A Brief History of Harris.

Aloha! I’m James Harris. I’m a comedy writer, performer, animator and film maker based in the North East of England.

In 2019 I won the Hachette Childrens’ Novel prize at the Northern Writers’ Awards. The book, currently titled “The Biscuit Factory”, should be published in 2021.

I’ve written/made stuff for the BBC (Shooting Stars, Comedy Shuffle, Scallywagga, Fresh Animation On 3, Spacehopper, Teethgrinder, Parsons and Naylor’s Pull Out Sections), Channel 4 (4mations), Dave (Totally Viral) and ITV (Cobravision).

Here is some of my stuff:

In 2004 my DIY comedy short The Curse of Jeff was short listed for the BBC Talent new filmmakers award and was selected to tour as part of the Independent Cinema Office’s Best of British programme 2005.

In 2006 I won BBC3 and Comedy Soup’s “Funny Hunt” with the animation The Prophecies of Nostradamus, subsequently broadcast on BBC3’s Comedy Shuffle in January 2007.

My 2007 film, Moon Shot UK, was short listed and winner of a “special mention” at DepicT! It has since been screened at film festivals world wide, plus Reading & Leeds and Glastonbury, and was included as part of the BBC and onedotzero’s New British Talent touring short film programme.

In 2013 I got shortlisted for Hat Trick/Bad Teeth’s Short and Funnies prize. with No Sex. This sketch is in no way based on a true story, by the way, and don’t even ask what a reverse bent spoon entails.

My animated webseries The Answer Yam was picked up for distribution by HypTV and apparently did quite well on mobile phones in China.

This is a film I made for the 2010 48 Hour Film Competition in Newcastle. It won best film, best director, best writing, best actress and the audience award. We got a perspex trophy.

This is Chad Banger, co-created with artist Gus Hughes. He was commissioned in 2008 to launch the now-defunct 4mations website. He has a sausage for a head. That’s Chad, not Gus. Gus has a head for a head, although it is admittedly stuffed with strange meat indeed.

I used to do a bit of stand-up comedy, and made the Edinburgh semi-finals of So You Think You’re Funny in 2009. Here’s some footage of me at The Stand in Newcastle in 2012, pretending to be somebody else.

I am the co-creator, with Gus Hughes, of The Story of Grass, an art/humour zine which Bob Mortimer likes and everybody else just sort of tolerates. You can buy it here.

I will sleep when I’m dead. On Thursday, most likely.

Basically, I am nearly successful, depending on your definitions of “nearly” and “successful”. And “am”.