Phill Jupitus
Phill Jupitus in Edinburgh 2006 |
| Born: |
June
25, 1962 (1962-06-25)
(age 45)
Newport, Isle of Wight |
| Occupation: |
Radio DJ |
| Children: |
2 |
Phill Jupitus (born 25th June 1962) is an English comedian
and broadcaster.
He is a regular on television and radio panel shows, including
BBC
Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue
and BBC
Two/BBC
Four's QI,
and is a team captain on BBC Two's Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
He was also a team captain on the BBC's television comedy panel show It's
Only TV But I Like It in 1999.
Jupitus (right) is also a disc jockey, both on the radio and at
clubs and festivals, a fan of alternative music styles. He
presented the weekday breakfast show on digital
radio station BBC 6 Music but left after 5 years, in March 2007. In recent years
he has presented some of the BBC's television coverage of music events,
such as the Glastonbury Festival.
|
Contents
- 1 Early
life
- 2 Career
- 3 Other
works
- 4 Personal
life
- 5 Trivia
- 6 External
links
- 7 References
|
Early life
Born in Newport on the Isle
of Wight to Dot and Bob Jupitus (an artist and self-employed surveyor
respectively), he is the eldest of three children. His brother Richard
was born in 1966 and sister Kate in 1970.
Christened 'Phillip Jupitus', he has said that the
fore-shortening of his first name to 'Phill' arose due to his mother's
reminders that the name 'Phillip' is spelled with two 'L's, something
he carried over to the short form 'Phill'.
His paternal grandparents are Lithuanian and claim that 'Jupitus' is an
anglicised version of their original surname and was ascribed to them
by an Immigration Officer when they emigrated to Britain from Russia in
1917.
In 1966 the family left the island and moved to
Horndon-on-the-Hill in Essex before settling in Stanford-le-Hope,
he attended Northbury Infants and Junior schools in Barking and
later attended Woolverstone Hall near Ipswich as
a private boarder.
He took eight O-Level exams,
failing three, and enrolled at a Technical College briefly to study at A-Level.
After dropping out of college, he became a Civil
Servant for the then Department
of Health and Social Services (DHSS) (now the Department of Work
and Pensions) working in a Jobcentre.
Career
During his 5 years at the DHSS, he began writing political
poetry and drawing cartoons in distracted moments. He quit the DHSS in
1984, hopeful of a career move into the music industry.
Using the moniker 'Porky the Poet', he became a performance
poet and approached local bands to offer himself as a support act for
their tours:
I thought it looked easy, I was very cheap. If you got
another band to support you, there are probably four of them and
roadies and managers. But me - I just turned up and read poems.
– Phill Jupitus,
Both Mark Lamarr and Sean Hughes, with whom he
appeared on Never Mind The Buzzcocks,
also started their careers as performance poets. He toured the student
scene of colleges, universities and student unions supporting bands
such as Billy Bragg, The
Style Council and The Housemartins.
He supported Billy Bragg once more on the Labour
Party sponsored Red Wedge tour in 1985: "In the early 80s,
I got involved with Red Wedge, in which Neil
Kinnock got various bands to stage concerts for Labour. The reason I
got involved was 20% because I believed in the cause, 30% because I
loved Billy Bragg, and 50% because I wanted to meet Paul
Weller".
After Red Wedge, he found it difficult to get other bookings
due to the decline of political poetry as a mainstream art. He joined
indie record label "Go! Discs" as a runner, which had signed Billy
Bragg and other bands such as The Housemartins.
Bragg has since said: "We ended up managing to get him a job
at Go! Discs, which was brilliant. I was concerned that the cut-throat
nature of the record business would make him jaded - underneath that
rhino exterior there is quite a sensitive person - but that was before
I realised that he was going to come back and do gigs again. Working at
Go! Discs got his confidence up."
He became press officer and compere for The
Housemartins (appearing in the Music Video for "Happy
Hour" in 1986), using the compere role to continue trying out comedy in
front of an audience, whilst also taking support slots for other
artists. During this time he worked as a warm up act on the Channel 4 TV
show The Show. He quit working for Go! in 1989 and
fell back on his poetry and compereing to try and gain a foothold on
the London
Comedy Circuit.
He conceived and directed the Brit-nominated video for Billy
Bragg's track "Sexuality" in 1991 and wrote a parody version about bestiality.
He also made an appearance alongside R.E.M.
in Bragg's "You Woke Up My Neighbourhood" video and on the 2006 Hope
Not Hate tour with Bragg- singing the parody, and one appearance at Glastonbury
in The
Left Field tent in 2005.
He also produced the music video for Kirsty
MacColl's 1991 single release "All I Ever Wanted" from the
album Electric Landlady.
He appeared at her Tribute Concert in 2002 as compere and also sang "Fifteen
Minutes" one of her songs.
