Dom Joly
Born	November 15, 1967 (1967-11-15) (age 39)[1] Beirut, Lebanon
Occupation	Political Researcher, Comedian and Writer

Dominic John Joly (born 15 November 1967)^[1] is an award-winning British television comedian and journalist. He is best known as the star of Trigger Happy TV, a hidden camera show, and Dom Joly's Happy Hour, where he explored the drinking habits of other cultures. is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Lebanon. ... This article is about the Lebanese city. ... A comedian, or comic, is an entertainer who amuses an audience by making them laugh. ... A writer is anyone who creates a written work, although the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. ... A comedian, or comic, is an entertainer who amuses an audience by making them laugh. ... For other uses, see Journalist (disambiguation). ... Trigger Happy TV is a British hidden camera television show, created, produced by and starring Dom Joly, originally aired on the British television channel Channel 4. ... A hidden camera is a still or video camera used to film people without their knowledge. ... Dominic John Joly (born 15 November 1968)[1] is an award-winning British television comedian and journalist. ... The Jolly Drinker, by Frans Hals Drinking culture is the notable customs shared by groups of people around the world involved in drinking alcoholic beverages. ...

Early life

This article does not cite any references or sources. (July 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Joly was born in Beirut, Lebanon and speaks Arabic and French in addition to English. While in Lebanon he attended Brummana High School in Brummana. Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... This article is about the Lebanese city. ... Arabic redirects here. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... 19th Century Drawing of Brummana Brummana is a town in Lebanon located east of Beirut over looking the capital and the Mediterranean. ...

Education

Between 1977 and 1982 Joly attended the Dragon School in Oxford, England (where he had his shrapnel collection confiscated); in 1983 to 1987 he was at Haileybury College, a famous boys' independent boarding school in Hertfordshire, England; and then in 1988 to 1991 the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he got a first-class degree in Arabic and International Politics. Dragon School logo School House at the Dragon School, on Bardwell Road. ... This article is about the city of Oxford in England. ... It has been suggested that Fragmentation (weaponry) be merged into this article or section. ... Haileybury College is an English public school founded in 1862. ... For the similarly named county in the West Midlands region, see Herefordshire. ... The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) is a constituent of the University of London specializing in the arts and humanities, languages and cultures, and the law and social sciences concerning Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Early career

Following university his work included:

• A runner at MTV in London
• A year as a diplomat^{[citation needed]} in Prague for the European Commission
• A year as Political Researcher for Around Westminster (BBC Political Programme)
• A year as Political Researcher for the New Statesman and Roth's Parliamentary Profiles

This article is about the original U.S. music television channel. ... For other uses, see Prague (disambiguation). ... Berlaymont, the Commissions seat The European Commission (formally the Commission of the European Communities) is the executive branch of the European Union. ... The New Statesman is a left-of-centre political weekly published in London. ...

Political career

Main article: Teddy Bear Alliance

In the 1997 UK general election Dom Joly formed the Teddy Bear Alliance ("Mr Blair, where do you stand on fleas?") and changed his name to Edward 'Teddy' Bear. Hiring out hundreds of teddy bear costumes, he staged mock protests in Westminster and came fifth out of nine candidates.^[2] The Alliance is not registered as a political party under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. . In the 1997 UK general election Dom Joly formed the Teddy Bear Alliance for Kensington and Chelsea and changed his name to Edward Teddy Bear. ... The UK general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997. ... In the 1997 UK general election Dom Joly formed the Teddy Bear Alliance for Kensington and Chelsea and changed his name to Edward Teddy Bear. ... Westminster is a district within the City of Westminster in London. ... The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 is an Act of Parliament that sets out how political parties, elections and referendums are to be regulated in the United Kingdom. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ...

