John Hardress Wilfred Lloyd CBE is a British comedy writer and television producer. Lloyd was Trinity College, Cambridge, where he befriended and later shared a flat with Douglas Adams. He worked as a radio producer at the BBC 1974–1978 and created The News Quiz, The News Huddlines, To The Manor Born (with Peter Spence) and Quote... Unquote (with Nigel Rees). He wrote Hordes of the Things with Andrew ("A. P. R.") Marshall, co-authored two episodes of Doctor Snuggles with Douglas Adams and then went on to co-write the fifth and sixth episodes of the first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with him. Lloyd then worked as a TV producer at both the BBC and ITV 1979–1989 where he created Not the Nine O'Clock News (with Sean Hardie) and Spitting Image (with Peter Fluck and Roger Law). He also produced all 4 Blackadder series. Lloyd was originally to have been the host of BBC topical news quiz Have I Got News For You, but was replaced by Angus Deayton.His first new TV series for 14 years, QI (short for Quite Interesting, and a deliberate reversal of IQ), starring Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, began on 11 September 2003 at 10pm on BBC2 for a run of 12 episodes. In its eighth series, which started on BBC One in September 2010, Lloyd appeared as a panelist in one of the episodes. All the episodes of QI (including the pilot) have been directed by Ian Lorimer. Lloyd currently presents the radio series, The Museum of Curiosity (2008), which he co-created with producers Richard Turner & Dan Schreiber and former co-host Bill Bailey. Lloyd was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting.
Was the original choice for presenter of "Have I Got News for You"
He was awarded the CBE in the 2011 Queens New Years Honours List for his services to broadcasting.
Contributed material for episodes 5 and 6 of the radio series of "The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy", when writer Douglas Adams was overwhelmed by simultaneous writing assignments for both Hitchhiker and "Doctor Who" . Most of Lloyds material was replaced by Adams in later incarnations of the story (TV, novels, albums, etc), and the film ( The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ) ends before this point in the story.
Lloyds "Not the Nine OClock News" had a spin-off book called "Not 1982". One of the sections in this book was a list of nonsense words and their humorous definitions, under the heading "Todays new word from the Oxtail English Dictionary". This list was then expanded by Lloyd and colleague Douglas Adams into the book "The Meaning of Liff" and further expanded in "The Deeper Meaning of Liff". At roughly the same time, a similar concept (defintions of invented words) was very successful in the US under the name "Sniglets", which began as a recurring sketch by Rich Hall on "Not Necessarily the News" (an American remake of Lloyds "Not the Nine OClock News").
(December 2010) Wantage, Oxfordshire, England
First husband of Chris Evert.
