Russell Kane

London-born and Essex-bred Russell Grineau never dreamed of being a comedian. A copywriter for an ad agency, he liked telling stories during meetings to make people laugh – until one day when a colleague dared him to try stand-up.  

Grineau cut his teeth at clubs in the early ’00s and even won the Laughing Horse New Act of the Year in 2004. Because his surname wasn’t the easiest to pronounce, he became Russell Kane.

He made his debut appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with The Theory Of Pretension in 2006 and came into the national spotlight as the presenter of Big Brother’s Big Mouth in 2007.

Soon more television as well as radio opportunities – like BBC Radio 2’s Out To Lunch – opened up to Kane.

He also continued to appear at the Fringe, claiming the Edinburgh Comedy Award with Smokescreens And Castles in 2010, and then going on to win the Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with the same show in 2011.

Along with being a comedian and presenter, throughout the ’10s, Kane added credits as an actor and author to his name.

His debut fiction novel The Humorist came out in 2012, and he hosted the comedy shows Britain Unzipped and Live At The Electric between 2012 and 2014 too. In 2016, Kane presented the hugely popular travel series Stupid Man, Smart Phone – where he and a guest would travel to remote locations around the world and try to survive using just their mobile phones. Plus he performed on Live At The Apollo and The Royal Variety Performance, and appeared in panel shows like Celebrity Juice and I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here Now. 

Since March 2018, Kane has been hosting the BBC Radio 4 programme Evil Genius, on which he and three panellists examine the way heroes and villains are seen in history.

Kane began touring The Fast And The Curious, a show packed full of his signature high-energy and turbo can-do attitude, throughout 2019 and rescheduled his 2020 dates into 2021 and early 2022.

The Times have called him “one of the quickest, most stimulating stand-ups in the land”, while The Guardian said he is “at the top of his game”.

During 2020, when much of the world went into lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the comedian launched his YouTube channel, which became the home of his Kaneing videos, the “sometimes topical, sometimes not rundown rants” of whatever enters his weird head. Kane also started doing funnies every week on Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch and published his second book Son Of A Silverback, a moving memoir in which he talks about growing up under the rule of an alpha male.

Kane launched the new podcast Man Baggage, on which he and his celebrity panel unpack the emotional baggage that men spend their lives avoiding, in 2021.