Actor Biography

Griff first came to public attention in the seminal sketch show of the 1980s Not the Nine O’ Clock News. This was followed by the prolific Smith and Jones, winning an International Emmy and several British Comedy Awards during its successful 11-series run.
On stage he has worked with Sam Mendes, Alan Ayckbourn, Nick Hytner and Sir Peter Hall. He has directed for the RSC and played leading roles in West End productions of An Absolute Turkey, Trumpets and Raspberries, Charley’s Aunt, Arturo Ui and Plunder. He was the original Toad in Alan Bennett’s Wind in the Willows at the National and Hildy in The Front Page at the Donmar Warehouse. He has even played the Royal Opera House, performing Frosch in John Mortimer’s adaptation of Die Fledermaus. Griff has won two Oliviers, the acting profession’s premier award, and been nominated four times.
On film Griff starred in Morons from Outer Space, Wilt (for which he received a British Comedy Award), Puckoon, Up ’n’ Under and As You Like It. Television drama includes Max in Russell T Davies’s Mine All Mine and Demob.
He worked extensively in advertising as a writer, director and performer and is a recipient of a prestigious Gold D & AD, the highest creative award in the United Kingdom, and set up Talkback as a radio production company. It became the most successful radio creative house in the world and diversified into television in the early 1980s. Before it was sold in 2000, Talkback Television had produced multi award-winning television as diverse as The Little Prince, Grand Designs and The Apprentice and launched the careers of Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, Steve Coogan and Sacha Baron Cohen amongst many others.
Recently, Griff has worked mainly as a television presenter, introducing Bookworm and The Nation’s Favourite Poem, making three series of the hit architecture show Restoration, and writing and presenting documentary films on Arthur Ransome, Rudyard Kipling, John Betjeman and Thomas Hardy.
He sailed his classic yacht to St Petersburg in 2002. The account of that trip, To the Baltic with Bob, was followed by his second book, Semi Detached, a memoir of suburban baby-booming, a bestseller and one of Richard and Judy’s six books of the year.
In 2007 Griff took on the mountains of Great Britain in Mountain for BBC1 and then two years later he got wet in Rivers. Two more books about these programmes were produced while he travelled the world for ITV, making Greatest Cities. Two series of A Pembrokeshire Farm, showing Griff’s struggle to renovate his Welsh farm, were broadcast in 2007 and 2009.
He is devotedly married and has two grown-up children and a chocolate Labrador.