Mitch Benn is an English comedian, author and musician known for his comedy rock songs performed on BBC Radio. He was, until 2016, a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s satirical programme The Now Show, and has hosted other radio shows. Benn has performed at several music festivals, and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He has also released seven studio albums. His first science fiction novel, entitled Terra, was published in July 2013 by Gollancz.
Benn has often performed on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio’s It’s Been a Bad Week (between 2000 and 2006). He is also an occasional contributor to Jammin’ on BBC Radio 2. In 2004 he created his own aptly named series, Mitch Benn’s Crimes Against Music on Radio 4, featuring Robin Ince and Alfie Joey; this has now run to three series. In 2005 he started a series for BBC7 called The Mitch Benn Music Show where he plays records of comic songs and invites musical comedians into the studio to perform. He took a small role as Pseudopodic Creature in the Quintessential Phase of Radio 4’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 2005. Until 2014, he regularly appeared on BBC Radio’s 2 Steve Wright Show as the voice of ‘Elvis’ in the “Ask Elvis” feature.
Mitch has released eight CDs to date: The Unnecessary Mitch Benn (1998), a collection of favourite live songs, recorded on a Walkman carried in his pocket at various gigs that year; Radio Face (2002), including material previously heard on Radio 2 and Radio 4; and, with the Distractions, Too Late To Cancel (2004), and Crimes Against Music (2005). The single “Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now” was released in September 2005 as a taster for the album, hitting the lower regions of the UK chart, and the video is still received heavy rotation on the Paramount Comedy Channel. The Distractions are Kirsty Newton of the band Siskin (vocals, bass and keyboard) and Ivan Sheppard (drums). Mitch provides most of the vocals and plays the guitar. As well as touring and releasing material, the band support Mitch Benn for some of his comedy programmes, such as the Mitch Benn’s Crimes Against Music.
In October 2007, a fifth album, The Official Edinburgh Bootleg 2007 (swiftly dubbed “The Brown Album” because of its mock brown paper cover art), recorded on the final night of his show at the Edinburgh Fringe, was made available exclusively to those who attended his autumn 2007 tour. In March 2008, Benn released the single “Happy Birthday War”, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, with an accompanying video.
The release of his sixth album, Sing Like an Angel, coincided with his autumn 2008 tour of the same name. The title track, featuring Rick Wakeman on piano, was released as a single on iTunes in September 2008. A video was produced to accompany the single. In October 2009, Benn released his seventh album, Where Next?. His seventh studio album, Breaking Strings, was released in March 2012. It features “I’m Proud of the BBC”, “I Love My Phone”, “The Library” and “Song for Europe”. Mitch Benn uses and endorses Line 6 guitars and amplification. His current on-stage rig consists of a Variax 700 (replacing the Variax 500 as seen on the cover of Crimes Against Music) played through a PodxtLive.
