Russell Howard

Russell Joseph Howard is an English comedian and presenter best known for his TV show Russell Howard's Good News and his appearances on the topical panel TV show Mock The Week.

He won "Best Compère" at the 2006 Chortle Awards and was nominated for an if.comedy award for his 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show

In 2004 he was commissioned by BBC Radio 1 to write, sing and perform on the comedy series The Milk Run. Howard has also appeared on the shows Banter (hosted by Andrew Collins) and Political Animal for BBC Radio 4.

Until 2010, Howard was a regular panelist on Mock the Week. He has also appeared on 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Would I Lie To You?, Live At The Apollo, The Secret Policeman's Ball 2008, Law of the Playground and Never Mind the Buzzcocks (Series 18, Episode 2 and Series 20, Episode 4)

He was one of several comedians picked as the best comedy talent from the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe that recorded 10–15-minute spots for the 'Edinburgh and Beyond show' which was aired on Paramount Comedy 1 in the autumn of 2006.

The show was filmed at The Bloomsbury Theatre. From 2009, he took over as compère of this show from Al Murray.

From November 2006 to July 2008, Russell co-hosted The Russell Howard Show on BBC 6 Music with fellow comedian Jon Richardson in a Sunday morning slot previously hosted by Russell Brand. The show continued to air, without Howard, until March 2010.

He has since explained that his main reason for leaving the show was that he finds radio "really restrictive" and "I gorge off the audience as a performer, but you can't gauge a reaction on the radio."

Russell was commissioned to make a comedy show called Russell Howard's Good News, aimed at under-25s, for BBC Three. The first episode aired on 22 October 2009 and the show ran for seven episodes as well as a "Best Of" show and a Christmas Special. It went on to become BBC Three's highest ever rating entertainment series.

In the show, he gave his take on the week's major news stories, as well as giving attention to some of the more light-hearted stories of the week. Two more series of the show were commissioned, with the second series starting on March 25, 2010.

A seventh series began on 27 September 2012 on BBC Three. Series 8 began on 25th April 2013 on BBC Three.

Russell Howard's Good News was voted the Best Ever BBC Three show on 9 February 2013 as part of BBC Three's 10th birthday celebrations.

He made his United States television début on the 3 August 2011 episode of Conan.

A show from his 2007 Adventures tour was released on DVD on 17 November 2008,under the title "Russell Howard Live". The show on the DVD was recorded at The Bloomsbury Theatre.

Howard started touring for his show Dingledodies in September 2008 and played various dates through to December. Due to overwhelming demand he further extended the tour twice into 2009.

It sold in excess of 125,000 tickets,including three sell-out shows at the Hammersmith Apollo as well as several large arenas such as Wembley Arena and Manchester's MEN Arena. The DVD of this tour was released on 9 November 2009 and features a recording of the show from the Brighton Dome.

He was named "Best Theatre Show" at the 2009 Chortle Comedy Awards.

Howard performed 10 UK dates between 11 and 20 December 2009 for his "Big Rooms and Belly Laughs" tour.

He performed his latest arena tour in 2011, titled Right Here Right Now. The tour sold out in days and was extended twice, with new dates in December 2011 announced on 3 May 2011.

It was reported in The Independent that Howard earned £4 million in 2009 alone, which he denies.

On 23 April 2013 Howard confirmed that he would be doing a UK stand-up tour called Wonderbox starting in February 2014. He has recently added dates in USA, Australia and New Zealand.