Jeff Leach

Jeff Alexander Leach (born 12 February 1984) is an English actor, writer and stand-up comedian. He has also worked as a television and radio presenter with shows airing in the UK, USA, Australia and Europe. He is most well known for appearing in feature films The Smoke as Dean and London Town as Ronnie. On television he hosted his own series Jeff Leach +1 on London Live and a number of high-profile shows for BBC Switch, BBC Three and E4.

Television career

Jeff Leach was raised in London by his cockney engineer father and Romanian drama teacher mother. Educated at the John Lyon School for boys in Harrow he obtained a degree from the University of Warwick in English Literature and Theatre Studies. After university he worked in commercial radio and as a professional DJ^[1] performing at major UK and European festivals and releasing a number of remixes on Ministry of Sound and Island Records. After being discovered by a producer whilst performing at Bestival he screen tested for and secured the presenting job for one of BBC Switch's flagship shows entitled The Surgery on BBC Two.^[2] After presenting Scene Stealers for BBC Switch and T in the Park Festival for BBC Three Leach had a stint as presenter of Big Brother's Big Mouth on E4. During 2009–2012 he became the face of Virgin Media and their Music on Demand channel which saw him present each year from V Festival, provide comedy continuity links for all of the content on the channel and interview artists such as Lady Gaga, Example, Kelly Rowland and Professor Green.

Between 2010–2012 he was signed up by the UK branch of Current TV to present two series of their flagship show What Did I Do Last Night? in which the cameras followed the antics of young British people suffering from socially driven alcohol, sex and drug-related problems. Leach was also signed up by BBC One to present The National Lottery Draws. During this time he hosted other shows for Current TV including an exposé on the dangers of male escorting entitled Male Hookers Uncovered in which Leach became a male escort for the purposes of the immersive documentary. Broadcasters to pick up the film included BBC Three, ABC Australia, TVNZ for New Zealand and Discovery TLC for Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands. It was also acquired by MTV3 for Finland, TV2 for Denmark and TVN for Poland. Following on from this he presented one more documentary about sex addiction for BBC Three called Confessions of a Sex Addict which also aired across a number of territories.

In 2014 London Live launched in the UK and Jeff became the presenter and executive producer of his own series called Jeff Leach +1. The programme explored the most alternative and creative night life on offer in London with Leach taking part in each of the events and meeting the people and performers behind them. During the series he performed a strip-tease on stage with the Dreamboys, took part in a Mexican wrestling match at Lucha Britannia and even took part in and won a rap battle at the Jump Off at Scala.

Stand-up and film career

Leach began his stand up career in February 2010, performing on the UK comedy circuit and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He was a finalist in the London New Comedian Award 2010, Laughing Horse New Act 2011 and a semi-finalist in the Leicester Square New Comedian 2011. He performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2011 and 2012 with promoters Live Nation becoming a Top Ten Finalist in the Amused Moose Laugh Off Competition 2012. During that same year he signed a development deal with BBC Worldwide Consumer Products' Division owned DVD and distribution company 2Entertain.

Leach has compered numerous events most notably during 2014 as host of the Promax Awards^[3] in New York City and stepping in to cover Adam Buxton to present BUG at the BFI Southbank.^[4]

In May 2014 Leach embarked on his debut solo comedy tour entitled 'Jeff Leach. FIT', performing across the UK, Guernsey, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and New York in various theatres with critical acclaim.^[5][6]

His first professional theatre work was with the Royal Shakespeare Company during the Complete Works of Shakespeare Festival season playing the lead in Lope de Vega's 'The Capulets and the Montagues'. In 2013 Jeff completed a role in short film Shop Girl Blog and played rocker Lenny in online comedy series The Chaos which amassed over 7 million views. During 2014 he played the role of Simon in Channel 4 show Hollyoaks and also He also played the role of Dean in feature length independent British gangster thriller film The Smoke^[7] directed by Ben Pickering which was released at the end of 2014.

During 2015 he appeared in a number of short films including playing the main role in Gerry's Garden which was selected to be shown during the prestigious London Short Film Festival, won a comedy award on the industry website Shooting People and at the Berlin Short Film Festival as well as being selected by Future Shorts to showcase on their YouTube channel.

In July 2015 it was confirmed that Jeff Leach would play Ronnie in Derrick Borte's London Town ^[8] featuring actors Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Dougray Scott and Daniel Huttlestone. It got released in 2016.

During his early career in radio Leach provided voice work for BBC Radio 1's Scott Mills Drive-time, Xfm's Lauren Laverne show and Tim Shaw's Asylum on Kerrang! Radio. He was also a station producer for GCAP Media station Mercia FM whilst at university. For two years he hosted a comedy podcast for Total Rock Radio^[9] and currently hosts his own weekly comedy show on Soho Radio.^[10]

Voice acting

As a voice-over artist he has featured on major campaigns for Citroën, SEGA and The Creative Assembly including work on video game titles such as The Order: 1886 and the upcoming release in the Total War series.

Video game live streaming

Jeff Leach is also a video game broadcaster and live streamer. Between 2016 and 2017 Leach live-streamed video and comedy gameplay on the Twitch platform, his community known as the "Leachers". By November 2017 Leach had amassed over 27,000 Twitch followers,^[11] some of whom donate money and virtual tokens to the actor/comic.^[12]

At the end of 2017 he started broadcasting regular video-gaming, comedy podcast and vlog content on his YouTube channel^[13] and on his Mixer channel.^[14]

In April 2016 Leach signed as a hosting personality to eSports org Tempo Storm^[15] and signed sponsorship deals with Gunnar Optiks, Astro Gaming, Green Man Gaming and AMD. As a live event and eSports host he has fronted major events for Bethesda, Ubisoft, Daybreak Games, Twitch, Tempo Storm and eSports Arena.

Leach also sells his own gamer merchandise.^[16]

References