Chorts 2018 Industry Judging Panel
Lucy Lumsden is the founder of Yellow Door Productions and former Head of Comedy Commissioning for BBC and Sky.
In her six years at Sky, she was at the forefront of the corporation’s investment in comedy and commissioned over 60 series including Stella, Mount Pleasant, A Young Doctor’s Notebook starring Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm, Yonderland, Spy, Little Crackers, Charlie Brooker’s A Touch of Cloth, Alan Partridge’s Mid Morning Matters, Psychobitches, Doll and Em and Hunderby. Her shows have won numerous awards including an International Emmy for Chris O’Dowd’s sitcom Moone Boy.
Prior to joining Sky she was Controller of Comedy Commissioning for BBC for 4 years, responsible for commissioning shows such as Outnumbered, Gavin and Stacey, Rev, The Thick of It, The Trip, Nighty Night, The Catherine Tate Show, Miranda, Lead Balloon, Harry & Paul and the pilot for Mrs Brown’s Boys.
Dave Cohen is the Chair of the Writers Guild of Great Britain Comedy Committee, co-star of the Sitcom Geeks podcast, award winning comedy writer and stand-up, and author of the book How to be Averagely Successful at Comedy.
In recent years he has written for Have I Got News For You and Not Going Out, and as a comic songwriter, co-created the Radio 4 hit 15 Minute Musical and writing loads of songs for the hit BBC Childrens’ Show Horrible Histories. Horrible Histories was named Best Comedy by Childrens’ BAFTAS 2010 and 2011, and Best Sketch Show two years running at the British Comedy Awards. And was nominated again at the 2014 British Comedy Awards.
Michael Orton-Toliver is the co-creator of Channel 5 Comedy Series Borderline. He and writing partner Chris Gau are currently working on a Pilot for POP TV in the US, produced by Hattrick Mercurio, and have just finished a pilot script commissioned by Comedy Central. They also created the two-part Radio 4 Comedy The Litterary Adventures of Curtis Brown. In addition to that they continue to write and perform with the London based comedy/Improv group The Free Association.
Katia Kvinge is a Scottish BAFTA Nominated actor, character comedian, and impressionist (as seen on BBC, MTV & Comedy Central). She started stand up whilst studying for a Fine Art degree at Edinburgh University and then went on to train in Acting & Clown with Gaulier (mentor to Sacha Baron Cohen) before going on to train and perform Improv at the Second City, Groundlings & UCB.
She has performed comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival between 2009-16 in student sketch shows with the Edinburgh Revue and more recently in her solo character/ stand up comedy shows ‘Karacters’, ‘140 Karakters’ and ‘Squirrel’. Featuring in Vanity Fair and Edinburgh Festivals Magazine as ‘One to watch’. In 2017 she was cast in the pilot for the UK version of SNL on BBC then later had a recall for the Saturday Night Live USA. Katia will be playing a variety of characters on a new Radio 4 series with Phill Ellis, Lolly Adefope and Johnny Vegas.
Paul Powell is the Creative Director of Black Dog Productions. He has been writing/producing comedy since 1991.
Television credits include Miranda, Zapped, Insert Name Here and Alexander Armstrong’s Big Ask. Radio credits include The Now Show, The Griff Rhys Jones Show, and It’s Your Round (starring Angus Deayton).
Paul has written for a number of large-scale live events including Miranda Hart’s ‘My, What I Call, Live Show’, the Nelson Mandela 90th Birthday Tribute and the Diamond Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace. He’s picked up a Comedy Award for Al Murray’s Happy Hour, an RTS award for Miranda, and the title of 39th greatest comedy sketch for ‘Saying Goodbye’ from Smack The Pony.
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