Alexander Armstrong

Armstrong and Miller co-starred in four series of Armstrong and Miller from 1997 to 2001, while also performing sketches in The Sunday Format. The duo decided to take a break and split for several years to forge their own solo careers.[8] Armstrong renewed his partnership with Miller for the award-winning The Armstrong and Miller Show in 2007.[12] The Armstrong and Miller Book was released in October 2010.[13]

Armstrong appeared in BBC Radio 4's The Very World of Milton Jones, broadcast between 1998 and 2001. He narrated the animated cartoon series The Big Knights in 1999; it first appeared on BBC1 that Christmas. That same year he also starred as Prince Charming in ITV's Christmas pantomime, alongside Ben Miller, Samantha Janus, Paul Merton, Harry Hill, Frank Skinner and Ronnie Corbett. Between early 2000 and early 2001 Armstrong starred as a misanthropic, animal-hating vet in the BBC One sitcom Beast, and he has also been the star of a series of TV commercials for Pimm's.

On BBC Radio 4, Armstrong played John Weak in the office sitcom Weak at the Top. He also played Martin Baine-Jones for the Times Online's Timeghost podcast. Between September and November 2010, Armstrong took The Armstrong and Miller Show on tour in the UK, completing 62 dates. This was the second time The Armstrong and Miller Show had toured, the first tour being in autumn 2001.

On 1 September 2006, Armstrong was chairman of the short-lived Channel 4 panel show Best of the Worst which featured team captains David Mitchell and Johnny Vaughan. Armstrong presented the short-lived ITV1 quiz series Don't Call Me Stupid, in which mismatched celebrities taught each other a subject they are passionate about, before facing a studio quiz on their new topic. He has been a frequent guest host on the BBC's satirical panel game Have I Got News for You, having appeared 32 times; he has, to date, made the most appearances of any guest, whether as host or panellist.

According to Armstrong, in 2003 he was offered the job of replacing Angus Deayton as full-time host of Have I Got News for You, but the BBC later changed its mind and withdrew the offer after deciding to continue with the guest presenter format instead.[14] In 2008, he was the presenter and narrator for When Were We Funniest? and was the only person to feature in all 12 episodes.

Armstrong was a leading contender to take over as host of Countdown when Des O'Connor left in 2008, although when he hosted Have I Got News for You on 24 October that year, he said that he had not yet accepted the job, despite team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton making jokes about his "new role".[15] In the event Armstrong declined the job, telling The Independent that he did not want to be "pigeonholed" as a presenter, preferring to focus on acting and comedy.[16]

Armstrong has been the presenter of the BBC One game show Pointless with former university friend Richard Osman since it began in 2009.[17] He also presented a documentary, Alexander Armstrong's Very British Holiday, for the BBC on 8 November 2009 about the history of the "great British summer holiday" and his attempts to explore its modern version. On 30 May 2011, Armstrong hosted the pilot for a new panel show, Alexander Armstrong's Big Ask for Dave with Dave Lamb, Katy Brand, Griff Rhys Jones and Robert Webb. After a positive response to the pilot, Dave commissioned the first series which first aired on 6 February 2012. In July 2011, Armstrong became a co-presenter on BBC One's The Great British Weather. In August 2011, he began presenting a game show on BBC One called Epic Win.[18]

For 2012–2013, Armstrong co-hosted ITV series Prize Island with Emma Willis.[19]

On 3 January 2015, Armstrong and Rochelle Humes co-hosted entertainment special Frank Sinatra: Our Way on BBC One.[20]

On 17 September 2014, it was announced that Armstrong would succeed David Jason as the voice of Danger Mouse in the 2015 revival of the 1980s animated series.

Armstrong has done other voiceover work, including Mr Wolf and Captain Dog in Peppa Pig and he is the narrator of Hey Duggee.

On 1 June 2015, Armstrong presented a documentary, Rome's Invisible City, which used 3D scanning technology to discover the underground spaces below the city.[21] Subsequently, it was announced that Armstrong would be making a three-part series exploring the lost and hidden sites of Florence, Naples, and Venice.[22]

In 2015, Armstrong presented a three-part factual series for ITV, called Land of the Midnight Sun, in which he travelled half-way round the Arctic Circle meeting its inhabitants and exploring their ways of life.[23] In January 2016, he guest presented Bruce's Hall of Fame on BBC One.

In 2017, he presented Don't Ask Me Ask Britain and Teach My Pet To Do That, both on ITV.

After over a decade in television and comedy, Armstrong returned to his musical roots and put together his own cover band,[24] which plays a wide range of music from jazz to rock to pop classics. A classically trained bass baritone,[10] he is the vocalist and is backed up by Harry the Piano on keyboards,[25] Simon Bates on woodwind, Jeff Lardner on drums and Dave Swift on bass.[26] The band's first tour ran from 19 September to 6 November 2013.

