Andy Riley is a cartoonist and scriptwriter from Britain.
He drew a weekly strip cartoon for The Observer Magazine called Roasted, which is also collected in hardback edition. So far his books have sold around one and a half million copies and have been published in eighteen countries, producing calendar, greetings card and poster spin-offs. Lucky Heather is his self-published mini-comic.
His comedy scriptwriting is done in partnership with Kevin Cecil. They have won two BAFTAS, for the sitcom Black Books in 2005 and the animated special Robbie The Reindeer in 2000. They created and wrote the sitcoms The Great Outdoors and Hyperdrive for the BBC, and Slacker Cats for the ABC Family Channel. Other television writing credits include Little Britain, The Armando Iannucci Shows, Come Fly With Me, Trigger Happy TV, So Graham Norton, Smack The Pony, The Armstrong and Miller Show, Bob and Margaret, Spitting Image, Harry and Paul, Katy Brand’s Big Ass Show, Alexei Sayle’s Merry Go Round, Man Stroke Woman and Big Train. Their Radio 4 panel game, The 99p Challenge, won a Sony silver award.
As well as writing comedy, they are experienced writers of feature-length animation: their credits include Gnomeo and Juliet (released February 2011) and The Pirates! (in production at Aardman). They did an uncredited rewrite of Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride.
Andy is originally from Aylesbury but now lives in London. He used to be the stage dancer for The Pod, Julian Barratt’s comedy techno band which was the forerunner of The Mighty Boosh. His hobbies include urban canoeing.
Despite rival claims on the internet, Andy Riley is the true originator of the tradition of cross-dressing at the Towersey folk festival.