Andy Secombe

Andy Secombe is an award-nominated stage, screen and radio actor. He trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama after which he spent several years criss-crossing the country both touring and in rep. His early career included seasons at both the Old Vic (King Lear, The Rivals) and the Young Vic (Hamlet, Stags and Hens, Coriolanus and What a Way to Run a Revolution). Other Theatre includes Godspell, Guys and Dolls, Around the World in Eighty Days, Long Days' Journey into Night, Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Live! tour and The Invisible Man in the West End. He was recently Offie-nominated for playing Mr Gillie in the play of the same name at the Finborough Theatre.

On television he was a regular on both Playschool and Playaway and also appeared in the BBC TV children's sketch show Fast Forward and played Rover the Dog in Chips' Comic. He was one of the five in Five Alive and a regular on The Brian Conley Show. Other television appearances include Star Cops, Amnesty Beausire, Executive Stress, The Legend of Robin Hood, The Bill, Casualty, The Detectives, Unreported Incident, Britannia and Killing Eve.

In feature films, he is best known for providing the voice of Watto in the Star Wars prequels. He also voiced another Toydarian in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.

Andy has published five novels: Limbo, Limbo II, The Last House in the Galaxy Endgame and Looking for Mr Piggy-Wig and a memoir about growing up in the shadow of his famous father: Growing up with the Goons.

He has contributed vocals to a number of games, including Nelly Cootalot, the Fowl Fleet and Star Wars Lego. For Penguin Audiobooks, he has recorded four novels by Mexican author Oscar de Muriel: The Strings of Murder, A Fever of the Blood A Mask of Shadows and Loch of the Dead. He also regularly reads books for the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and is a well-known voice on the radio, recently playing Reverend Wavering in the internet radio series Wooden Overcoats.

In March 2017, he starred in four episodes of the third series of The Missing Hancocks for BBC Radio 4; episodes that were originally aired in 1955 in the second series of Hancock's Half Hour starring his father Harry, after Tony Hancock had disappeared.[2][3]

In the 2000s, Secombe focused on writing. He has penned five fantasy novels, including Limbo, Limbo Two: The Final Chapter and The Last House in the Galaxy. Looking for Mr Piggy-Wig (2008), about a post-nuclear Britain after the 'New Battle of Britain' is described by The Guardian as "best taken as a spoof on the genre".[4] Endgame (2009) was criticised by Publishers Weekly for its "two-dimensional, clichéd characters and the tiresomely predictable story line".[5]

He published the book Growing Up with the Goons in 2010.