Paul Whitehouse

Paul Julian Whitehouse (born 17 May 1958) is a Welsh actor, comedian, presenter, and writer. He was one of the main stars of the BBC sketch comedy series The Fast Show and has starred with Harry Enfield in the shows Harry & Paul and Harry Enfield & Chums. He has appeared with Bob Mortimer in the BBC series Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing and has also acted in films including Corpse Bride, Alice in Wonderland (2010) and The Death of Stalin (2017).

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was in the top 50 comedy acts voted for by comedians and comedy insiders.

Early life Whitehouse was born on 17 May 1958, in Stanleytown, Glamorgan, Wales. His father, Harry, worked for the National Coal Board and his mother, Anita ( Jones), was a singer with the Welsh National Opera. The family moved to Enfield, Middlesex, when he was four years old, which led to his discovering his talent for mimicry: At school I didn't say a word for the first four weeks – I called it my Silent Month. I think it was because everyone was speaking so differently from how it had been in Wales. Then, after four weeks, I came home one day and said, 'Muumm, I wanna go to Sarfend!' For her that was the end because I had lost my lovely Welsh lilt. So I became very conscious of speech and the effects it can have. But when I went back to Wales I would start talking all Welsh, 'like that, you see' before going all Alf Garnett while coming back the other way. The pair spent little of their first year studying, instead playing guitar and performing with their punk rock combo, the Right Hand Lovers. Whitehouse dropped out and squatted in a council flat in Hackney, east London and occasionally worked as a plasterer. After Higson graduated in 1980, he moved in with Whitehouse, working by day as a decorator and performing at night and the weekends with his new punk-funk group the Higsons.

The pair began working as tradesmen on a house shared by comedians Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, which inspired them to start writing comedy. They moved to an estate where in a pub they met Harry Enfield, a neighbour with a stage act,

In 2001 and 2002, Whitehouse and Fast Show collaborator Dave Cummings co-wrote two series of the BBC comedy drama Happiness; Whitehouse also performed the lead role as a voice-over actor with a mid-life crisis.

He appeared in the BBC sketch series Harry & Paul (formerly Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul), starring alongside Harry Enfield. Whitehouse starred alongside Charlie Higson in the BBC2 comedy series Bellamy's People, with the first episode broadcast on 21 January 2010. The comedy evolved from the BBC Radio 4 program Down the Line. The show originally had the working title of Bellamy's Kingdom.

In October 2014, Harry Enfield and Whitehouse revived the classic characters Frank and George ("The Self-Righteous Brothers") from Harry Enfield and Chums, in a sketch for Channel 4's testicular cancer awareness comedy series The Feeling Nuts Comedy Night.

In 2015 his sitcom Nurse, based on his Radio 4 series of the same name (see below), debuted on BBC2 on 10 March.

In August 2015, Whitehouse, alongside Enfield, in celebration of their 25-year partnership, presented An Evening With Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse.

In June and July 2018, Whitehouse appeared with his long-time friend and fellow comedian Bob Mortimer in a BBC2 six-part series, Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. The two friends, who both suffer from heart conditions, share their thoughts and experiences while fishing at a variety of locations around the UK, often with anecdotes about Paul's health and Bob's misadventures. The fourth series of Gone Fishing began broadcasting in 2021. The fifth series began in September 2022, and returned for a Christmas special in December 2022. The duo returned for a sixth series broadcast on BBC.

Whitehouse will portray Argus Filch in HBO's television adaptation of the Harry Potter series.

Radio Whitehouse and Charlie Higson produced and appeared in a spoof phone-in show Down the Line on BBC Radio 4. The first series was broadcast May–June 2006. A second series was broadcast 16 January – 20 February 2007, during which they won a Sony Radio Academy Award. A third series was broadcast in January 2008, a fourth in January 2011 and a fifth in May 2013. In February 2014, Radio 4 broadcast Nurse, written by Whitehouse and David Cummings and starring Esther Coles in the title role, with Whitehouse playing a variety of characters, including Graham Downs who had previously appeared in Down the Line. The show would become the basis for the 2015 BBC Two TV series Nurse.

Theatre Whitehouse, and John Sullivan's son Jim Sullivan, have written Only Fools and Horses The Musical, which launched on 9 February 2019 at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London. Whitehouse stars as Grandad. In October 2022 he temporarily handed the part over to Les Dennis.

Other work He also starred alongside Eddie Large and Russ Abbot in episode 4 of Horne & Corden. Comic Relief 2011 contained a new parody video of "Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)" directed by MJ Delaney featuring Whitehouse and other Welsh celebrities lip-syncing to the song. It is available to download via iTunes.

Johnny Depp described Whitehouse as "the greatest actor of all time". Depp appeared in the 2000 finale of The Fast Show, and he and Whitehouse have appeared in five films together: Finding Neverland, Corpse Bride, Alice in Wonderland and its sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass, and Mortdecai. The latter has been noted for alluding to Fast Show characters.

Influences Whitehouse's main early influences were the sketches of Les Dennis and Dustin Gee and The Goodies. In 2001, when asked about comedians who had influenced him, Whitehouse said that Monty Python, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were the main influences from when he was young. He also cited his modern influences as Harry Enfield, of whom he said without meeting him, he would not have been doing what he does now, and the approach of Reeves and Mortimer who he described as "far and away the best comedians that we have had in this country for a long while."

Personal life Whitehouse married Fiona Wightman in 1992, and the couple had two daughters before separating in 2000. The couple divorced three years later. Whitehouse supported his former wife in a civil action she has pursued against a national newspaper from the Mirror Group Newspapers, for accessing her medical records. The publisher later offered unreserved apologies. He had a third daughter with costume designer Natalie Rogers.

Whitehouse is a fan of Premier League football team Tottenham Hotspur.

Episode: "Coronation" 2023–present The Change Tony TV series 2026–present Harry Potter Argus Filch TV series

Awards and nominations Year Award Category Film/series Result 1995 Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award TV – Light EntertainmentShared with Harry Enfield, Simon Greenall, Ian Hislop, Geoffrey Perkins, Nick Newman, Harry Thompson & Kay Stonham Harry Enfield & Chums 1996 British Comedy Award Top Male Comedy Performer The Fast Show 1997 BAFTA TV Award Best Light Entertainment (Programme or Series)Shared with Charlie Higson, Sid Roberson & Mark Mylod Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award TV – Light EntertainmentShared with Dave Cummings, Harry Enfield, Ian Hislop, Gary Howe, Graham Linehan, Arthur Mathews, Nick Newman, Geoffrey Perkins & Richard Preddy Harry Enfield & Chums 1998 BAFTA TV Award Best Light Entertainment (Programme or Series)Shared with Charlie Higson & Mark Mylod The Fast Show Best Light Entertainment Performance 1999 British Comedy Award Best TV Comedy Actor Ted & Ralph 2002 BAFTA TV Award Situation Comedy AwardShared with David Cummings, Declan Lowney & Rosemary McGowan Happiness 2006 Best Comedy Programme or SeriesShared with Jane Berthoud, Chris Langham & Declan Lowney Help 2008 Banff World Media Festival Award Best Comedy ProgrammeShared with Harry Enfield Harry & Paul 2009 British Comedy Award Best Sketch ShowShared with Harry Enfield 2010 2011 BAFTA TV Award Best Comedy ProgrammeShared with Harry Enfield, Sandy Johnson & Izzy Mant