Peter Baynham
His writing work includes collaborations with comedy figures such as Armando Iannucci, Steve Coogan, Chris Morris, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Sarah Smith.Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), Brüno (2009), Grimsby (2016), and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020).During this period he financially supported himself with self-employment income under the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, his redundancy cheque from Merchant Navy, and a bank loan that was nominally meant for buying a car.[6][7] Aiming to break into television, Baynham wrote one-liner jokes for a Friday night show presented by Terry Wogan.[2] Baynham described his work on I'm Alan Partridge as a highly productive and enjoyable period of his career, saying "It's my happiest, most fun writing experience ever really, it was just so exciting".[9] In the same period, Fist of Fun transferred to television where Baynham makes an on-screen appearance of his character "Peter", a "stinking 32-year-old Welsh virgin".[1][3][11] Baynham created and performed the character "Terry from Pontypridd" in a popular television advertising campaign for Pot Noodle, promoted with the catchphrase "they're too gorgeous".The campaign propelled him to unexpected fame; he reported that strangers would shout "gorgeous" at him in public, and that a university student threw a Pot Noodle at him on stage while touring with Lee and Herring.[5][16] Baynham felt uncertain about his future in television after I Am Not an Animal was poorly received by BBC executives, one of whom told him, "I won't be paying a return visit to this".Meanwhile, he received a phone call from Sacha Baron Cohen who asked him if he could help continue his faltering feature film project he had been working on based on the comedy character Borat.[20] The story deals with Santa's global operation to deliver presents to every child, which Baynham said he considered with "pedantic" detail, such as what would be mathematically possible in 12 hours with one million elves and a mile wide spaceship.[2] In 2021, Baynham - along with close friend and long-time collaborator Jeremy Simmonds - launched the surreal comedy podcast Brain Cigar.