Rich Hall

Rich Hall
Hall performing at York Theatre Royal, UK in 2014
Birth name	Richard Hall
Born	(1954-06-10) 10 June 1954 Alexandria, Virginia, United States
Medium	Stand-up, television
Years active	1979–present
Genres	Observational comedy, Deadpan, Political satire
Subject(s)	American culture, British culture, United States politics, British politics
Influences	Bill Murray
Spouse	Karen Hall
Notable works and roles	QI, Saturday Night Live, Fridays, Late Show with David Letterman
Website	www.offthekerb.co.uk/rich-hall/
Hall's voice from the BBC programme Front Row, 22 June 2009[1]

Richard "Rich" Hall (born 10 June 1954) is an American comedian, writer, and musician, first coming to prominence as a sketch comedian in the 1980s. He wrote and performed for a range of American networks, in series such as Fridays, Not Necessarily the News (popularising the "sniglet" neologism), and Saturday Night Live. After winning a Perrier Comedy Award in 2000, using the character of Tennesseean country musician Otis Lee Crenshaw, Hall became popular in the United Kingdom, regularly appearing on QI and similar panel shows. He has created and starred in several series for the BBC, including comedies with Mike Wilmot, and documentaries often concerning cinema of the United States. Hall has also maintained a successful stand-up comedy career, as both Crenshaw and himself.

Early life and career

Hall was born in Alexandria, Virginia and grew up in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He is part Cherokee.^[2] Early in his career, he performed as a street comedian with a suitcase and stand, traveling the college circuit, and performing impromptu skits for gathering crowds. He attended college at Western Carolina University.^[3]

Hall performing at the Tower Theatre in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania in 1986

Hall's first professional work was as a writer and performer on the original David Letterman Show (1980), and the sketch comedy TV series Fridays from 1980 until 1982. After the end of Fridays, Hall co-wrote and starred in the satirical comedy series Not Necessarily the News from 1983 until 1990 where he coined the term "sniglet" to describe newly created words and collected and published several volumes of books of them. Matt Groening has described him as the inspiration for Moe Szyslak from The Simpsons.^[4] He was also a regular on Saturday Night Live for the show's tenth season (1984–1985), becoming the only Fridays cast member to be an SNL cast member (Larry David, while also a Fridays cast member who went on to work for SNL was hired as a writer and only appeared onscreen as an extra).

In 1986, Hall had his own Showtime channel special, Vanishing America, which was turned into a book with the same title. He hosted a talk show during The Comedy Channel's 1990–91 season, titled Rich Hall's Onion World.

Rich Hall Musician - Image shot by Tina Downham prior to show 15th April 2016 in Taunton U.K.

In the United States, he has appeared several times on American talk shows such as Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Hall was previously a writer and on-air contributor on The David Letterman Show, Letterman's morning show that aired on NBC in 1980.

Hall made a special guest appearance as himself in the Cartoon Network talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

In 2011, Hall voiced an Idaho man in Sony Pictures Animation's Arthur Christmas.

Appearances and work in the United Kingdom

Outside his homeland, Hall has also achieved popularity in the United Kingdom, where he has lived on-and-off for 23 years. He spends part of his time during the off-seasons writing plays in the United States, where he has a small ranch just outside Livingston, Montana. The rest of the time is spent in London, where he owns a flat.

Hall is a guest on popular BBC panel quiz shows, most notably as a regular guest on QI,^[5] for which he has received much critical acclaim and is known as the game's most frequently victorious guest panellist with ten victories (only permanent panellist Alan Davies has won more shows), and also with appearances in 8 Out of 10 Cats, Have I Got News for You and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.^[6][7] He has also appeared on the British stand-up comedy series Jack Dee's Live at the Apollo. His appearances achieved some cult status due to his line of jokes on Live at the Apollo about Tom Cruise, and the perceivable similarities between many of his roles. In 2006, Hall also wrote and acted in the play Levelland at the Edinburgh Festival.

Hall has had four BBC TV series of his own: Rich Hall's Badly Funded Think Tank, Rich Hall's Fishing Show in 2003, Rich Hall's Cattle Drive in 2006, as well as a one-off programme about the 2004 American Presidential Elections, Rich Hall's Election Special. He also appeared on the BBC Two programme Top Gear, where he successfully managed to make a song about a Rover 25 car, much to the enjoyment of host Jeremy Clarkson and the audience. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Hall was entrusted with the task of responding to the tragedy on the first subsequent edition of Have I Got News for You.

Hall has written and presented six 90-minute documentaries about film genres, broadcast on BBC Four. Rich Hall's How the West Was Lost (first broadcast June 2008)^[8] discusses Westerns, Rich Hall's The Dirty South (October 2010) challenges stereotypical Hollywood presentations of the Southern United States,^[9][10] Rich Hall's Continental Drifters (November 2011) examines the American road movie,^[11] Rich Hall's Inventing the Indian (October 2012) discusses portrayals of Native Americans.,^[12] Rich Hall's You Can Go To Hell, I'm Going To Texas,^[13] first broadcast 30 June 2013, which examines what it means to be a Texan, and Rich Hall's California Stars.^[14]

In 2007, he returned to the Fringe with his second play, Best Western, which he wrote and directed. His autumn 2009 tour included a performance at London's Hammersmith Apollo, which was recorded and released in November 2009 as a live DVD.

In 2009, he performed at the Edinburgh Festival in two shows, his solo stand up and also with longtime collaborator Mike Wilmot and Montana-based actor Tim Williams in a new play entitled "Campfire Stories".

