Now I’ve read his Wikipedia page, I may have started to hate Richard Ayoade. I freely admit this is pure jealousy. He is not quite six months younger than I am, and he is a ridiculously busy man. Not an A-lister, not even in that insular British way where it’s quite clear that everyone there thinks he’s a much bigger deal than anyone from anywhere else, even my friend who lived in the UK for years but is American. Frankly he’s too quirky to be an A-lister, which I’m sure he finds frustrating. Even if it weren’t for the likely racism involved.

Ayoade is the son of a Norwegian mother and a Nigerian father. He studied law, but his parents didn’t like the idea of his going for a non-vocational degree, apparently. Though it’s hard to picture Ayoade as a plumber or something. We’re talking about someone who chose to dress like Holden Caulfield and was, at fifteen, already a fan of Fellini and Bergman. Ayoade is one of God’s nerds. At best, you can picture him as The Cool Teacher. There is no shame in working with your hands, but Ayoade doesn’t look like the kind of person who does anything more vocational than, well, working in IT.

I hadn’t even graduated from college yet by the time Ayoade found his true calling. He and his Cambridge buddy Matthew Holness, both of the Footlights, developed Garth Marenghi and Dean Lerner. They won awards, and then they got a Channel Four show out of it, and that was Ayoade’s career off and running. He started meeting the other names with which he’d be associated—Noel Fielding and Matt Berry and David Mitchell, for example. They’re not all Oxbridge types; Noel famously went to art school. Still, his time in the Footlights definitely furthered his career.

Ayoade’s a busy fellow. The IT Crowd. Assorted Big Fat Quizzes. Directing music videos, movies, and an acclaimed episode of Community. Doing assorted UK panel shows. Voice work. Writing books—he’s got two that are slated to come out this year. He dabbles with American projects; the American version of The IT Crowd never happened, which would have seen him in the same role, but he was in The Watch, a movie that definitely existed. Every once in a while, the kids will be watching something, and his unmistakable voice will catch my attention.

Look, I’m not thrilled that he defended the showrunner of The IT Crowd. The UK really needs to come to terms with how awful its treatment of trans people is and how bigoted they are toward them and that it’s not okay. You don’t get to be a bigot without consequences. And Ayoade knows this, because he shut down his brother-in-law, a white man of a family so prominent they have their own Wikipedia page, for claiming to have experienced racism for having worked in Kenya one time. Maybe listen to trans people the way you want your brother-in-law to listen to you.

Make me feel a little better about what I haven’t accomplished by supporting my Patreon or Ko-fi!