Until he started his band, Armstrong mainly sang at his local parish church services or at weddings, away from the public eye.[27] Armstrong impersonated Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" in the show Your Face Sounds Familiar and surprised the judges by singing in falsetto.[28] He sang "Winter Wonderland" during the celebrities Christmas special of Pointless and "No Rhyme for Richard" from Blondel in BBC Two's Tim Rice: A Life in Song[29] and collaborated with The Sixteen to record the single "Good King Wenceslas" to raise funds for the charity Crisis.[30]

Since September 2014, Armstrong has presented the Saturday afternoon programme on the classical radio station Classic FM.[31][32] He now also presents the Sunday lunchtime programme.

Armstrong participated in VE Day 70: A Party to Remember on 9 May 2015, a televised commemorative concert from Horse Guards Parade in London, where he sang "We Must All Stick Together" by Ralph Butler and Raymond Wallace, and "London Pride".[33] He sang in Songs of Praise: The Big Sing, broadcast on 20 September 2015, a special programme from the Royal Albert Hall to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II becoming the world's longest-serving monarch. Armstrong sang I Would Be True.[34]

On 6 November 2015, Armstrong brought out his debut solo vocal album, A Year of Songs, on Warner Music Group's East West Records label. It reached number 6 on the UK Albums Chart in its first week and topped the UK Classical Chart, the first time a comedian/actor has reached number 1 in that chart.[35] In January and February 2016 he carried out a 9-date UK tour with his band.[36]

In June 2016 he began recording his second album, Upon a Different Shore, scheduled for release on 28 October.[37] It reached number 8 on the UK Albums Chart.

In December 2017 he joined the long list of celebrities who have narrated Prokofiev's Peter and The Wolf for children. Armstrong's version was recorded under the Warner Classics label with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

• December 1998 – Children's Hour with Armstrong and Miller (BBC Radio 4)
• 2005–2006 – Weak at the Top (BBC Radio 4)
• July 2006 – Private Passions (BBC Radio 3)[48]

In August 2010, Armstrong was featured in an episode of BBC One's Who Do You Think You Are?, through which he discovered that he was a descendant of William the Conqueror. His father comes from a landowning family with deep connections to the North East, and is a great-grandnephew of Robert Spence Watson and distantly related to William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong.[2] With Armstrong's father's family history already well known to him, the series traced his mother's side of the family, who were descended from Irish landed gentry.

The McCauslands were originally seated in Drenagh, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland and trace their ancestry through the Rouse-Boughton family to Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester (1602/03–1667), a descendant of William the Conqueror via Edward III and the Beauforts, Dukes of Somerset.[5]

Edward Somerset's first marriage was to Elizabeth Dormer (d. 1635). Elizabeth's grandfather, Robert Dormer, 1st Baron of Wing (1551–1616), was half-brother to Jane Dormer (1538–1612), later Countess of Feria, and lady-in-waiting to Mary I.

Tracing Edward Somerset's lineage further back reveals him to have been a great-great-grandson of Henry Pole, 1st Baron Montagu – Pole himself being the eldest son of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. The Countess of Salisbury, beheaded by Henry VIII as the last of the Yorkist line,[60] was daughter to George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence and Isabel Neville. Isabel was daughter to Warwick the Kingmaker. Margaret Salisbury's father Clarence and his brothers Richard III and Edward IV were sons of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York and Cicely Neville, who pursued the Yorkist claim to the English throne in the Wars of the Roses.

Armstrong is a second cousin to Imogen Stubbs[61] and Mary Wakefield.

His wife, Hannah Snow, is the sister of Esther Walker,[62] a journalist and food blogger[63] who is married to restaurant critic and TV presenter Giles Coren. The two brothers-in-law co-presented The Twelve Drinks of Christmas[64]

In February 2011, Armstrong became President of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne and launched their million pound appeal at a special gala event.[65] He is a patron of several charities, including Family Links,[66] the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust[67] and Just A Drop.[68]

In an interview with The Independent in March 2012, Armstrong spoke of his support for the Countryside Alliance, saying "I'd like people to be honest about what they don't like about country sports, because if it's actually the people you don't like then I'd much rather they would actually just say that." He has appeared in their advertisements and magazine to promote countryside shooting. He said that his family had traditionally voted for the Liberal Democrats. Armstrong described himself as a "floating voter", stating "I'm not greatly impressed by party politics but I am by individual people. I'm a centrist, and very suspicious of any tribalism."[9]

In August 2014, Armstrong was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.[69]