Ben Cottam

Ben Cottam is a prolific writer of radio adaptations, comedies and dramas. He is best known for the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Plum House, starring Simon Callow and Jane Horrocks, which ran for six years and was nominated for a BBC Audio Drama award, as well as his episodes of the hit podcast Wooden Overcoats. Other critically acclaimed work for audio includes multiple series of the medical drama The Latvian Locum, the original play The Receiver of Wreck and an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s The Signal-Man.

Although he is currently based in Kent, much of Ben’s work is set around, or inspired by, his native north-west of England, especially the Fylde coast where he was born and raised. This preoccupation extends to a series of documentaries he has written and presented for BBC Radio 3 such as Cave Life for Beginners and Walking the Causeways, which have featured him living in a Cumbrian mine working and navigating the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay.

Beginning his career working simultaneously as a comedy performer and in television production at the BBC, Ben soon found himself writing episodes of the Bafta- and Emmy-winning animated series The Amazing World of Gumball. He continues to develop original ideas for television and has multiple scripts optioned with independent production companies.

Ben is currently engaged in adapting one of his favourite films, Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death, into a feature-length drama for BBC Radio 4, and is working on his first book.