Julian Dutton - TV Comedy

TV Comedy

Early TV appearances at this time included The Bore of the Year Awards, in which he appeared in sketches with Peter Cook and John Sessions, Time Gentlemen Please, Al Murray's sitcom for Sky, and Does China Exist?, performing with Paul Merton. Dutton was also cast in many TV commercials, including playing the new Secret Lemonade Drinker in adverts with Ronnie Corbett, Frankie Howerd, and John McEnroe. He was also cast as the Canon Man in the copier ads.

In 2000 he co-created, wrote and performed in Alistair McGowan's Big Impression, later to be renamed The Big Impression, which was BBC One's first sketch show for many years and their first impressions show since Mike Yarwood's. The show, produced by Charlie Hanson, proved a massive hit: in addition to writing the series Dutton was one of the supporting performers along with Ronni Ancona, Alan Francis, Roger Blake and Duncan Wisbey, and performed impressions of, among others, Dustin Hoffman, John Le Mesurier and James Stewart. He wrote and performed in four series of the show and two Christmas Specials, and won a British Comedy Award in 2001, and a BAFTA. A spin-off series, Ronni Ancona & Co was commissioned in 2007, which Dutton wrote with Ancona, Alan Francis and Alex Lowe.

Dutton also writes extensively for children's television, including the sketch shows Spoof and Driving Me Mad, the long-running legendary sitcom ChuckleVision, and the 13-part sitcom Scoop, re-commissioned for a second series of 13 episodes for screening in 2010, and a third series for screening in 2011. Dutton was also commissioned to create and write a pilot for a new CBBC sitcom, Little Chucks, the adventures of Paul and Barry Chuckle as children, broadcast in 2010.

Recent television appearances include the Emmy Award-nominated My Life as a Popat for ITV, The Sarah Jane Adventures, a Doctor Who spin-off for CBBC produced by Russell T Davies, Nuzzle and Scratch, a children's comedy series, and Scoop with Shaun Williamson.

In 2006/7 he performed a London run of his impressions show Look Back in Hunger, a one-man history of film and TV, and in early 2009 wrote and performed two new radio comedy series, Inside Alan Francis, with fellow comedian and actor Alan Francis, and a new impressions show, The Secret World, produced by Bill Dare, in which Dutton performs alongside star impressionists Jon Culshaw, Lewis Macleod, Duncan Wisbey and Jess Robinson. He is also developing a silent comedy TV sketch show, The Dumb Show - a show devoted to purely visual comedy.

A third series of 13 episodes of his children's sitcom Scoop was commissioned and was filmed in the Autumn of 2010 for screening in 2011; and three series of the hit impressions show "The Secret World" have been broadcast on BBC R4 between 2010 and 2012. A fourth season of the hit show has been commissioned for broadcast in 2013.

He has also written columns for The Sunday Times, The Independent on Sunday, and the London Evening Standard, a historical travel book, Shakespeare's Journey Home: a Traveller's Guide through Elizabethan England, http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00583ZPGI - and "The Bumper Book of Curious Clubs," a comic journey through the world's strangest associations and societies - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bumper-Book-Curious-Clubs-ebook/dp/B007FAXWHQ