Lucy Donna Porter is an English actress, writer and comedian. She has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, the Brighton Festival and many clubs around Britain. She is also a regular voice on BBC Radio 4 in various panel shows, including Quote... Unquote and The Personality Test.
Personal life
Porter was born in Croydon, south London, and attended Wallington High School for Girls. She is married to Justin Edwards. The couple have two children. She is small, describing herself as when appearing on The Rob Brydon Show. In September 2009 Lucy appeared on The One Show on BBC One for a feature on heights.
Career
After a degree in English literature from Manchester University, she worked as a journalist on The Big Issue in The North. Porter began to perform stand-up comedy whilst working as a researcher for Granada Television, on programmes such as The Mrs Merton Show. Her first performance was at a club in Chester, claiming this is because it was far enough from home that if it went badly, no one would know her. As an actress, she made brief appearances in Life's a Pitch and Absolute Power. She presented a TV commercial for mobile phone companyOne2One during the year 2000. Her first high-profile acting role was alongside Christian Slater in the stage version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004. She reprised her role of a nurse for the 2005 London production. In 2005, she made regular appearances on Broken News as Claudia Van Sant. She has been one of the writers for all nine series of Parsons and Naylor's Pull-Out Sections, appearing as a special guest performer in many editions. Porter starred in The Powder Room alongside Julia Morris and Gina Yashere, which was also broadcast on BBC Radio 2. She wrote the scripts for two series of BBC Three's . She has appeared on several panel shows, including the first episode of Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive. She appeared on satirical news quiz show Have I Got News For You, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Mock the Week. In May 2007, Porter became host of a The Guardianpodcast, Many Questions and more recently The Heckle. In June 2007, Porter came second in a celebrity edition of The Weakest Link. Porter appeared in 2007 on ITV2's Comedy Cuts, a programme showcasing the best of the British stand-up comedy circuit. In 2008, she began work as a team captain on the BBC Radio 4 panel gameAct Your Age. Lucy Porter has recorded her stand-up show The Good Life for a DVD release by independent labelGo Faster Stripe, and appeared in the 2008 and 2009 series of Mock The Week. She was the warm-up act for Mitchell & Webb's television series screenings at the BBC TV Centre. In 2009, Porter took her show The Bare Necessities on a tour, playing 30 dates between February and June. In November 2009, Lucy appeared at LIVEstock 2009: Friends of the Earth's comedy and music event at the Hammersmith Apollo in support of the green campaign group's Food Chain Campaign for planet-friendly farming. The same month, Lucy appeared on Celebrity Mastermind, achieving a record-breaking score of 35 with Steve Martin as her specialist subject. Porter's marriage at the end of 2009 to her long-term partner, fellow-comedian Justin Edwards, led to a substantial re-write of her successful 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show Fool's Gold for her 2010 UK tour. In the original script, Lucy claimed she was unlikely to ever marry because of an "allergy to gold", meaning she would never be able to put on a wedding ring; on tour, she made a self-deprecating reference to the original material, given that she was then married. Porter presented FirstPlay, a weekly digital "magazine" for European customers on the PlayStation 3. She hosts the successor show, Access, which is still available weekly on the PlayStation Network. In 2011, Porter worked alongside Ed Byrne in Pointless Celebrities, eventually losing in the penultimate round. Porter created Screaming with Laughter, an afternoon mother and baby comedy club. The club tours the country to play for parents with infants under a year old. In 2014, Porter wrote her debut stage play, The Fair Intellectual Club, which premièred at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Assembly Rooms, directed by Marilyn Imrie. Porter developed this into a comedy series of the same name for BBC Radio 4, featuring much of the same cast and also directed by Imrie. Porter has since expressed a desire to write more plays for the Festival in the future. Porter has appeared on three episodes of QI, in series L, M and N. In February 2017, Porter was a guest on Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast. In 2018 Porter along with professional quizzer Jenny Ryan launched "Fingers On Buzzers" a podcast about quiz and game shows. In early 2019 Porter returned to Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast with Ryan and they discussed Fingers On Buzzers and other topics.
