Regency cad is the subject of BBC Radio 4 sitcom ‘The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brighty’

Comedian and TikTok sensation Christian Brighty has enjoyed success with his BBC Radio 4 sitcom The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brighty (written by Christian and his fiancée Amy Greaves) – a far cry from his comedy beginnings as a secondary school pupil at St Bede’s in Cambridge.

The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brighty stars Christian alongside Jessica Knappett and Perse-educated Colin McFarlane – whose numerous film and television credits include Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Fast Show, and Peppa Pig.

Hailing from Molesworth, Christian was a student at Hills Road Sixth Form College (which involved a rather long commute), after he had finished at St Bede’s.

Lord Christian Brighty is based on a character he previously took to the Edinburgh Fringe.

His Lordship has been described as “the country’s most notorious rake” and that he “puts the bi in Byron, the don in hedonism, and the key in chastity belts”.

“I started watching lots of period dramas during lockdown,” explains Christian, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from London, “and I did some [TikTok] videos based on those sort of archetypes and tropes.

“I was having loads of fun with it and it was going viral, and then having found that way of having fun on stage, I was like ‘Oh, I should do a live show’.”

Christian, 30, studied clowning for two years at Ecole Philippe Gaulier in France, a well-known theatre school formerly run by French master clown, Philippe Gaulier, who also taught the likes of Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen, who called him the funniest man he’s ever met.

“The show was originally just very playful, which is why it’s called Lord Christian Brighty,” notes Christian, “so it was me wearing a costume and being silly.

“And then over time, he has become more of a character. In the live show that we did, he was like the modern archetype of a terrible bastard who uses women and then throws them away – it’s the cad.

“Basically I was watching friends of mine being treated by men terribly and commiserating them about these awful men and then, watching this, I’m going ‘This is the same character, this is the same person, they’re dating this bastard’, and so it was like ‘Well let’s put him on stage’.

“And at the end of that, we killed him off, we shot him, and then turned him into a radio show.

“It was a case of ‘Right, well if you’ve got a terrible man and you can’t just shoot him, what do you do? How do you make it so that it’s actually tolerable to watch?’

“So the show is very much built around him trying to make up for all the bad things that he’s done in the past.”

Inverting the familiar worlds of BBC period dramas, Jane Austen, Poldark and Bridgerton, The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brighty follows Lord Brighty as he attempts to make up for all his misdemeanours, accompanied by his radical chambermaid Babs (Jessica Knappett) and very reluctant butler Churlington (Colin McFarlane).

The first live, on-stage appearance of Lord Christian Brighty was in a show called Playboy, which Christian took to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2021.

“I was making it sort of at the same time as these videos going viral,” he recalls, “so it was very much the same voice and some of the same costumes but just done in a different way.

“The full run for that was the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022, and we were one of the best-reviewed shows at the Fringe that year.

“We got to do a Soho Theatre run with it, we did a national tour in 2023 – and actually doing the tour was really fun because it meant that we could add an extra half hour to the show.

“I feel very lucky, in that it’s an unusual thing where I made a character and then I had lots of excuses to come back and enrich that character.”

Four 30-minute episodes of The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brighty are available now to listen to on BBC Sounds.

Christian is hopeful for a second series, and possibly a television series and/or another live show.

“I know that BBC Radio 4 are doing great work commissioning new writing and new comedians,” he says, “a whole tranche of stuff.

“There’s one show especially – Time of the Week, which is by two comedians, Lorna Rose Treen and Jon Oldfield.

“They’re just bringing in this wonderful set of writers. I think that a large part of that is wanting to return to the time when Radio 4 shows were sort of the testing ground for stuff which then might translate to TV, kind of going down the old tradition of The Mighty Boosh and The League of Gentlemen…

“Most of the BBC’s flagship comedy shows started on Radio 4, and there’s a specific pitching branch which they’re doing at the moment to try to bring that back in and transfer stuff.

“I mean it’s still a chance in a million [that The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brighty will be made into a TV series] and there’s so few spaces to get things commissioned, but there’s very few things being made at the moment so I feel preposterously lucky to have been able to actually get to make anything.

“I’m very grateful to Radio 4 for giving us this chance, and I definitely would love to do a second series.”

Looking back on his time in Cambridge, Christian mentions his “very encouraging” drama teacher at St Bede’s, Adrian Watts, as well as the “fantastic” teacher Richard Fredman, who is now head of drama at Hills Road.

He adds that Hills Road has “probably one of the best theatre departments in a state school anywhere in the UK”.

“And instead I was doing English literature, economics, history and French,” says Christian. This was despite him having done comedy while at secondary school, as previously mentioned.

“I wasn’t doing anything in the theatre there, so I’m sad that I didn’t get a chance to start acting earlier on,” reflects Christian, who now auditions for short films and TV roles.

“I went and did a law degree for five years before I left that and started doing comedy full time, I guess.”

Christian says he also did “a lot of stuff at the Cambridge Junction” while at St Bede’s and Hills Road, including setting up The Fiver: Unplugged live music nights with some friends.

“I think The Fiver still runs,” he says, “but The Fiver: Unplugged was an acoustic version of it. So I’ve got a lot of love for that space – they’re a fantastic venue.”

Joining Christian, Jessica and Colin in the cast of The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brighty are Chiara Goldsmith, Katia Kvinge, Joz Norris, Nimisha Odedra and David Reed – who also worked as script editor for the series.

Christian and Amy’s viral sketches (@brightybuoy) have catapulted them to viral stardom, amassing 580,000-plus followers and more than 100 million views across TikTok and Instagram.

Listen to The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brighty on BBC Sounds.