Sean Lock, who has died of cancer aged 58, was a bespectacled, besuited and well-groomed standup comedian who projected a constant air of puzzlement as he imparted his deadpan observational humour. His style was best summed up by his own assessment: “When it comes down to it, comedy is rehearsed moaning.”
He was adept at blending wordplay with slapstick and the occasional touch of the absurd, covering subjects from salad cream, 1970s furniture and messy family cars to the origins of cake decoration, golf on the radio and forgetting to take a “bag for life” to do the supermarket shop.
“What’s remarkable about Lock is how he burnishes the dross of observational platitude into gold,” Brian Logan wrote in a Guardian review of the comedian’s 2010 Lockipedia tour.
Alongside his standup act, television panel shows kept him in front of a big audience for two decades. He will be best remembered as a team captain for the first 18 series (2005 to 2015) of the Channel 4 show 8 Out of 10 Cats, which gets comedy out of opinion poll results, and he quickly emerged as its biggest star.
In 2012, to mark Channel 4’s 30th anniversary, Lock, along with the presenter, Jimmy Carr, and fellow team captain, Jon Richardson, switched to the studio of Countdown – which had been running for all that time – to broadcast their version of that show. The one-off special was so popular that it became a series, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, and Lock continued in it after leaving the original programme.
Sean was born in Chertsey, Surrey, to Mary (nee McCreesh) and Sidney Lock, who worked in the building trade, and was brought up in Woking. On leaving St John the Baptist school he took jobs as a builder’s labourer, a Department of Health and Social Security office worker, a toilet cleaner and a goat herder in France. He attributed a skin cancer diagnosis in 1990 to his work outside on building sites in the full glare of the sun, but made a full recovery after surgery.
Lock used his powers of observation gained from such a wide life experience to develop a stand-up act. “I used to go to comedy gigs and see people in pubs in London, then I started doing open spots and it was a hobby for many years,” he explained.
“One day I got my first gig and I got paid £15 for 20 minutes, and that’s when I realised you could earn a living from it.”
His big break came when he landed a regular guest spot in the 1993 TV sketch show Newman and Baddiel in Pieces. This led him to support Rob Newman and David Baddiel on a tour that year culminating at Wembley arena, when the venue was sold out for the first time for a comedy show.
Guest appearances followed on other programmes and, in 1998, his writing skills were recognised when he became script editor for a fellow comedian in the television series Is It Bill Bailey?
His own persona was given a boost when he wrote and starred in the BBC Radio 4 comedy Sean Lock’s 15 Minutes of Misery (1998-99). Lock played his fictional self in a London tower block listening in on the lives of his neighbours via a device called the “Bugger King”.
The programme evolved into Sean Lock: 15 Storeys High, which ran for two series (1999-2000), introducing Peter Serafinowicz as the miserable recluse’s ever-optimistic, considerate flatmate, Errol. Various oddball fellow residents and tradespeople fleshed out the comedy, while the listening device was dispensed with.
When the high-rise sitcom moved to television as simply 15 Storeys High (2002-04), Lock’s character was named Vince Clark and Errol was played by Benedict Wong. The screen version began with Vince selling the flat’s only sofa – and insisting the buyer collects it as soon as it is paid for. “You can’t just dump your furniture in the middle of my flat,” he says.
After establishing himself on panel shows, Lock presented and produced TV Heaven Telly Hell (2006-07), with a different guest – mostly comedians – each week telling him about their screen likes and dislikes. In line with his own lateral way of thinking, he also asked them to reconstruct a moment in TV history the way they wanted it to have happened.
He won a British Comedy Award as best live standup in 2000, the year his Edinburgh comedy festival show No Flatley, I Am the Lord of the Dance was nominated for a Perrier comedy award. His stage tours included Sean Lock Live (2008), Lockipedia (2010), Purple Van Man (2013) and Keeping It Light (2017).
Lock is survived by his wife, Anoushka Giltsoff, and their son and two daughters.
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