Sue Perkins

This article is about the English comedian. For Miss America 1978, see Susan Perkins.

Sue Perkins
Birth name	Susan Elizabeth Perkins
Born	22 September 1969 (1969-09-22) East Dulwich, London, England
Nationality	English
Genres	Comedy
Notable works and roles	Mel and Sue The Supersizers Go... The Supersizers Eat...

Susan Elizabeth Perkins (born 22 September 1969, East Dulwich, London) is an English comedienne, broadcaster, actress, and writer.

Education

Perkins was educated at Croham Hurst School, an independent school for girls in Croydon in South London, at the same time as the BBC Breakfast News presenter Susanna Reid. She later studied at New Hall at the University of Cambridge, where she performed her first stand-up show, before becoming a schoolteacher.

Mel and Sue

Perkins is best known for her collaborations, especially presenting comedy material with Mel Giedroyc. As Mel and Sue the duo were short-listed for the Daily Express Best Newcomers Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993. After a few years writing for French & Saunders (occasionally appearing on their BBC series), they hosted a lunchtime show on Channel 4 called Light Lunch, and an early evening version, Late Lunch. The two met whilst students at Cambridge, where Perkins was a student at New Hall, and were both members of the long established comedy performance club, the Footlights. Perkins graduated in 1990 with a degree in English Literature.

Television

Perkins has also been a presenter on Channel 4's RI:SE and appeared in Celebrity Big Brother during 2002 in aid of a number of charities. During the series she had some notable dancing moments with eventual winner Mark Owen of Take That. Over the years she has made numerous appearances on BBC TV shows Have I Got News for You, Mock the Week, QI, Room 101, Celebrity Weakest Link, Question Time and Newsnight; she has often joked that the BBC pay her a regular wage for "blabbering on random shows". She made notable appearances as a 'field reporter' for Armando Iannucci vehicle The Saturday Night Armistice.

Perkins hosted Good Evening, Rockall (second series), a short-lived news orientated panel game shown on BBC Choice. She appeared on the 7/10 and 9/10 episodes of BBC Four's 2006 language quiz show Never Mind the Full Stops. She was also a team captain on ITV's Win, Lose or Draw Late, appeared on Celebrity MasterChef in 2006, performed in early 2007 on Celebrity Poker and News Knight with Sir Trevor McDonald in 2007.

In April 2007, she participated in Edwardian Supersize Me for the BBC with food critic Giles Coren, spending a week eating the equivalent of a wealthy Edwardian couple's food, whilst wearing a corset. The duo returned, in May 2008, with a series called The Supersizers Go... where they live, for a week, eating food based upon certain diets. The first programme saw them survive for a week on WWII rations, the second covers the English Restoration period, the third the Victorian period, the fourth the Seventies, the fifth the Elizabethan period and the sixth the Regency period.

In August and September 2008, Sue Perkins appeared in the reality TV talent show television series Maestro on BBC Two. During the series, a group of eight celebrities attempted (until eliminated) to learn to conduct orchestral, choral and operatic music. Perkins won the competition with her mentor conductor Jason Lai and conducted the orchestra at Proms in the Park, part of the BBC's Last Night of the Proms. Her "Maestro" section of the programme was broadcast live from Hyde Park, London on 13 September 2008, in front of a crowd of more than 30,000. During the programme, Perkins played three pieces and was accompanied during two of them by Lesley Garrett.

Also in 2008 Perkins narrated the series ....and Proud on Virgin 1.

Sue Perkins appeared in a second 'Supersizers' series called The Supersizers Eat... with Giles Coren which started airing on BBC Two on 15 June 2009. In September and October 2009 she hosted the Channel 4 panel game The Big Food Fight.

Perkins has filmed a documentary series with the working title A Band for Britain about brass bands. The series was officially announced in November 2009 as part of BBC Two's Winter/Spring 2009-10 season and aired in April 2010.

