Humphrey Ker
Humphrey Ker is an actor, born 1982.
Humphrey Ker has two jobs and the second one is stranger than the first. As a comedian he came up with the sketch troupe The Penny Dreadfuls, worked solo, and became a fixture on British comedy television and BBC Radio 4, appearing regularly on Fast and Loose and Live at the Electric. As a football executive he works at Wrexham A.F.C., which he joined after his friends Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought the club, and he appears as himself in Welcome to Wrexham.
The acting runs alongside both, and it is mostly one very particular English type: plummy, faintly ridiculous, deployed by American productions that want that sound in the room. Paul in Mythic Quest and Elliot in American Auto are the same joke played two different ways, the Englishman being reasonable in a workplace that is not. He does voice work too, including a doorman and a general in the stop-motion film Missing Link.
The football job has quietly become the most visible thing he does, which is a peculiar outcome for a sketch comedian, and it means the on-camera version of him now has an enormous audience that has never seen a minute of his comedy.
Movies (3)
TV (4)
Where to start with Humphrey Ker
Go to Mythic Quest first. It is the best show he is in, Paul gives him a proper comic function rather than an accent to perform, and the series around him is one of the sharpest workplace comedies of the last decade. Then Welcome to Wrexham, which is where most people now know him from and which is genuinely good documentary television about a small club and two very rich owners.
American Auto is the closest thing to a second sitcom role, broader and faster than Mythic Quest. Missing Link is the family option, a beautifully made stop-motion film where he turns up in two small voice parts. Ibiza and Daddy Issues are for people who want the complete set rather than the highlights.