Joe Lycett is an incredibly right-wing comedian, painter, filmmaker, sculptor, television presenter, poet, gardener, dietician, radio presenter, tuning fork, Fiat Punto manual and queer.
His television work has won him a BAFTA, two Royal Television Society Awards plus Rose D’or and Grierson nominations. His work as an artist has been featured in the Royal Academy, Manchester Art Gallery, IKON, Birmingham Midlands Arts Centre and Wolverhampton Art Gallery and his work as a Fiat Punto manual is unrivalled.
Joe has been performing stand-up comedy since 2007, embarking on three sell-out UK tours, numerous international appearances and a lot of rough clubs where people shouted stuff like ‘wanker’ and ‘poof’ at him. For three weeks he was considered by many to be Prime Minister Liz Truss’s personal portrait painter, although these claims are unsubstantiated.
He has appeared on numerous television programmes including QI, The Graham Norton Show, The Royal Variety Performance (for which he received a round of applause), 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Sunday Night at the Palladium, Thursday Night at Alan Sugar’s, Taskmaster, Mary Berry’s Christmas Party, James Corden’s Soulless Pit, Michael McIntyre’s Big Show, Let’s Eat Dogs with Eamonn & Ruth, The Jonathan Ross Show and Room 101. He has hosted Live at the Apollo, The One Show, Sunday Brunch and also hosted drinks with Pat Sharp at his house once.
He played the unseen character Debbie Frollop in BBC One’s Eastenders for six years before she was mysteriously killed by an aggressive kitchen cabinet.
On Channel 4 he hosts the chaotic live show Late Night Lycett, long running adventure series Travel Man and his own consumer comedy hybrid show called Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back, for which he won a BAFTA in 2023 and a Royal Television Society Award in 2021. He hosted the BBC’s coverage of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2022 in Joe Lycett: Summer Exhibitionist, three years on BBC One’s The Great British Sewing Bee and Joe Lycett’s Big Pride Party for Channel 4.
He has hosted multiple programmes for BBC Radio 4, including Joe Lycett’s Obsessions, and occasionally stands in for people like Rylan and Sara Cox on BBC Radio 2.
In 2020 as part of a story for Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back he changed his name by deed poll to Hugo Boss in protest to the company of the same name sending cease and desist letters to small businesses. It became international news and people still occasionally shout the name at him in the street. You can watch what happened here.
In 2021 he took on oil giant Shell for their greenwashing, releasing a rival advert in which he plays their CEO shitting out of his mouth. The show won an Edinburgh TV Festival award and was nominated for a Grierson Award. You can watch that here.