Hairspray

Nigel trained at LAMDA and is a founder member of The Comedy Store and The Comic Strip group.  He went on to star in the TV classics The Young Ones (1981) and The Comic Strip Presents (1983-1996).

In the guise of ‘Neil' the hippy, Nigel has twice topped the British pop charts, gaining silver and gold discs and winning a Brit award in 1985.  As part of the spoof Heavy Metal band ‘Bad News’, he made two albums produced by Brian May and played the Hammersmith Apollo and Donington and Reading Rock Festivals.

Theatre:  In 2006 Nigel opened in the original London Company of Wicked in the role of ‘The Wizard’.  He also starred in the original London production of We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theatre (2002) and the original West End casts of Chicago (1997) and Evita (1978) and the smash hit political satire Feelgood (West End 2001), as well as the second West End cast of Alan Ayckbourn’s Man of the Moment (1990) where he took over from Michael Gambon.  He has also played leading roles at the Bush Theatre, the Lyric, the Traverse, the Young Vic, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park, Chichester Festival Theatre, Plymouth Drum and the Hampstead Theatre.

Television:  Nigel’s many TV credits include leading roles in the long-running Shine on Harvey Moon; Filthy, Rich and Catflap; The Grimleys; King and Castle; Bonjour La Classe; Rollover Beethoven;  Michael Palin’s Number 27; Simon Gray’s Two Lumps of Ice; Emma Tennant’s Frankenstein’s Baby and Dennis Potter’s Blackeyes.  As well as appearances in, among others,  The Bill; French and Saunders; Jonathan Creek; Blackadder III; The Last Detective; Gil Mayo; The Paul Merton Show; The Lenny Henry Show and Gary Wilmot’s Songs from the Shows.

Film:  The Flood; Virgin Territory;  Bright Young Things; Hogfather and  The Colour of Magic; Wind in the Willows; Land Girls; Clockwork Mice; Carry on Columbus; Brazil; Supergrass and Yellowbeard.

Nigel has written two novels, The Right Man and Faking It (Arrow) as well as the best-selling A Good Enough Dad (Ebury) and the spoof theatrical biography I, An Actor (Methuen with Christopher Douglas) which also spawned two BBC TV series, a radio series and a one man show as ‘Nicholas Craig’.  He also scripted and voiced over one hundred episodes of the Magic Roundabout for Channel 4.  In 2005, On the Ceiling, his first play, was put on at the Garrick Theatre in the West End after a successful run at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and was broadcast on Radio 4 in February 2009.  Nigel’s new play Death of Long Pig will open at the Finborough Theatre, London, this July.

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