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QCA Comedy: Simon Amstell

28-year-old Simon Amstell is a gay British comedian who hosts the music panel game show, Never Mind The Buzzcocks (NMTB) and has performed annually at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival since 2005. He started performing on the comedy circuit when he was just 14 and later caught the eye of television executives by becoming the youngest finalist of the BBC New Comedy Awards in 1998. His first professional television appearance was in 1998, as a presenter on the UK children’s channel Nickelodeon. He claims he was sacked for being “sarcastic and mean to children.”
Amstell was born in Gants Hill into a Jewish family. His religion and sexuality figure occasionally in his work; Amstell came out as gay two months into his work on a music program called Popworld, claiming that no one believed him initially, “so I had to keep going on about it.” His orientation has been referred to both on Popworld and NMTB, with John Barrowman challenging him to a “gay-off” on NMTB. Amstell has been lauded by some for his “approach of refusing to treat homosexuality as a dirty secret that can’t be mentioned.”
Amstell has won numerous awards for hosting NMTB. You can see some of his finer moments on the program in the video below.