Richard Osman’s House of Games is back on television for a new episode tonight (September 27).
Comedian Geoff Norcott will take part in this week’s challenges, against fellow comedian Cariad Lloyd, Sherlock actress Yasmine Akram, and snooker legend Dennis Taylor.
The 44-year-old has been on the comedy scene for 20 years with appearances on Mock the Week, Question Time, The Mash Report, Live at the Apollo, Daily Politics, and is a regular columnist for The Daily Telegraph.
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Famed for making jokes about both sides of the political spectrum Geoff is no stranger to making digs at either right or left-wingers.
However, he’s proud to label himself as a ‘right-wing comedian’ after confirming his choice as a Conservative voter back in 2013.
Here’s more about Geoff Norcott away from the TV screen and stand-up gigs.
Geoff’s family life and devastating loss
Geoff has been married to his Emma since 2004 and they share a son called Sebastian.
After being born and raised in London, he ditched the big smoke in 2004 when he brought his first property in St Neots, Cambridgeshire.
After meeting Emma, the pair lived in her Bedfordshire flat but failed to find a home together they wanted to purchase until an estate agent mentioned a cottage that was under redevelopment in St Neots.
He told The Metro: “I drove over the bridge into St Neots and saw there were some swans on the river and, growing up where I did, I thought if I lived in a town that had swans I’ve made it.”
Geoff has recently, and very bravely, opened up about the death of his daughter, seven years after she was stillborn.
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The comedian and his wife lost their daughter Connie in July 2014.
In an essay for stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands, Norcott said his wife had been 34 weeks pregnant and that they were “devastated” to be told that their baby’s heart had stopped beating.
He said stillbirth could feel “like a void”
The star said as the anniversary approached this year he realised it felt different than usual, as a result of the COVID pandemic.
“As the date approached, I knew the signs that my mind was drifting back to that summer,” he wrote. “The headaches, the brutal lack of self-esteem, all the while noticing that my wife is going through the same and more, given the additional burden of the physical trauma women experience in stillbirth.
“However, for all the familiarity, this year has also felt different. I suspect there are two reasons. One is that last year the pandemic was so new and all-consuming that grief was just another thing we weren’t having a normal experience of.”
Geoff also opened up about his experience In a recent episode of Josh Widdicombe and Rob Beckett’s podcast, Parenting Hell.
Geoff said: “It was a hard thing to go through, but we had a couple of miscarriages, then we had a loss of a very late stage pregnancy.
“I do think it’s important that blokes talk about this because it’s hard enough for women, but blokes tend to just internalise and kind of not really mention it.”
Inspired by Geoff’s comments, Josh, who has a daughter and a son with his wife Rose Hanson, later added: “I think it’s interesting you say about, ‘not wanting to talk about it’, because I haven’t spoke about it on here before because we were pregnant but we had a miscarriage between our two children.
“It’s not spoken in the same way as loads of other things. You don’t realise that it’s something like one in four pregnancies end in a miscarriage of some sort. It’s such a regular thing but it’s so kind of behind closed doors even now I think.”
Becoming the ‘Tory comedian’
Geoff was born and raised in South London before moving to a council estate in Wimbledon following his parents’ divorce when he was nine years old.
His debut book Where Did I Go Right? offers a frank and light-hearted account of how Geoff came from a working-class background in South London to becoming a Conservative.
He also went to the same school as former Prime Minister John Major.
Geoff says: “I’m a comedian who grew up on a council estate with two disabled parents, and my dad was a trade union man.”
That context leads others to make assumptions about him, as Geoff told The Telegraph : “It’s obvious to everyone I meet that I should be Labour through and through.”
He’s now branded himself as the “UK’s only declared Conservative comedian.”
* Richard Osman’s House of Games airs at 6pm on BBC 2, on Monday (September 27)
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