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Paul Whitehouse (born 17 May 1958) is a Welsh actor, writer and comedian. He became known for his work with Harry Enfield and as one of the stars of the popular BBC sketch show, The Fast Show. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian`s Comedian, he was in the top 50 comedy acts voted for by comedians and comedy insiders.

Whitehouse was born in Stanleytown in the Rhondda Valley, Glamorgan, Wales.His father worked for the National Coal Board and his mother was a singer with the Welsh National Opera. The family moved to Essex, England when he was four years old, which led to him discovering his talent for mimicry:

"At school I didn’t say a word for the first four weeks - I called it my Silent Month. I think it was because everyone was speaking so differently from how it had been in Wales. Then, after four weeks, I came home one day and said, ‘Muumm, I wanna go to Sarfend!’ For her that was the end because I had lost my lovely Welsh lilt. So I became very conscious of speech and the effects it can have. But when I went back to Wales I would start talking all Welsh, ‘lyke that you see’ before going all Alf Garnett while coming back the other way.”

Whitehouse attended the University of East Anglia in Norwich from Autumn 1977, where he made friends with Charlie Higson. The pair spent little of their first year studying, instead playing guitar and performing with their punk rock combo, the Right Handed Lovers.

Whitehouse dropped out and lived with other drop-outs in a council flat in Hackney, East London and occasionally worked as a plasterer. After Higson graduated in 1980, he moved in with Whitehouse, working by day as a decorator and performing at night and the weekends with his new punk-funk group The Higsons.

The pair began working as tradesmen on a house shared by comedians Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, which inspired them to start writing comedy. They moved to an estate where in a pub they met Harry Enfield, a neighbour with a stage act, and after he gained a place on Channel 4`s Saturday Live, the pair were invited to write for him. Whitehouse created Enfield`s character Stavros a London-based Greek kebab shop owner, and then Loadsamoney an archetypal Essex boy made good in Margaret Thatcher`s 1980s; he also appeared as Enfield`s sidekick Lance on Saturday Live.

This success turned Whitehouse and Higson`s career, and they started writing for Vic Reeves` Big Night Out and extensively for the BBC, firstly for A Bit of Fry and Laurie and The Paul Merton Show, then as performer on shows such as Harry Enfield`s Television Programme, where he developed numerous characters including DJ Mike Smash of Smashie and Nicey alongside Harry Enfield as Nicey.

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