The Pope Must Die

Peter Richardson is an English actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. Richardson is best known for founding the The Comic Strip troupe of performers, which showcased his double act with Nigel Planer and launched the careers of French and Saunders, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, and Alexei... Sayle. Richardson approached Channel 4 to make a series of short, self-contained one-off comedy films with this group, which led to the The Comic Strip Presents, many of which were written, directed by and featured him in acting roles. Richardson began his career as a teenager acting in Alan Bennett's Forty Years On. Trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, in the late 1970s, he created his own experimental theatre shows with Nigel Planer amongst others, mixing comedy and improvisation with rock music. Two of these shows, Rank and The Wild Boys toured nationally. Although he did not reach the same level of public recognition as some of his contemporaries, Richardson was influential on British television comedy throughout the 1980s as the driving force behind The Comic Strip Presents...
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