In 2010, she appeared on QI, where host Stephen Fry embarrassed himself by absent-mindedly calling her Mel. Alan Davies responded by calling him Hugh.

Perkins has filmed two series which aired on BBC Two in 2010: Giles and Sue Live The Good Life, with Giles Coren, and The Great British Bake Off, a cookery competition series which she co-hosts with Mel Giedroyc. The latter began its second series in August 2011, beginning with a programme on cakes. It has since had episodes looking at bread and biscuits. She also narrated the 2011 game show Don't Scare the Hare. She was one of the co-presenters on a programme about Cornwall broadcast on BBC Two on 5 October 2011. The programme is called "All Roads Lead Home", and Sue Perkins has presented this programme with Alison Steadman and Steve Mangan. This programme aired again the following week (October 12 2011), looking not at Cornwall but at Ireland. The mini series (based on the concept of how to navigate on short rambles, or nature walks, solely with the use of natural clues found in nature) concluded the following week (October 19 2011), with a sedate series of short hikes which took the team from north Wales to Liverpool.

She presented and performed Mrs Dickens' Family Christmas, a sixty minute documentary for BBC Two broadcast on 30 December 2011 and which examined the marriage of Charles Dickens through the eyes of his wife, Catherine.

Conducting

Perkins guest-conducted the London Gay Symphony Orchestra on 11 October 2009, at St Anne's Church Garden in Soho, London, UK. She conducted two pieces, the Simpsons Theme by Danny Elfman, and the William Tell Overture by Rossini, the latter for the first time. On 30 October 2009, it was announced that Perkins would conduct the Dinnington Colliery Band at the DW Stadium in Wigan. The band will be performing the national anthems before the Rugby League Four Nations match between England and Australia. Perkins conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra on more than one occasion at the first ever Comedy Prom at the Royal Albert Hall during 2011 Prom season.

Radio

Perkins is a panel member of Radio 4's The News Quiz and has made regular appearances on BBC Radio 2's It's Been a Bad Week. She occasionally appears as a panelist on another popular Radio 4 show, Just a Minute, and has won the game in series 55, against Paul Merton (and others).

She was the chairman of BBC Radio 4's The 99p Challenge until the show finished in 2004. Perkins appeared every day in the last half hour of Mark Radcliffe's afternoon radio show on BBC Radio 2, when he sat in for Steve Wright.

Since 2006 Perkins has been a panellist on a Radio 4 show, The Personality Test, a quiz show about the host, presented by a different host each week. Past hosts include Gyles Brandreth and Rick Wakeman, and other panelists include Robin Ince, Lucy Porter, and Will Smith. Perkins is a regular cast member of Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show.

While presenting a Radio 4 documentary on the Lake District's competition the "World's Biggest Liar", she rather controversially ended up winning it.

In December 2008 she was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3.

Perkins also chairs the Radio 4 panel game Dilemma, in which four humorous guests discussed moral conundrums she provided for them. The first series ran for six episodes on Sunday evenings from 13 November to 18 December 2011.

Books

Perkins was a judge for the 2009 Man Booker Prize.

Edinburgh Festival appearances

Perkins has performed two stand-up comedy solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, "Spectacle Wearer Of The Year 2006" in 2005 and "The Disappointing Second Show" in 2006.

Personal life

Perkins lives in London and Penzance.

She was outed as a lesbian in 2002 by her ex-girlfriend Rhona Cameron during Cameron's appearance on ITV's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!. Perkins had a four-year relationship with artist Kate Williams, until early 2012.

External links

• Sue Perkins at the Internet Movie Database
• Official MySpace
• Official Mel and Sue website (has not been updated in many years)
• Sue Perkins at Biogs.com
• Sue Perkins Management - Debi Allen
• Sue Perkins Twitter feed

Cultural offices
Preceded by Henry Naylor	Footlights President 1990–1991	Succeeded by Dan Gaster