Lee Ridley

Lee Ridley (born 31 December 1980), better known by his stage name the Lost Voice Guy, is an English stand-up comedian. Disabled since early life and unable to speak, he won the 12th series of Britain's Got Talent in June 2018. Originally from Consett, County Durham, Ridley was diagnosed at the age of six months with a form of cerebral palsy, brought about by a brain infection that left him in a coma for two months, which affected his movement and rendered him unable to speak. He attended Percy Hedley School for disabled children, then the Barbara Priestman Academy and Thornhill Academy, and between 1999 and 2002 studied journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, gaining an undergraduate degree and a master's degree.

Ridley worked as a journalist with the BBC and local newspapers and as an online content manager for the city of Sunderland before beginning to perform comedy in 2012. He purchased an iPad text-to-speech app called Speak It! to formulate his routines, pre-programming it with his material and occasionally creating new material onstage in real time. His first successful show was at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2013. In 2014 he won the BBC Radio New Comedy Awards, and his Edinburgh shows included Disability for Dunces (2015) and Inspiration Porn (2017), which made fun of "inspirational" videos and memes about disability.

In 2018, Ridley starred in the Radio 4 sitcom Ability, which he co-wrote, playing the disabled character Matt, and won the 12th series of Britain's Got Talent by public vote. In February 2019 he appeared in the BBC Three series Jerk, and that year he competed in America's Got Talent: The Champions and released his first book, I'm Only In It For The Parking. He became a patron of the communication disability charity The Sequal Trust, and in March 2021 announced he would work with technology company CereProc and voice-artist Dan Pye to create a Consett accent similar to his family's.