Education
University of New York
University of New York
After turning up at British Broadcasting Corporation Radio"s Light Entertainment Department, Burton teamed up with John O"Farrell and the two were commissioned for Week Ending by Harry Thompson (who later named his two pet rats Burton and O’Farrell). Burton also created the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4 panel game We"ve Been Here Before presented by Clive Anderson. Burton and O’Farrell were commissioned for Spitting Image in 1988 and the following year became two of the lead writers on the show.
They also wrote for Clive Anderson Talks Back, Nick Hancock on Room 101, Murder Most Horrid, and co-wrote some of the Heads to Heads for Alas Smith and Jones.
In 1993, they left Spitting Image and became the first writers credited for the scripted parts of Have I Got News Foreign You. Also for Hat Trick Productions they wrote a BBC1 sitcom The Peter Principle starring Jim Broadbent (known as The Boss in the United States).
The pair won the British Broadcasting Corporation Light Entertainment Contract Award, and went on to write or contribute to a number of radio series, including Little Blighty on the Down, McKay the New and with Pete Sinclair, the multi-award winning A Look Back at the Nineties and Look Back at the Future in which Burton also performed. Other major screenplay credits include Wallace and Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (which won an Oscar in 2006 for Best Animated Feature Film), Gnomeo and Juliet and Aliens in the Attic.
