Sam Simmons

Sam Simmons (born 1977 or 1978) is an Australian comedian, actor, and radio and TV presenter. He was born in Adelaide, South Australia, and raised there by a single working mother. As a child he watched a lot of The Goodies, Monkey, and Benny Hill, and says he was also strongly influenced by John Cleese's character Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers: "Rage and silliness combined. What a mix!" He has toured extensively with his stand-up shows, with many appearances on TV in Australia, the US, and the UK, and won the Helpmann Award for Best Comedy Performer in 2014.

Simmons first performed comedy in 2001, at a benefit show, performing as a duo in an act called Smutty and Pert, like Ernie and Bert. He presented The Steve Promise Story at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2003, and developed shows including Death of a Sails-Man (2014) and the award-winning Spaghetti for Breakfast (2015). In Los Angeles he did regular shows with Dr Brown (Phil Burgers), and in 2015 the two performed together at the Soho Theatre in London in a show called Ceremony. He later performed 26 Things You're Doing Wrong with Sam Simmons (2019) and Man With A Fork In A World Full Of Soup (2024) at the Adelaide Fringe.

Simmons has made regular TV appearances since 2003 as a stand-up comedian, guest, and actor, including a main role in the comedy series Squinters. His network appearances include NBC, BBC, Channel 4, Comedy Central, and ABC, and he appeared on Conan in the US in 2013, where host Conan O'Brien called him "a very strange fellow." He has also appeared on British shows 8 Out of 10 Cats and Room 101. On radio, he started as a regular guest on The Pinch on Triple R in 2003 and became a regular host on Triple J from 2005, which led to his first television show, The Urban Monkey with Murray Foote, in 2009. John Bailey wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald in 2016 that an hour with Simmons is "a tour of the comic spectrum."