Riddiculous' Henry Lewis' life off camera from 'tedious child' to big break
Game show lovers can't get enough of Riddiculous, with 'The Riddlemaster' Henry Lewis proving to be a particular favourite among viewers.
Hosted by broadcaster Ranvir Singh, the ITV daytime show, which is now back for its second series, sees three teams of two compete to answer quick-fire general knowledge questions in a bid to solve riddles set by Riddlemaster Henry. Some of the riddles can be pretty tough, offering a fairly rigorous afternoon work-out for your grey matter.
As quizheads settle in for another gripping battle of minds, we take a look at witty Henry's life away from the small screen, including mortifying moments onstage, and his incredible early successes.
Henry has turned his childhood love of jokes into a wildly successful career (@henrylewis/Instagram)Childhood love of jokes
Henry, 35, has had a love of comedy from an early age, and learned the art of joke-writing through reading plenty of joke books. During an interview with essence, magazine, Hastings-born Henry revealed: "I was one of those annoying kids who memorised jokes from books. I was a tedious child, but it's the only way to learn how to write your own."
He then went on to share some of his early influences, which can be seen in his fondness for slapstick, including iconic comedy troupe Monty Python.
Life-changing success
Henry honed his talent for acting at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), going on to form Mischief Theatre company with fellow grads Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields while still in their twenties.
The trio went on to co-write the extraordinarily successful 2012 play The Play That Goes Wrong, a play within a play which follows the disastrous exploits of The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society as they attempt to perform the gaff-filled murder mystery, The Murder at Haversham Manor.
The rib-tickling show went on to scoop a Best New Comedy gong at the 2015 Laurence Olivier Awards, and spawned a series of similarly titled productions, including Peter Pan Goes Wrong and A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong.
Onstage drama
During a 2017 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Henry and his collaborators Jonathan and Henry opened up about some of their most mortifyingly hilarious slip-ups while on tour.
Henry recalled: "We had a lovely gentleman who was understudying, playing one of the crew members in the show. Amazing guy. And we had this joke at the top of act two where the curtain goes out at the start of act two, and everyone is still getting ready. There's people with ladders, and he was always involved in this bit of chaos, and then it comes back up and everything's perfect on set, that's the joke.
"And he was always there, always doing a slightly different thing. So one day he had a book, the next day he was on his phone, and one day he brought in a big box of raspberries, and he's eating them. [...] So he was sat there eating them, we thought, well, this is great. Then the curtain went down, and he went to run off, because he has to quickly clear the stage before the curtain coming out, and he tripped over and the raspberries went all over the stage."
Chuckling at the memory, Henry continued: "I've never seen fruit spread as quickly as it did. And he just panicked and just ran off. We were all standing there, and I distinctly remember Jon just saying, 'Oh no!' And we had to then continue this scene, and I'm on this stage for 20 minutes straight without leaving, and there were just raspberries all over the floor, and we're treading them into the carpet. And the weirdest thing was seeing all the new characters enter. Every time a new person entered the scene, they saw that the floor was covered in raspberries. And you could just see the shock! It was very, very funny."
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