He began hosting his own show on BBC GLR in 1995,
a regular job that would last until 2000. After which he embarked on
his first Stand-Up Tour of the UK Jedi, Steady, Go,
performing the Star Wars story in a comedic fashion.
His big television break came in 1996 when he joined BBC2's
pop quiz Never Mind The Buzzcocks
as a regular team captain. He also frequently appears on QI
as a guest panellist.
His second UK Tour 'Quadrophobia' in 1999 was released on VHS
and later DVD.
He was the Breakfast DJ on BBC 6 Music from 2002 until 2007-03-30. The
last song played, by listener request, was "Broadway," by The
Clash.
Other works
Away from his comedy and DJ work, Jupitus has also worked on Radio 4
as a regular contributor to Loose
Ends, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue,
presented 'Best Sellers' - a series on the life and work of Peter
Sellers - and wrote and presented 'Disneyfied', a documentary on the
work of Walt
Disney.
He has presented several editions of the popular 'Top Ten'
series for Channel 4, while also joining another comedy panel game - It's
Only TV But I Like It - as a team captain, alongside Jonathan Ross
and Julian
Clary.
He has made one appearance in an Episode of Holby City
as a patient (Episode titled 'Men are from Mars' Season 4 Episode 3).
As a voice actor he has provided the voices for Dandelion in an ITV
adaptation of Watership Down
and also performing a selection of voices for Rex
the Runt by Aardman
Animations.
He appeared as a sports journalist in the movie Mike Bassett: England
Manager.
Jupitus made a guest appearance on the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band
40th anniversary DVD performing with the band on the track 'Mr. Apollo'
and has toured with them around the UK.
He performed with The Blockheads (and has done so
sporadically over the last few years since Ian Dury's passing) on their
30th anniversary tour in 2007.
He is currently touring in his new play Waiting For
Alice co-written by Andre Vincent, before it
has a run at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The world-premier took
place on July 16th 2007 at the St. Ives Theatre in Cornwall, a regular
holiday spot of his for the last 25 years.
Personal life
Jupitus was born in Newport on the Isle of Wight. He currently
lives in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. Indeed, he has
spent his life gradually moving along the A13. He has
stated on air that his dying act should be being shot out of a cannon
off Shoeburyness,
at the eastern end of that road. He is married with two daughters.
Trivia
- Like Billy Bragg, he is a devoted supporter of West
Ham United, having regularly watched the team play as a child and
teenager and has even worn West Ham shirts on Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
He had, under the pseudonym of "Porky the Poet", drawn cartoons for the
now-defunct West Ham fanzine Fortunes Always Hiding.
- Jupitus is also a fan of American sports. He is a devout
fan of the Boston Red Sox, often wearing Red Sox
apparel during television appearances. He also follows the Pittsburgh
Steelers. On Never Mind The Buzzcocks,
he went through a phase of wearing various National Hockey League
jerseys.
- His left ear is pierced.
- He was the continuity announcer for Paramount
Comedy 1 (then known as The Paramount Comedy Channel) in the late 90s.
- He is arachnophobic.
- Billy Bragg attended the same school in Barking and
played one of his early gigs in a Pub owned by Jupitus' grandparents.
Phill has since toured with, and directed videos for, Bragg. They
continue to have a close friendship.
Bragg's first band had done an early gig at my granddad's
pub, the Brewery Tap, and we went to the same school. He is possibly
the most affable person I've ever met in the music business so, coupled
with having a few location things in common, I was always very fond of
the man.
– Phill Jupitus,
- He has played guitar live with Billy Bragg, one photo of
which is here on kirstymaccoll.com.
- He is a big fan of ska and reggae music, even going so far as to have
the Trojan
Records logo tattoed on his arm.
- Some sources state his birth name as 'Phillip Swann'.
- He occasionly wears apparel by Canadian prog band Rush.
External links
References
-
Home Entertainment - Phill Jupitus The
Guardian December 1 2000
-
The whole story from Kirsty's tribute.
kirstymaccoll.com September 23 2002
-
Who is Phill Jupitus uktv.co.uk
accessed November 19 2006
-
Phill's Fears standupcom
Magazine J C Wilson 2000
- BBC Radio 4, 2000. In
Conversation With... Phill Jupitus. Series 2, Episode 7,
first broadcast 18
May.
| v • d • e Never
Mind the Buzzcocks |
| Presenters |
Simon Amstell
Mark Lamarr
Jonathan
Ross • Ricky Wilson •
Lauren Laverne • Jeremy
Clarkson • Huey Morgan • Dale
Winton |
| Team
Captains |
Phill
Jupitus • Bill
Bailey
Sean Hughes |
| Format |
| List of
episodes • List
of Identity Parade Guests |
|
This
box: view • talk • edit
|
