Neil Sean

Neil Sean
Born	Mirfield, England
Nationality	British
Occupation(s)	Journalist, broadcaster, writer

Neil Sean is a journalist from Mirfield. The son of entertainers Ann Montini and Alan Scott, Neil first attracted attention as a singer, and released a cover version of Cliff Richard's "We Don't Talk Anymore", before taking up posts as a presenter and a writer, including the Metro's "The Green Room" for over ten years.

Neil then set up his own outfit, Maycon Productions, and released numerous books and DVDs including the book "How to Live Like a Celebrity for Free" and the DVD "D.R. W.H.O.: The Lost Interviews", which attracted critical commentary on separate editions of Dave Gorman's show Modern Life is Goodish. He also spent a period as Travelodge's writer-in-residence and as an entertainment reporter for Sky News, Fox News, and NBC News.

Life and career

Early life and journalism

Neil Sean was born in Mirfield in West Yorkshire, and attended the Mirfield Free Grammar. His first appearance on stage was at Variety Express at Battyeford Methodist Hall aged eight. His mother, Ann Montini, is a variety artiste who performed as a Marie Lloyd tribute act and set up Variety Express in 1959 as a derivative of Tonight at the London Palladium, and his father, Alan Scott, was a comedian. In 1997, Neil was working as a publicist under Barry I Tomes, who set up Gotham Records in 1989, and in 2000, he and Montini released a cover version of Cliff Richard's "We Don't Talk Anymore".

By 2003, he was an entertainment reporter for Heart, which he had left by 2006 for Capital, and was working at Sky News as a supplier of show business news, which he left in 2008 to become royal reporter for Fox News, by which time he had columns in the Daily Star Sunday and New!. Initially under a contract where he was US-exclusive to Fox, by 2013, he had moved to NBC News, on the grounds that Fox had stopped calling. By 2003, he had also begun writing a column in the Metro, "The Green Room"; Dave Gorman used a September 2014 episode of his Dave show Modern Life is Goodish to express his admiration for "his ability to fill a gossip column five days a week for more than 10 years with almost no gossip", and opined that the column had a preoccupation with celebrities' smoking habits.

Maycon Productions and "D.R. W.H.O.: The Lost Interviews"

After a distributor offered to buy archive material from his interviews, Neil founded Maycon Productions, with the intention of distributing them himself, and released the DVDs "West End Stars in Conversation", "Dr. Who Tales Lost in Time", and "Dad's Army: The Lost Interviews", the last of which was released in April 2010. In 2012, Neil released "From Hollywood to Yorkshire", an exploration of Jayne Mansfield's trip to Yorkshire later in life.

A subsequent DVD, "D.R. W.H.O.: The Lost Interviews", featured a red telephone box on the back cover, and its blurb promised "extensive and revealing interviews" with David Tennant, the then-Doctor Who. Dave Gorman used an October 2017 edition of Modern Life is Goodish to analyse the DVD with Doctor Who expert Toby Hadoke, and found the DVD to be just under 40 minutes long, with just over five and a half minutes of interviews with Doctor Who alumni Russell T Davies, John Barrowman, Noel Clarke, and Simon Pegg, thirty seconds of David Tennant discussing Kylie Minogue, eighty seconds of him discussing Doctor Who (which is then repeated later in the video), and several instances of Neil interviewing people only vaguely connected to the show about unrelated topics. They also found much of Pegg's and Barrowman's interviews to have "sod all" to do with Doctor Who, and that the DVD contained several factual inaccuracies, several instances of Neil relaying comments Doctor Who actors had made to him, five "fast facts" delivered slowly including one repeat, numerous instances of graphics as padding including "three panda walks of shame in one go", and about a minute of poorly shot footage of John Barrowman gossiping about non-Doctor Who alumnus Lee Mead.

He also questioned how Neil was able to include thirty seconds of a Kylie Minogue music video, thirty seconds from Mr. Bean's Holiday, about a minute of Mead singing a song from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and thirty seconds of Mead singing something else in the DVD, on the grounds that he was not allowed to include it in the show, and Hadoke opined that Mead winning a talent show judged by John Barrowman did not make his appearances relevant. Explaining himself on an episode of Richard Herring's Edinburgh Fringe Podcast, Gorman noted that his usual Modern Life is Goodish dissections were tongue-in-cheek, with Neil being the only person he had given a "proper kicking" to, and that Hadoke had been brought in as he was struggling to contain his hatred for Neil during run-throughs.

Christopher Bennion used a review for the episode in The Times described the "The Lost Interviews" as "the shonkiest Doctor Who DVD ever made", and Christopher Stevens of the Daily Mail used a review for the episode to describe the DVD as "littered with errors" and Gorman's review as a "blistering attack". In late 2020, Neil presented a six-part series on YouTube, "That Reminds Me!", in which he discussed careers with faded comedians; explaining himself to the British Comedy Guide, he stated that he had come up with the idea after meeting with comedy commissioners at a television channel, and finding that many of the names he was suggesting dismissed as too old-fashioned.

"How to Live Like a Celebrity for Free" and other books

In 2012, Neil announced his book, "How to Live Like a Celebrity for Free", which contained a number of money-saving ideas, ostensibly from celebrities he had interviewed. The book claimed to contain Beyoncé's discount method of maintaining her hair, and to detail how Jennifer Lopez received a free makeover at a makeup counter before an audition and how Michael Caine travelled the world for free. He wrote the book while writer-in-residence at Travelodge, having been given the idea to become a writer-in-residence after encountering a man with a laptop in the Savoy Hotel, before approaching other chains and then them. He promoted the book with an appearance on Australian television, on which he alleged that Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex had suggested combining free hotel aftershave samples, that Jason Donovan had told him that he commuted by a self-renovated second-hand bicycle after appearing in Neighbours, and that Boris Johnson had told him that he visited his local library for the latest books, audiobooks, and newspapers.

Dave Gorman used just over six minutes of a September 2014 episode of Modern Life is Goodish to opine that the last three of these did not constitute a celebrity lifestyle and neither did his book's tip to recycle gym wet bags to transport packed lunches, and suggested that one tip, that a "calling card for things like free menu-testing at all the top restaurants" was rushing to leave a posh hotel at the same time as an A-list celebrity and planting a kiss on their cheek in view of paparazzi, would constitute sexual assault. Both Gorman and Emma Clayton of the Telegraph & Argus questioned Neil's suggestion that it was feasible to obtain free shoes by offering to be a shoe-tester, with the latter also questioning whether a customer would in fact find "a good Cartier belt, vintage cufflinks, a Hermes scarf" just by rummaging in charity shops, whether a record company's public relations department would supply free albums or concert invites without harassing for press cuttings, and whether banks would want to befriend customers just because they adopted a nonchalant air and asked about corporate hospitality offers, though did describe the book as "a fun guide to shameless blagging". Neil released a further book, "Live from the London Palladium", in December 2014, which he launched at Mirfield Library, followed by a book in December 2016, "I met Marilyn", about Marilyn Monroe.