Television

After being recruited to work as a producer on ITN's House to House programme, a political discussion programme on Channel 4, Joly went on to work for The Mark Thomas Comedy Product because of his political knowledge. He then created his own show for the Paramount Comedy Channel called 'War of the Flea'. Discovering that working in comedy was both easier and more fun than his previous employment, Joly began to develop Trigger Happy TV which had a similar structure to 'War of the Flea'. He has recently appeared as a celebrity participant in reality television programme Deadline and was a finalist on the show. The show saw ten celebrities compiling a gossip magazine where each week, one would get sacked by Janet Street-Porter. ITN may refer to: Independent Television News In the news, a section on the Main Page of English Wikipedia This is a disambiguation page, a list of pages that otherwise might share the same title. ... This article is about the British television station. ... This article is about the anarchist comedian. ... Deadline is a reality television series which is currently airing on ITV2 during April and May 2007. ... Janet Street-Porter née Bull[1] (born 27 December 1946) is a BAFTA award-winning British editor, journalist, media personality, television presenter and producer. ...

Recently Dom has hinted in his articles that he is making a new TV series titled "GSOH" (Good Sense of Humour). However this has not been confirmed.

Trigger Happy TV

Joly's anarchic surreal sketches first started appearing as interstitials during advert breaks on the British Paramount Comedy Channel. The Paramount Comedy Channel is a television channel shown in the UK. As the name suggests, it is owned by Paramount Pictures (aka Viacom) and concentrates on comedy. ...

In 1999 following a successful fifteen minute pilot on Comedy Lab, Channel 4 commissioned Joly to make a TV series. Trigger Happy TV was born. Joly made two series and two Christmas specials before announcing that he wanted to do other things. Joly was nominated for three British Comedy Awards for the show, won the Silver Rose of Montreux, the BBC2 award for Best Comedy and the Loaded/Goodfella' Comedy newcomer of the Year. This article is about the year. ... Comedy Lab is a series which showcases pilots of experimental comedy shows. ... This article is about the British television station. ... The British Comedy Awards is an annual awards ceremony in the United Kingdom celebrating notable comedians and entertainment performances of the previous year. ...

The three DVDs for the shows were all best-sellers as were the soundtrack albums that Joly had personally selected and mixed himself.

A spoof documentary about Joly followed, called Being Dom Joly which was produced and written by Joly himself. This aired prior to screenings of Trigger Happy TV in the USA and earned critical acclaim, with one reviewer Bob Croft, LA Times calling Joly "the funniest man in Britain." In contemporary usage, a parody (or lampoon) is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. ... The Los Angeles Times (also L.A. Times) is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California and distributed throughout the Western United States. ...

This new series of Trigger Happy TV was made for a US audience in 2003, and changed the format of British Trigger Happy TV in that it featured a band of different "comedians", who performed skits without Joly. Though Joly did cameo sporadically on the show, he was very unhappy with the programme and called it "Trigger Happy by numbers - take joke, put it in slo-mo, add fluffy animals and random indie soundtrack - it was made by uncaring idiots." He had a producer credit on the show but disassociated himself with the project. Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

2003 BBC contract

Following the success of Trigger Happy TV on Channel 4, Joly was secured by the BBC for a rumoured £3 million^[3]. However his first show for the BBC, This is Dom Joly, a spoof chatshow for the BBC in which Joly played an appallingly egotistical media character who had the same name as him thereby confusing a lot of the audience as to what was real and what wasn't, did not achieve the same success as Trigger Happy TV, leading to the hidden camera format being revamped on BBC1 as World Shut Your Mouth. Featuring all new material and an increased budget relative to Trigger Happy, allowing for pranks to be performed in different countries, the show was critically acclaimed and gained a further huge fan-base.^{[citation needed]} It was later released on DVD. This article is about the British television station. ... For other uses, see BBC (disambiguation). ... This is Dom Joly is a BBC3 TV show with Dom Joly. ... For other uses, see BBC (disambiguation). ... World Shut Your Mouth was a hidden camera TV series starring Dom Joly. ... DVD (also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc) is a popular optical disc storage media format. ...

