Chris Morris is a British comedian who is well-known for his highly
intelligent and controversial comedy. He demonstrated his extraordinary comedic
skills in popular British current affairs television programs such as The
Day Today and Brass Eye during the 1990s, and he established a
reputation for himself as a “comedy genius”, as well as “the most loathed man on
television”.
Christopher Morris was born on the 5th of September, 1965 in
Bristol, England. He spent much of his childhood in Cambridgeshire, where his
parents worked as doctors. He attended a Jesuit boarding school for boys called
Stonyhurst College, and he went on to pursue a zoology degree at the University
of Bristol. After he graduated, he found employment at local radio stations such
as the GLR and Radio Bristol, but he was fired from these stations because his
employers were enraged by his pranks. Soon, he started working with Radio 4, and
he achieved considerable success with his On the Hour show on BBC 2. A
television version of the show called The Day Today was commissioned
later, and it turned Morris into a star.
After his success with The Day Today, Morris started to develop a
darker form of humor, and this was evident in his next television project. The
Brass Eye was aired on Channel 4 in 1997, and it is considered his most
controversial show to date. Celebrities and politicians were invited to appear
on the show, and they were tricked into supporting public campaigns for absurd
issues, such as an elephant with its trunk in its anus and a drug named
“cake”.
In the year 2001, a Brass Eye reprise was aired to deal with the
issue of paedophilia, which was causing moral panic among the British people at
that time. Morris’ insensitive humor angered many viewers, and the show received
the third highest number of complaints for a UK television program, behind
Jerry Springer: The Opera and Celebrity Big Brother 2007, as
well as numerous negative comments from the press. The viewers were infuriated
because they felt that the show was ridiculing paedophilia victims, but Channel
4 came to Morris’ defense and said that the target of the satire was the media
and the way it treated paedophilia with such hysteria.
Morris wrote and directed another television show called Jam, which
was a rework of his radio project Blue Jam. This show was highly
controversial because it explored taboo subjects such as incest, rape, anal sex,
infant mortality, sadomasochism, and suicide. In 2002, he directed a short film
called My Wrongs #8245-8249 & 117, which was based on the story of
a man who was led astray by a talking dog. This film won the BAFTA award for the
“Best Short Film” category. He also wrote a sitcom called Nathan
Barley, and it was aired on Channel 4 in 2005. Currently, Morris is working
on his first feature film, Four Lions, which revolves around a group of
Muslim terrorists in England.
Morris lives with his partner Jo Unwin and two sons in Brixton, England. He
rarely gives interviews, and he tries to keep out of the public eye as much as
possible.
Our Most Popular Pages