Andrew McConnell Stott likes books and potatoes. Many years ago he was a stand-up comedian, described by the London Evening Standard as "an absurdist comic with a satirical eye for popular culture." There were two problems with this - first, that he wasn't particularly funny; and second, that he prefers staying in. But although he decided to give it up, many of those he performed with went on to become obscenely rich and famous.
Oh well.
He is the author of Comedy (Routledge, 2005) and The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi (Canongate, 2009), which won the the Royal Society of Literature/Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction, the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography, and the George Freedley Memorial Award of the Theater Library Association. Grimaldi was a BBC Radio 4 "Book of the Week," and was named as one of the Guardian's "Books of the Year" for 2010. In 2010-11, he was a Fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
He is Professor of English at the University of Buffalo, SUNY, and is pictured here winking at the Coldstream Guards.