Dom Joly's Excellent Adventure

During 2005, Dom starred in a one-off documentary as part of a series on Sky One. Dom Joly's Excellent Adventure involved him travelling back to Beirut for the first time since he left in the late 1980s, and embarking on a road trip through the Syrian Desert to find a cave where he scrawled his name in as a child, which he discovered after much searching. His next project for Sky One was a critically acclaimed spoofy travel series supposedly investigating attitudes to alcohol around the world, entitled Dom Joly's Happy Hour. The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. ... The Syrian Desert is a combination of steppe and true desert that is located in parts of the nations of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. ...

Dom Joly's Happy Hour

Dom Joly's Happy Hour was a surreal, spoof travel investigation in which Joly teams up with his friend, Canadian digital artist, Peter Wilkins to explore drinking habits around the world. They travelled to the Southern States of the U.S., Russia, Australia, Europe and India. During the first documentary the pair explored Miami drinking styles, then met up with some hillbillies in the Appalachians tasting moonshine, and visited a gay cowboy bar in Atlanta before taking on the Christian right in Alabama's dry counties. After that Joly hilariously visited Russia, trying 80% proof homemade vodka known as Samogon. He explains "You have an hour where you feel you can take on the world, then you black out. But because it’s almost pure alcohol, no hangover - sadly because I can’t remember it, I don’t know if it’s worth doing." They then visited Australia, Mexico and Europe before ending the tour in India. It was described in the Guardian as "a brilliantly surreal take on the tired format that is the TV travel show." Motto: (Out Of Many, One) (traditional) In God We Trust (1956 to date) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington D.C. Largest city New York City None at federal level (English de facto) Government Federal constitutional republic  - President George Walker Bush (R)  - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence from... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... Appalachians in North Carolina The Appalachian Mountains (French: les Appalaches) are a vast system of mountains in eastern North America. ... Vodka bottling machine, Shatskaya Vodka Shatsk, Russia Vodka (Polish: wódka, Russian: водка) is one of the worlds most popular distilled beverages. ... Samogon (ru: самого́н) is the Russian name for any home-made distilled alcoholic beverage (cf. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

The programme included a lot more than just attempting to discover foreign drinking habits - for instance, in Russia Dom received a haircut from a nude woman. Another instance found Joly and Wilkins catching crocodiles in Australia. In Russia, they performed their own version of a morris dance before a bemused dance academy. For the American magazine, see Foreign Policy. ... The word nude may refer to: The state of nudity. ... Genera Crocodylus Osteolaemus Tomistoma A crocodile can be any of the 14 species of large, water-loving reptiles in the family Crocodylidae (sometimes classified instead as the subfamily Crocodylinae). ... Cotswold morris with handkerchiefs A morris dance is a form of English folk dance usually accompanied with music. ...

"The premise of investigating alcohol is ridiculous," Joly admitted during an interview. "I wanted an excuse to travel the world, but they (Sky TV) wanted a focal point. So I said as a joke: 'Well, I quite like drinking.' And they went, 'Fantastic, that’s brilliant!'" It was the best blag in the history of television. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... For other uses, see World (disambiguation). ... British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB - formerly two companies, Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting, which merged) is a company that operates the most popular subscription television service in the UK and Ireland. ...

The DVD was released on the 1st October 2007.

Happy Now?

Dom Joly is currently working on a new hidden-camera sketch show (presumably in the vein of Trigger Happy TV and Dom Joly's Happy Hour). The show is titled Happy Now? A trailer is currently linked from Dom Joly's blog.^[4] and he has hinted that there has been interest in the show from NBC in America Trigger Happy TV is a British hidden camera television show, created, produced by and starring Dom Joly, originally aired on the British television channel Channel 4. ...

