Simon Nicholls

Course Leader, MA Comedy Writing

Simon is a multi-award-winning TV and Audio comedy producer. He has 20 years comedy industry experience, developing and selling TV and Audio comedies in the UK and US. Across his career, Simon’s enthusiastically championed and successfully enabled new comedy writing talent; which he's passionately continuing to do for the online MA Comedy Writing; since creating it in 2020.

Starting out writing jokes for Jonathan Ross, Simon has been first a Producer then an Executive Producer for BBC Comedy, as well as working at leading comedy indies including Hat Trick Productions, Tiger Aspect, NBC Universal and Avalon. Simon was part of Armando Iannucci’s award-winning team at BBC Comedy for five years and recently helped nurture the transfer of Liam Williams’ hit comedy Ladhood from BBC Radio 4 to BBC Three. Simon is now an independent producer and Exec, based in Cornwall, leading the MA Comedy Writing. Recent producing credits include French and Saunders Titting About for Audible and sitcom Party’s Over for BBC Radio 4.

Some of Simon's career highlights:

• Winning Best Comedy at the Broadcast Press Guild Awards for BBC sitcom Ed Reardon’s Week and Sony Gold for Best Comedy with Chris Addison’s BBC comedy The Ape That Got Lucky.
• Working alongside and learning from Bafta and Emmy-winning showrunner Armando Iannucci.
• Developing and producing Dave Gorman’s comedy series Genius, successfully transferring it from BBC Radio 4 to BBC Two.
• Nurturing Emmy and Bafta-winning comedy writer Sean Gray, securing him his first solo comedy writing commission. Sean has gone on to write for BBC Two’s Thick Of It and HBO’s Veep.

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