Steve Delaney
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Steve Delaney (born 1954) is an English comedian and character actor, best known for his comedy character Count Arthur Strong on
Early life and career
Delaney was born in
In 1979 he enrolled at the
Count Arthur Strong
The fictional character Count Arthur Strong is an elderly, pompous, mostly out-of-work,
Count Arthur is based on many influences and people from Delaney's youth from the 1960s onward: next-door neighbours, relatives, and eccentric shopkeepers.
Character history
Delaney created Count Arthur in the 1980s, when he was a drama student at
In 1997 Delaney resurrected Count Arthur Strong at the suggestion of former tutor and friend Lyall Watson, now an award winning TV writer, for his character comedy routine in clubs. The character was performed at the
Delaney then entered an intensive period of production, culminating in more than 350 live shows performed over five further Edinburgh Fringe runs and nine national tours. This covered live shows from "Forgotten Egypt!" to "Alive and Unplugged" in 2018.
In 2004 the character stepped onto national radio after a series of speculative pilots recorded at Komedia Brighton. Count Arthur first appeared on BBC Radio 2 as a regular guest on the Mark Radcliffe show, before featuring in his own BBC Radio 4 sitcom, Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show! Produced by Komedia Entertainment and Smooth Operations, the show won the Sony Award for Best Radio Comedy in 2009 and became a cornerstone of BBC Radio comedy; almost 50 half-hour episodes were broadcast between 2005 and 2012.
In 2008 Delaney and Komedia Entertainment partnered with Graham Linehan and Talkback to create a TV version of the radio series. A quiz show format called The Entertainment Game was piloted in 2010 for the BBC,[4] which was followed by the commissioning of scripts for a sitcom for BBC Two that became Count Arthur Strong.
References
- ^ a b The Strong Will Survive, Steve Delaney Interview at The Sunday Times Culture p18. 19 April 2015
- ^ Breaking News: TV Series to air 8 July on BBC2 – The Times 20 June 2013
- ^ Arthur. "New Statesman: Radio Show review, January 2008 | Count Arthur StrongCount Arthur Strong". Retrieved 8 September 2021.
- ^ a b "Steve Delaney and Graham Linehan: how we brought Count Arthur Strong to TV", Radio Times, retrieved 15 August 2013