Harry Enfield is an English comedian educated at the University of York who quickly came to prominence after appearing on Channel 4's Saturday Live in a number of different personae. These quickly entered the national consciousness. Amongst these characters was the Greek kebab-seller with markedly fractured English, "Stavros", a profound supporter of the football club Arsenal F.C., which he demonstrated by frequently uttering the phrase "Up the Arse". His other popular character "Loadsamoney" spawned a hit single in 1988.

Before that he provided voices for the British satirical puppet show Spitting Image.

After Saturday Live, Enfield moved to the BBC where he developed his sketch show, "Harry Enfield's Television Programme", and later Harry Enfield and Chums with fellow comedians Paul Whitehouse (later of Fast Show fame) and Kathy Burke. This created more nationally recognised characters such as "Mr. and Mrs. Loadsamoney", "Tory Boy", "Smashie and Nicey", "Wayne Slob" and "Kevin The Teenager". Two characters played by Enfield and Jon Glover, Mr Cholmondley-Warner and Grayson appeared for several years both in the series' mock 1950s information film sketches, and in television commercials for the first of the privatised UK telephone companies, Mercury Communications.

In 2000 Enfield appeared in a his first leading film role playing "Kevin" alongside Kathy Burke who played the character's male friend "Perry" - roles originally created for the television series - in "Kevin & Perry Go Large". The film charted the pair's attempt to become professional DJs by travelling to the nightclubs of Ibiza and molesting their idol DJ "Eyeball Paul", played by Rhys Ifans, whilst gaining love but losing virginity along the way.

Enfield has also been featured in a number of successful commercials including the 1996 run for Dime Bar. (One memorable commercial in this series had Enfield as a country yokel refusing a Dime bar with its crunchy centre because he preferred armadilloes - soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside.) In 2004, he starred in a series of commercials for Burger King in the US as Dr. Angus, a character designed to promote the company's newest hamburger.

After a short break Enfield signed a new contract with Sky Television, but only produced one series which flopped badly. In 2003 Enfield returned to the BBC with Celeb, a new series based on the comic strip of the same name, as the ageing rockstar character, Gary Bloke.

External link

• IMDb-Harry Enfield (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0256960/)