Sean Lock

Sean Lock (22 April 1963 - 16 August 2021) was an English comedian and actor who began his comedy career as a stand-up comedian. In 2000 he won the British Comedy Award in the category of Best Live Comic and was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. His routines were often surreal and delivered in a deadpan style. He was a team captain on the Channel 4 comedy panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats from 2005 to 2015, and on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown from 2012 until his death in 2021. He was voted the 55th-greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups in 2007, and was upgraded to 19th in the 2010 list.

Lock was born in Chertsey, Surrey, the youngest of four children, and was raised in Woking, where he attended St John the Baptist School. After leaving education in 1981, he spent seven years as a labourer stripping concrete panels off buildings, then travelled and took on different jobs, including working on a French farm as a goat herder and on a kibbutz in Israel. After seeing comedians like Alexei Sayle and Paul Merton perform, he decided to pursue comedy, and in 1988 he had his first official gig at a pub in Stoke Newington, London.

Lock's early television work included a supporting role alongside Rob Newman and David Baddiel in the 1993 series Newman and Baddiel in Pieces. In December 1998 he launched his own BBC Radio 4 show, 15 Minutes of Misery, which was expanded into the half-hour series 15 Storeys High, co-written with Martin Trenaman, and transferred to television for two series in 2002 and 2004. He also wrote material for Bill Bailey, Lee Evans and Mark Lamarr, and wrote the screenplay for Andrew Kötting's 2001 feature film This Filthy Earth.