Richard Ayoade

Richard Ayoade (born 23 May 1977 in Hammersmith, London) is a British comedian, actor, writer, director and presenter. He played the role of socially awkward IT technician Maurice Moss in the Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd (2006-2013), for which he won the 2014 BAFTA for Best Male Comedy Performance. He was the son of a Norwegian mother and a Nigerian father of Yoruba ethnicity, and was president of the Footlights club while studying law at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, from 1995 to 1998, alongside contemporaries David Mitchell and John Oliver.

Ayoade and Matthew Holness debuted their respective characters Dean Learner and Garth Marenghi at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2000, where their show Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight was nominated for a Perrier Award; in 2001 he won the Perrier Comedy Award for the sequel Garth Marenghi's Netherhead. They brought the characters to television with Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004) and Man to Man with Dean Learner (2006). He also appeared in The Mighty Boosh (2004-2007) and Nathan Barley (2005). After directing music videos for Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys, Vampire Weekend and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, he wrote and directed the comedy-drama film Submarine (2010) and the black comedy The Double (2013).

Ayoade has frequently appeared on panel shows, most prominently on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, and presented the factual shows Gadget Man (2013-2015), its spin-off Travel Man (2015-2019), and the revival of The Crystal Maze (2017-2020). He has voiced characters in animated projects including The Boxtrolls (2014), Early Man (2018), The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019) and Soul (2020). He has written three comedic film-focused books, Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey (2014), The Grip of Film (2017) and Ayoade on Top (2019), as well as the children's book The Book That No One Wanted to Read (2022).