Tim Renkow | Writer/Performer

Tim Renkow | Writer/Performer

Coming from a family of storytellers, Tim has always used stories to communicate ideas and thoughts and was hoping to become an illustrator. It wasn’t until he placed third in a comedy competition at his university that he realised that he was possibly better at stand up than his actual degree.  

His first TV show Jerk, a dark, BBC3 comedy based on a fictionalised version of Tim, came about because his friend, writer and producer Stu Richards, applied for a job where he had to create a treatment for a show, and made Tim the subject. Stu didn’t get the job but did manage to get Jerk commissioned. Tim suddenly realised that he was going to have to act and, ever the entertainer, used his stand up skills to round out the much loved on-screen persona. It took a year of rewiring his brain from the structure of stand up, where the punchline is king, to the fundamentals of a TV series where narrative is what engages audiences, for Tim to feel comfortable as a writer.

He goes by the motto that a creative is someone who has something to say and through being honoured as a BAFTA Breakthrough, feels as though his hard work is validated and that his unconventional route into the industry has not put him at a disadvantage. As a child who used to dream in cartoons, impressed by the physicality of characters from Betty Boop and Looney Tunes, Tim still hopes to work in animation, his favourite form of storytelling.