On 5 April 2010, Hall appeared as one of the stand-up acts on Channel 4's Comedy Gala, a benefit show organised by Channel 4 to raise money for Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.

Hall is a former regular performer on Channel 4's Stand Up for the Week, which began in June 2010.^[15]

Hall also appeared in the Paul Merton era of the television series Room 101.

In January 2015 Hall started a comedy tour of the UK called '3:10 To Humour' ^[16]

Hall guest starred on an episode of Have I Got News for You, first broadcast on Friday 11th November 2016. He was on Paul Merton's team and won 5-3 (against Maureen Lipman and Ian Hislop).

Otis Lee Crenshaw

In 2000, he won the Perrier Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, in the guise of his own grizzled uncle, Otis Lee Crenshaw, the much-convicted country music singer. He has released several albums, including How Do We Do It? Volume! in 2003, and a concert video, as this character. The first album, London Not Tennessee, in 2001, was recorded on the first comedy tour, and included two duets on stage with US singer Catherine Porter. In 2004, he published a book of the man's memoirs, entitled Otis Lee Crenshaw: I Blame Society, and in 2007 he finished a screenplay for a film based on the book, written for the director Mel Smith.^[17]

In 2008, Hall toured two stand-up shows around the UK: Rich Hall Autumn Tour 2008 played around 45 dates and headlined as his alter-ego in a show entitled Otis Lee Crenshaw and Band, with Rich Hall listed as a "special guest". He subsequently toured a version of this show throughout the UK and Ireland in 2009, with longtime sidekick Myron T. Buttram (guitarist and pedal steel player, Rob Childs) and Lonesome Dave (banjoist and guitarist, David Lindsay) appearing at the 2009 Adelaide Fringe festival, the Sydney Opera House, and the 2009 Melbourne Comedy festival. The band were originally credited as with The Black Liars, and were renamed as The Honky Tonk A**holes when joined by Horst Furst II (bassist, Nigel Portman Smith) and drummer Mark Hewitt.

Other appearances

Rich Hall made an Irish TV appearance as a guest on the fifth series of RTÉ's topical news comedy programme, Don't Feed the Gondolas, and has appeared at the Kilkenny Cat Laughs comedy festival on 15 occasions. He has also performed at the West Belfast Festival/Feile an Phobail, one of the largest community festivals in Ireland, to a sell-out audience where he received widespread critical acclaim. He appeared in several Pizza Hut commercials in the 1980s, mainly promoting Pizza Hut's guarantee of serving each customer within five minutes.

Hall has achieved some popularity in Australia, regularly appearing at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and on Australian comedy panel shows, such as The Glass House and Spicks and Specks.

Hall appeared at the Garvey 1989 Celebrity Ski Classic and at the Altitude Comedy Festival 2008 in the ski resort of Meribel in France. He also appeared – albeit briefly – in the 2006 Cheap Seats (ESPNCL) episode titled "Steve Garvey Celebrity Skiing".

From 2015 onwards, Hall has lent his voice as Captain Taylor in the ITV series Thunderbirds Are Go, with the character first appearing in the episode "Relic" and is set to return to the role in the show's second season.

List of celebrities impersonated on Saturday Night Live

• Doug Henning
• Doug Flutie
• Bernhard Goetz
• Caspar Weinberger
• Paul Harvey
• David Byrne
• Mark Goodman
• Vince McMahon

Musical and literary career

Filmography

1. C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D. (1989)

TV

Hall has written and presented six 90-minute documentaries about film genres, broadcast on BBC Four.

1. Rich Hall's How the West Was Lost (first broadcast June 2008)[8] discusses Westerns,
2. Rich Hall's The Dirty South (October 2010) challenges stereotypical Hollywood presentations of the Southern United States,[9][10]
3. Rich Hall's Continental Drifters (November 2011) examines the American road movie,[11]
4. Rich Hall's Inventing the Indian (October 2012) discusses portrayals of Native Americans.,[12]
5. Rich Hall's You Can Go To Hell, I'm Going To Texas,[13] first broadcast 30 June 2013, which examines what it means to be a Texan, and
6. Rich Hall's California Stars.[14]
7. Rich Hall's Presidential Grudge Match. 2016

Radio

1. In Search of Southern Hospitality. A BBC Radio 4 documentry. Rich Hall explores the idea of the famed hospitality in America's Southern states, and tries to find out if a stranger can still be sure of receiving a warm welcome.

Discography

1. London Not Tennessee (with The Black Liars) (2001)
2. How Do We Do It? Volume! (2003)
3. Waitin' On A Grammy (2016)

Bibliography

1. 1984: Sniglets (Snig'Lit: Any Word That Doesn't Appear in the Dictionary, but Should), ISBN 0-02-012530-5
2. 1985: More Sniglets: Any Word That Doesn't Appear in the Dictionary, but Should
3. 1986: Unexplained Sniglets of the Universe
4. 1986: Rich Hall's Vanishing America, ISBN 0-02-547480-4
5. 1987: Angry Young Sniglets (1987)
6. 1989: When Sniglets Ruled the Earth (1989)
7. 1994: Self Help for the Bleak: Attaboy Therapy, ISBN 0-8431-3669-3
8. 2002: Things Snowball, ISBN 0-349-11576-1
9. 2003: Top Gear, (2003)
10. 2004: Otis Lee Crenshaw: I Blame Society, ISBN 0-349-11818-3
11. 2009: Magnificent Bastards, ISBN 0-349-11965-1

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rich Hall.

• Rich Hall at the Internet Movie Database
• Rich Hall reading from "Magnificent Bastards" at writLOUD, London