Robert Llewellyn

Robert Llewellyn (born 10 March 1956, in Northampton, Northamptonshire) is an English actor, comedian and writer best known as the mechanoid Kryten in the hit TV sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf and as a presenter of the TV engineering gameshow Scrapheap Challenge. He is a science and technology enthusiast, a promoter of renewable technologies and electric cars and an atheist and skeptic who frequently gives talks at science and technology events. He is also active online.

Early career

Llewellyn's first foray into the world of show business started out as a hobby, organising a few amateur cabaret evenings in a riverside warehouse overlooking Tower Bridge in London. The shows were a great success and he eventually helped form an alternative comedy theatre group called the Joeys. Within six months he had stopped working as a shoemaker and started performing professionally with the group alongside Bernie Evans, Nigel Ordish and Graham Allum. The group toured Britain and France in the early 1980s with an initial idea of exploring sexual politics between men. Llewellyn wrote much of the material, and also began writing novels. The group split in 1985, having toured for years and done thousands of shows.