Christopher Langham (14 April 1949 – 24 June 2026) was an English writer, actor and comedian. He was known for playing the cabinet minister Hugh Abbot in the BBC sitcom The Thick of It, and as presenter Roy Mallard in People Like Us, first on BBC Radio 4 and later on its transfer to television on BBC Two, where Mallard is almost entirely an unseen character. He is also known for his roles in the television series Not the Nine O'Clock News, Help, and Kiss Me Kate, and as the gatehouse guard in Chelmsford 123. In 2006, he won BAFTA awards for The Thick of It and Help.
On 2 August 2007, Langham was found guilty of 15 charges of downloading and possessing level 5 child pornography. Langham was jailed for 10 months, which was later reduced to six months on appeal. He was made to sign the sex offenders' register and was banned from working with children for 10 years.
Christopher Langham was born on 14 April 1949. He was the son of theatre director Michael Langham and actress Helen Burns. He was born in London and educated at St Paul's School, an independent school for boys in Barnes in west London, followed by the University of Bristol, where he studied English and drama, dropping out after suffering a nervous breakdown when his parents split up.
Langham began performing comedy and writing for Spike Milligan. At the suggestion of John Cleese, Jerry Juhl, the head writer of The Muppet Show, contacted Langham and asked if he would be interested in writing some sample segments for the show. Langham wrote three short segments—an "At The Dance" bit, a monologue for Fozzie Bear, and a backstage story for an episode. He further contributed to an episode featuring Petula Clark before he was hired a full-time member of the writing staff for the third and fourth seasons of The Muppet Show.
Langham also appeared as the "special guest star" in the 19th episode of the final season, when the scheduled guest, Richard Pryor, was unable to attend after he had incurred injuries during a freebasing binge. He was awarded a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the Carol Burnett episode, along with Juhl and David Odell. Langham next co-wrote the script for the 1981 television special The Muppets Go to the Movies. He also made a brief appearance as a police driver in The Pink Panther Strikes Again in 1976, opposite Peter Sellers.
Also in 1976 was the inception, at the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool, of the nine-hour stage play Illuminatus, which Langham co-wrote with Ken Campbell. In 1977, the production transferred to the Cottesloe Theatre, London, where he took the part of George Dorn, giving a performance which Peter Hall found "extremely impressive".
He was part of the original cast for the pilot for Not the Nine O'Clock News in 1979, written by Richard Curtis. Even after the original pilot was pulled from the schedules, Langham was retained for the first full series, billed equally with the then-unknown Mel Smith, Pamela Stephenson and Rowan Atkinson. The first series did not rate as well as hoped, however, and Langham was felt to be "too independent a spirit".
Langham went on to appear on Smith and Jones's own programme, Alas Smith and Jones, playing an ineffectual host in a spoof of the then well known live TV discussion programme After Dark. This character apparently inspired John Morton to create the character of Roy Mallard, who was later to feature in his show People Like Us; Mallard was played both on radio and (off-screen) on television by Langham. Langham also played a fly-on-the-wall documentary interviewer very similar to Roy Mallard in Happy Families in 1985.
Also in 1979, Langham played Arthur Dent in the first professional stage version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, directed by Ken Campbell and staged at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He later returned to Hitchhiker's, appearing as Prak in Above The Title Productions' Tertiary Phase radio series in 2004.
Langham appeared in the 1979 film, Monty Python's Life of Brian, as one of the Roman soldiers unable to keep a straight face in the 'Biggus Dickus' scene. He appears in the cast list as "Alfonso, Giggling Guard".
He narrated the 1984 radio series The History of Rock with Chris Langham, in which Langham gave a comedic and somewhat fictitious account of the history of rock music. On 14 November 1985, Langham appeared as the narrator/reporter in "Roxanne", episode five of the BBC situation comedy Happy Families, written by Ben Elton. In 1992, he appeared in the film Carry On Columbus.
In addition to several one-man shows, Langham's stage credits includes Les Misérables, in which he played Thénardier in 1996; Crazy for You, for which he received an Olivier nomination; The Way of the World, The Nerd and The Pirates of Penzance. He created the comic role of the assassin in Blondel (co-starring Paul Nicholas; by Tim Rice and Stephen Oliver), and appears on the original cast album.
Langham wrote the BBC One sitcom Kiss Me Kate, in which he appeared alongside Caroline Quentin and Amanda Holden. In 2002, he wrote and starred in Bradford in My Dreams, an adaptation of a short story by Lawrence Block for the BBC Three series Spine Chillers. On Radio 4, he narrated the series The Rapid Eye Movement, which starred Martin Freeman as Chester Beatty, in whose head the entire series took place. In 2003, he directed the BBC TV comedy series Posh Nosh.
In 2003 and 2005, respectively, Langham portrayed authors George Orwell and John Wyndham in the BBC docudrama George Orwell – A Life in Pictures and the BBC Four documentary John Wyndham: the Invisible Man of Science Fiction. He also appeared in the radio magazine satire The Sunday Format.
He was the narrator for the storypeople segments on the children's TV show Boohbah which aired on ITV from 2003 to 2006.
Langham starred alongside co-writer Paul Whitehouse in Help on BBC Two in 2005, where he also appeared in the Armando Iannucci comedy The Thick of It in the same year. Langham was named Best Comedy Actor in the 2005 British Comedy Awards and won the 2006 BAFTA Best Comedy Performance award for his role in The Thick of It. In November 2005, Langham wrote and starred in ITV pilot Seven Second Delay.
He was a frequent guest on The Heaven and Earth Show. He was part of the writing team for Bremner, Bird and Fortune, in which he occasionally appeared as a civil servant discussing things with Bremner's Tony Blair. Langham also appeared as a panellist on the Radio 4 show Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive.
On 29 November 2005, Langham was arrested by Kent Police in connection with Operation Ore, a British police operation into credit-card customers paying to access indecent and abusive images of children on the internet. The arrest was first reported in the press on 16 December 2005, in response to which Langham's lawyer read a statement saying he was innocent and pointing out he had not been charged. On 11 May 2006, he was charged with 15 counts of downloading indecent images of children.