Simon Munnery
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Simon Munnery, also known as 'The League Against Tedium', is a British comedy writer and experimental standup comedian. He performs mainly to an alternative audience but has pierced the mainstream both with his BBC Radio 1 show in 1997 and his BBC2 television series, Attention Scum! in 2001.
Munnery's experimental style is reified through his sartorial appearence: his tragically unfashionable glasses, homemade clothes (or clothes apparantly donated to him by commedian Jeff Green), giant animated hats, and dramatic facial hair. As 'The League' he often dons a hat crafted from a kettle and one of his standup shows is performed entirely with a metal bucket over his head.
His standup is perhaps best described as often satirical, often political and most always surreal. Munnery plays Harmonica and his dialogue, sometimes comparable to that of a modern Oscar Wilde is endlesly quotable ("If you've only ever read one book in your life... I strongly recommend that you keep your mouth shut").
While at university, he took part in a standup double-act called God and Jesus, which as Richard Herring notes, is a hard name to beat. Herring and Munnery would later work together (along with Steve Coogan, Patrick Marber and Stewart Lee) at the Edinburgh Festival in a piece called The Dum Show.
Munnery was brought to the attention of a comedy community as the compere of a post-alternative comedy cabaret called Cluub Zarathustra performed originally in London and later at the Edinburgh Festival. Cluub Zarathustra featured the talents of Stewart Lee, Kevin Eldon, Sally Phillips, Johnny Vegas, Julian Barratt, Roger Mann, Jason Freeman and the music of Richard Thomas and Lori Lixenberg. A television pilot was made of Cluub Z for Channel 4, but was never broadcast.
Perhaps his crowning achievement, Attention Scum! was a television series produced for the BBC and directed by Stewart Lee. It involved Munnery as 'The League Against Tedium' driving around the United Kingdom in an adapted transit van and preaching to the masses with the help of an opera singer (Lori Lixenberg), a sedated vampire (Richard Thomas), and a monkey (Munnery's wife Janet). He is also famous, however, for his musical and comedy work as Alan Parker: Urban Warrior on the stage and for writing and hosting the 1999 TV comedy Game Show, Either/Or.
More recently, Munnery has been working in radio and runs a show called Simon Munnery's Experimental Half Hour ("experimental in that it lasts an hour") on Resonance FM. He also wrote and performed two 4-part Radio 4 series called "Where Did It All Go Wrong?", which were broadcast in the summer of 2003 and the spring of 2005.
Munnery seems to have taken up something of a residency at The Stand Comedy Club in Edinburgh and performs excellent one-man shows there during festival time as well as shows at the Glasgow counterpart of the same club. Some recent Munnery Festival shows include Trilogy, Buckethead and Simon Munnery's Annual General Meeting.
External links
League Against Tedium (http://www.www.leagueagainsttedium.co.uk) - An unofficial but pretty well researched fan site.
Comedy CV (http://www.comedycv.co.uk/simonmunnery) - A small write-up on Munnery with good picture.
A blog entry (http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/warmingup.php?id=647) in which comedy writer Richard Herring relates a personal Munnery anecdote.
Resonance FM (http://www.resonancefm.com/)