Actor, comedian and writer, Robert Llewellyn has established himself as one of our most successful media personalities. He became a TV cult hero as the mechanoid, Kryten, in the hit BBC Sc-Fi sitcom Red Dwarf and then went on to establish himself as a popular presenter of Channel 4’s hugely successful, Scrapheap Challenge.
Born in Northampton, England, Robert’s stage career started in the early 80’s when he performed with a theatre group called The Joeys. He then turned professional and spent almost 5 years touring with the group all over the UK and France. The enthusiastic Robert did most of the writing and it was at this time he wrote his first novel.
The group split in 1985 and after a trip to the United States, Robert returned to the UK to write a comedy play called Mammon, Robot Born Of Woman, a story about a robot who, as he becomes more human, begins to behave increasingly badly. The play premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1988, was a huge success and was nominated for a Perrier Award. At that time, it was seen by Paul Jackson, producer of Red Dwarf and Robert was then invited to audition for the role of Kryten. Robert joined the cast in 1989 and Red Dwarf was to run for 8 series, spanning over 10 years. In 2009 Robert found himself back in the Kryten role, when a new three part series was aired. It was so successful another new 6 part series was later aired in 2012.
You can visit the official Red Dwarf web site by clicking here: www.reddwarf.co.uk
Robert has presented a number of programmes for UK television. His first outing was in 1998 on Scrapheap Challenge for Channel 4. In the show, teams of contestants had 10 hours in which to build a working machine that could do a specific task, using materials available in a scrapheap. Robert remained the presenter until 2010.
Never one to cool his heels, Robert was back in front of the cameras with a web based series, Carpool. In each episode he interviews a celebrity guest, while giving them a lift in his Toyota Prius. In November 2010, the Carpool series began broadcasting on the Dave channel. The show is filmed using high-definition cameras mounted within and outside the car. Robert drives his guest to a destination of their choosing as they talk informally about various subjects. Carpool was shortlisted for best content partnership in Broadcast Awards. In 2011 however, he announced that the show would stay as a web-exclusive and that no more ‘made-for-television’ episodes would be commissioned.Recently Robert also ticked one of his ‘must do’ boxes, when he appeared on Celebrity Mastermind answering questions on the specialist subject of electric cars. He is currently making a series about electric cars and the future of energy called 'Fully Charged'.
Robert is an author of several bestselling books and is an avid Twitterer. He lives in the Cotswolds and is married to the novelist, Judy Pascoe.
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