Journalism

Joly writes for various publications. His eclectic weekly column for the Independent on Sunday covers subjects as varied as Middle East politics, fifty foot chickens and stalking Liz Hurley. He is also a regular travel writer for The Sunday Times and has written about trips to Costa Rica, Dominica, Syria, Northern California, Vietnam, Canada, Miami, Scotland, Italy, Maldives, South Africa, Zanzibar, New Zealand, Malaysia and Corsica At the end of 2006 readers of the paper were asked to vote on where Joly would go every week. He travelled the globe performing various adrenaline sports whilst making a weekly podcast from South Africa, Spain, The Arctic Circle, Paris and Fort William. In 2007 he started writing a monthly article for FHM under the title "Dom Joly's Life Lessons Learned". He has also written for Esquire Magazine, GQ, The Mail on Sunday and The London Evening Standard. The Independents old (pre-compact) masthead. ... Elizabeth Hurley in Bedazzled Elizabeth Hurley (born June 10, 1965) is a British model, actress, producer and designer. ... The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper distributed in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International which is in turn owned by News Corporation. ... Northern California, sometimes referred to as NorCal, is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. ... This article is about the city in Florida. ... This article is about the country. ... Map of Zanzibars main island Zanzibar is part of Tanzania Coordinates: , Country Tanzania Islands Unguja and Pemba Capital Zanzibar City Settled AD 1000 Government  - Type semi-autonomous part of Tanzania  - President Amani Abeid Karume Area  - Both Islands  637 sq mi (1,651 km²) Population (2004)  - Both Islands 1,070... For other uses, see Corsica (disambiguation). ... A podcast is a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. ... FHM or For Him Magazine is an international monthly lads mag. ... Esquire is a magazine for men owned by the Hearst Corporation. ... GQ can refer to several things: Gentlemens Quarterly, a mens magazine The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for Equatorial Guinea GQ, a replacement Quake 1 game engine This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same... The Daily Mail and its Sunday edition the Mail on Sunday are British newspapers, first published in 1896. ... The Evening Standard is a newspaper published in London. ...

Joly wrote a spoof autobiography called Look at me, Look at me! which was published by Bloomsbury in 2004. Joly's second book, Letters to my Golf Club, is a book of humourous letters and correspondences sent to golf clubs around the world for Transworld Publishing. Letters to my Golf Club was published on the 8th October 2007.

Joly recently starred in the ITV2 reality programme Deadline with Janet Street Porter where he had to become a paparazzo. Amongst other highlights he was punched by Lily Allen, hit over the head with a guitar by Pete Doherty, called a "persistent little fat fuck" by Pierce Brosnan and snorted vodka with Ingrid Tarrant. Janet Street-Porter (born December 27, 1946) is an outspoken media personality in the United Kingdom. ... Lily Rose Beatrice Allen (born May 2, 1985) is a British singer-songwriter best known for songs such as Smile and LDN. She is the daughter of actor/musician Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen. ... Peter Doherty (born March 12, 1979) is an English musician, artist and poet. ... Pierce Brendan Brosnan, OBE [1] (born May 16, 1953) is an Irish actor and producer best known for portraying James Bond in four films from 1995 to 2002: GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day. ... Ingrid Tarrant (born 1954 in Elstree, England) is a British television presenter and former wife of Chris Tarrant. ...

Music

Joly was the singer in a Indie band called Hang David in the early Nineties. He was a Goth and said that he looked more like Robert Smith than Robert Smith. Joly personally selects all the soundtracks for his TV shows. All three soundtracks albums for Trigger Happy TV were huge commercial hits. He has also directed a couple of music videos. Ian Brown - Golden Gaze, in which Joly made the whole video in one take, making Brown run through the streets of London being chased by gorillas, frog-men and ninjas before he took refuge in the Prince Charles Cinema. WigWam, the duo composing of Betty Boo and Alex James from Blur asked Joly to direct their first single. Joly decided to pay a weird homage to The Beatles concert on a roof and filmed the band performing in cat costumes on the roof of a building opposite the Groucho Club in Soho. For other persons named Robert Smith, see Robert Smith (disambiguation). ... Trigger Happy TV is a British hidden camera television show, created, produced by and starring Dom Joly, originally aired on the British television channel Channel 4. ... Ian George Brown (born February 20, 1963) is an English musician and former lead singer of the indie rock/Madchester band The Stone Roses. ... Golden Gaze is the third single from Ian Browns second solo album, Golden Greats. ... Apache wickiup, by Edward S. Curtis, 1903 A wigwam or wickiup is a domed single-room dwelling used by certain Native American tribes. ... Alison Moira Clarkson, better known as Betty Boo born 6 March 1970 in Kensington, London) is an English dance-music artist, singer, and songwriter // Clarkson studied sound engineering at college before having a string of hits between 1989 and 1992. ... Alex James (born Steven Alexander James, 21 November 1968, in Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset, England) is the bass player in the band Blur, and one of the members of Fat Les. ... Blur are an English rock band formed in Colchester in 1989. ... The White Album, see The Beatles (album). ...

