Tim Key

Timothy Key (born 2 September 1976) is an English poet, comedian, actor and screenwriter. He has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, both as a solo act and as part of the comedy group Cowards, and plays Sidekick Simon in various Alan Partridge film and television projects. In 2009, he won the Edinburgh Comedy Award and was nominated for the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality. Key was born in Cambridge and grew up in Impington, Cambridgeshire. He studied Russian at the University of Sheffield, then returned to Cambridge and joined the Cambridge Footlights, where he met Tom Basden, Stefan Golaszewski, and Lloyd Woolf, with whom he formed the sketch group Cowards.

Key's first appearance with the Footlights was in the stage production Far Too Happy in 2001. In 2009, his solo poetry show The Slutcracker won the Edinburgh Comedy Award and was nominated for the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality. His comedy show Megadate toured from 2017 to 2018, and in 2023 he toured his sell-out show Mulberry around the UK and Ireland, as well as a run at the SoHo Playhouse in New York City. Key has regularly been heard on BBC Radio 4 since 2006, and in 2012 he reunited with Basden for Tim Key's Late Night Poetry Programme. His first album, Tim Key. With a String Quartet. On a Boat., was released in November 2010.

In November 2010, Key appeared as "Sidekick Simon" alongside Steve Coogan on Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge, reprising the role in the 2013 film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa and the BBC series This Time with Alan Partridge. In 2015, he was a panellist on the first series of Taskmaster and has been credited as a "Task Consultant" since the show's second series. In 2022, he starred in the BBC Two comedy series The Witchfinder, and in 2025 he starred as "Ken" in Peacock's The Paper, a follow up and spinoff to The Office.