Mitch Benn

MITCH BENN is not only one of the most sought-after acts on the comedy circuit but is widely acknowledged as one of the best writer/performers of comic songs in the country. Mitch began his comedy career in Edinburgh in 1994. He moved to London in 1996 and quickly established himself as a comedy club "headliner" as well as a favourite on the university circuit.

Mitch is a regular writer and performer on "The Now Show" for BBC Radio 4 and "It's Been a Bad Week" for BBC Radio 2. Three series of his successful Radio 4 show, "Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music" have been broadcast so far. He also presents "The Mitch Benn Music Show" on BBC Radio 7.

On TV, Mitch appears regularly on BBC1's "The One Show" as the writer and arranger of "The Complaints Choir". Mitch contributes occasional songs to Channel 4's "Bremner Bird And Fortune" among many other mainstream TV channel programmes.

In 1995 Mitch won the Best New Comic award at the Glastonbury Festival and has played there every year since, including an hour-long extended sets in 97, 98 and 1999 which drew a standing ovation from an audience of 1,500.

In 2003 Mitch formed the band Mitch Benn & The Distractions with Kirsty Newton and Tash Baylis; after a successful run at the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe they took up a residency at The Bedford in Balham in October 2003. The bands debut single Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now, was released on September 5th 2005. The video for the single was posted online at www.everythingsoundlikecoldplaynow.com, attracting 8,000 hits in one hour.

Another online success of Benn's is the social networking site Twitter. Annoyed at the fact that only a few people followed him on Twitter, Benn planned to make himself the "King of Twitter" by getting The Now Show's 1.5 million listeners to follow his account. Within a week of his announcement, the number of people following Benn more than tripled and at the last count had over 8,000 followers.

Visit the shows page for performance listings.