.

With Morris, he is writer for The Day Today, Brass Eye, and Jam.

Baynham himself created the animated series I Am Not an Animal.

In feature film, with Baron Cohen he is writer for Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), Brüno (2009), Grimsby (2016), and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020).

With Smith, he is writer for Arthur Christmas (2011) and Ron's Gone Wrong (2021).

Other features as writer include Arthur (2011) and Hotel Transylvania (2012).

Baynham was born and raised in Cardiff as the second of four children.

He attended St Mary's primary school in Canton, then Lady Mary RC High School in Cyncoed.

Baynham said he found school difficult, finding himself shy, "weedy", and unpopular.

He found himself too unathletic to enjoy rugby, despite expectations from his father.

He left school with eight O-Levels, four with an "A" grade, and joined the Merchant Navy at age 16 with a desire to travel the world.

Baynham described his experience in the Merchant Navy as unsuited to his character, he said "I was with men who drank beer for breakfast. A lot of them were fascist, and I mean really fascist. They say travel should broaden the mind but these blokes would have been kicked out of the Ku Klux Klan for being too extreme".

Duties included performing operations on a chemical tanker while wearing a hazmat suit.

He reflected, "I'm small and would basically float around inside the suit like a confused foetus, trying to pick up spanners and operate a walkie-talkie".

Baynham is qualified to navigate a supertanker.

After five years, he was made redundant due to government cuts in defence.

He went on to serve as second mate on a private yacht in Monte Carlo as a summer job.

With Iannucci and Coogan, he is writer for Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013).