Dom Joly
Dom Joly (born
15 November 1970; full name
Dominic John Joly) is a
British television comedian. He is best known as the star of
Trigger Happy TV, a
hidden camera show.
Joly was born in
Beirut,
Lebanon and hence speaks
Arabic and
French in addition to
English. While in Beirut he attended
Brummana High School, the same school as
Uday Hussein and
Osama Bin Laden in Beirut, although Joly is younger than both. When his parents divorced in
1987, he moved to England with his mother. Joly then attended The
Dragon School in
Oxford (where he had his
shrapnel collection confiscated).
In the
1997 UK general election, he formed the Teddy Bear Alliance and changed his name to
Edward 'Teddy' Bear. Hiring out hundreds of teddy bear costumes, he staged mock protests in
Westminster and received 218 votes.
Trigger Happy TV first screened on
Channel 4 from
1999 to
2002. A
spoof documentary about himself followed, called
Being Dom Joly, and a series of
Trigger Happy TV was made for a US audience in
2003.
Further to
Being Dom Joly, he wrote a spoof autobiography in 2004 titled
Look at ME, Look at ME!.
Following the success of
Trigger Happy TV on
Channel 4, he was secured by the
BBC for a rumoured £1 million. However his first show for the BBC,
This is Dom Joly, did not follow the success of
Trigger Happy TV.In
2005, the
Trigger Happy TV format was revamped on
BBC TV as
World Shut Your Mouth,unfortunately not at all as popular as Trigger Happy TV, featuring all new material; it was later released on
DVD.
Also in 2005, Dom starred in a one-off documentary as part of a series on
Sky One.
Dom Joly's Excellent Adventure involved him travelling back to Beirut for the first time since he left in the late 1980's, and embarking on a road trip through the
Syrian Desert to find a cave where he scrawled his name in as a child.
Dom Joly also writes a column for the
Independent on Sunday.
He has a daughter, Parker, and a second child called Jackson.
*
Dom Joly in The Independent*
Dom Joly (Agents site, credits)
