Michael Fenton Stevens

Fenton Stevens was one of the principal performers in the Radio 4 comedy series Radio Active during the 1980s, alongside Helen Atkinson-Wood, Angus Deayton, Geoffrey Perkins and Philip Pope, which later led to the television series KYTV.[3][4]

He also appeared in various roles in the Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series.[5] In 2007, he played the similarly named Michael Wenton Weeks in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.[6] He plays the eponymous Inspector Steine in Lynne Truss' long-running Radio 4 comedy series.[7]

He has also played a long-running role in the radio soap The Archers.[8]

In 2020, Fenton Stevens released the first of a podcast series, My Time Capsule, produced by his son John Fenton Stevens.[9] The show involves guests choosing four memories they would preserve in a time capsule, and a fifth memory they would wish to bury in the ground and never think about again. Guests have included Stephen Fry, Rebecca Front, Rick Wakeman, Mark Gatiss, Rufus Hound, David Mitchell, Anthony Head, Chris Addison, Rev Richard Coles, Griff Rhys Jones, Richard Herring and David Baddiel.[10] In June 2023, it celebrated its 300th episode.

Fenton Stevens featured in regular roles as Hank in the 1996 series The Legacy of Reginald Perrin, and as Ralph in Andy Hamilton's 2003 television sitcom Trevor's World of Sport, as well as in the Radio 4 version of the latter which was broadcast in 2004. He had previously appeared in a guest role in Drop the Dead Donkey, another television comedy series written by Hamilton, and appears regularly in various roles in Hamilton's Radio 4 sitcom Old Harry's Game. He has also featured in Ian Hislop's sitcom My Dad's the Prime Minister as the Home Secretary.

From 2004 until 2005 he appeared in two series of Julia Davis's dark comedy series Nighty Night as the Reverend Gordon Fox.[11]

He has provided the voice of Mr Beakman, a toucan, in the CBeebies show 3rd & Bird, and has a recurring role in the sitcom My Family as Mr Griffith, the boss of the dental corporation Cavitex. He has played Sir Henry in Benidorm since series four, which was first broadcast in 2011.

Notable guest appearances have included the next door hotel guest in "Mr. Bean in Room 426", and the brother-in-law of Hee Bee Gee Bees bandmateAngus Deayton's character in an episode of One Foot in the Grave.[12] He played Alan Perkins, a holiday rep in Spain in "The Unlucky Winner Is" episode of Only Fools And Horses.[13] He also played a guest role in Coronation Street in November 2004. In 2006, he guest-starred in the Doctor Who audio adventure The Kingmaker. He appeared in Series 3 Episode 3 of Outnumbered, as a substitute player called 'Lance' in a tennis match, and in the "Music 2000" episode of Look Around You as the chairman of the Royal Pop and Rock Association. In 2022 he appeared as Tony Vanoli in a fourth season episode of Ghosts.[14]

He is a very successful Pantomime Dame, having written and appeared in a number of pantos over the years. From December 2006 until January 2007, he starred in and wrote the Cambridge Arts Theatre pantomime version of Aladdin in the role of Widow Twankey.[15] In 2015, Stevens appeared as Dr. John Radcliffe in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Helen Edmundson's Queen Anne.[16]