Rob Grant

Robert Grant, 1955 – 2026, was born in Salford. Despite being hopelessly and incurably tone deaf, he spent ten years at Chetham's School of Music.
After being unceremoniously ejected from Liverpool University, he started writing for BBC radio. Together with Doug Naylor, he created several radio series, including the multi-award-winning Son Of Cliché, and the surreal sitcom Wrinkles, which earned the distinction of achieving the second worst audience evaluation rating ever, just being edged out of the top spot by a Radio One quiz show that provided the wrong answers to the questions. They also contributed material to just about every living comedian in the eighties, including Bob Monkhouse, Ken Dodd, Roy Hudd, and, yes, the Grumbleweeds.
They moved onto television, supplying sketches for Three Of A Kind, and Carrott’s Lib among other shows, before heading up the writing team on Spitting Image, and penning the inexcusable No. 1 hit ‘The Chicken Song’.
Again with Doug, he co-created the international smash Red Dwarf for BBC television in 1983, and in 1988, BBC television actually got around to making it. In 1994, the show was awarded an international Emmy.
His solo TV work includes the pre-medieval comedy series Dark Ages for ITV, starring Phil Jupitas and Alistair McGowan, and the alien invasion comedy The Strangerers for SKY.
He has written four novels: Colony, Backwards, Incompetence and Fat, which were all international bestsellers.