Personal life

Joly is married to Stacey, a Canadian graphic designer. The couple have a daughter named Parker, a son named Jackson, a black Labrador called Huxley and a flat-coat retriever called Oscar. He is obsessed with golf, scuba diving and photography. Joly is left-handed. Graphics are often utilitarian and anonymous,[1] as these pictographs from the US National Park Service illustrate. ... This article is about the sport. ... Scuba diving is swimming underwater while using self-contained breathing equipment. ... Photography [fәtɑgrәfi:],[foʊtɑgrәfi:] is the process of recording pictures by means of capturing light on a light-sensitive medium, such as a film or electronic sensor. ...

It was revealed in Would I Lie To You? that he attended the same school as Osama Bin Laden; this was widely received as a joke (as the aim of the TV Show is to trick people into guessing true or false to facts of people's lives), but it was revealed to be true. Joly said he is tracking a photograph featuring the two.^[5] For other uses of Would I Lie to You?, see Would I Lie to You? (disambiguation). ...

Notable Quotes

• "No, I'm trying to download the Wup Wup!" - Big mobile (Trigger Happy TV)
• "I've been attacked by wild Shih Tzus!"- (Trigger Happy TV): the Mark and Mike years.
• "I was young, dumb and full of glum." On his mispent youth as a Goth.
• "I don't come to your office and tell you what to do" - Stand up in the Comedy Store
• "And I suffered a shattering nervous breakdown....whicha was difficult" - Various Pranks
• "Ciao!!" - Mobile Phone Prank
• "Do you want some more, do you?" - Various Pranks
• "Helloooooooooooooo!!" - Mobile Phone Prank (Trigger Happy Tv)
• "I want it clean on my patch." - Street Cleaner (Trigger Happy Tv)
• "See you at the Baftas!!" - (This is Dom Joly)
• 'I had what you might call a shattering nervous breakdown." - Insane gardener (Trigger Happy TV)
• "Vous retournerez ce soir a la maison...dans une ambulance" football hooligan learning French in a park (Trigger Happy TV)
• "MR GUND???" - Various Pranks
• "Where...what do you mean where? I didn't ask where when I got to Normandy, I just killed Germans!" - Grumpy Old Man (World Shut Your Mouth)
• "Have you ever...you know just wondered about the terrible, all encompassing darknesss of death that is our mutual future?" The Goth to a bemused picnicking couple who'd just said good morning to him (World Shut Your Mouth)
• "Up yours Tiger!" Dom Joly's Happy Hour
• Dom as hermit "At night, in the cave, I can hear the screams."
• Old lady picknicker- "What, from the wild animals?"
• Dom- "no....it's me."
• Standing in front of a famous landscape or monument, such as the Pyramids of Giza, he turns to another person - " That ... is shit" (World Shut Your Mouth)

References

Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 12th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 270th day of the year (271st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses of Would I Lie to You?, see Would I Lie to You? (disambiguation). ...

External links

• Dom Joly Official website [1]
• Dom Joly in The Independent
• Dom Joly in the Sunday Times [2]
• Dom Joly at the Internet Movie Database
• Agent's site
• Pete Wilkins website [3]