Peter Richardson

Peter Richardson (born 15 October 1951) is an English director, screenwriter, actor and comedian. He founded The Comic Strip troupe of performers, which showcased his double act with Nigel Planer and boosted the careers of French and Saunders, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, and Alexei Sayle. 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..., the majority of which featured Richardson in acting, writing and directing roles. Richardson began his career as a teenager acting in Alan Bennett's Forty Years On, before he trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School from 1971 to 1973. 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 1980s as the driving force behind ()