Mel Giedroyc

Her father, a history writer, is a Polish-Lithuanian who came to England in 1947. She is a Roman Catholic, and has Belgian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Belarusian ancestry. She attended the independent Oxford High School in Oxford. The first record she ever bought was Son Of My Father by Chicory Tip, and her favourite animal is a guinea pig, of which she had one called pongo.

She is married to Ben Morris, an ex-Downside/Ampleforth boy now a TV director, with two children: Florence (born May 2002), and Vita (born February 2004). Her sister, Coky Giedroyc, is a TV director.

Giedroyc is best known for presenting comedy items alongside Sue Perkins. As Mel and Sue, the duo were short-listed for the Daily Express Best Newcomers Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993. After a few years writing for French & Saunders, they hosted a lunchtime show on Channel 4 called Light Lunch (and the early evening version, Late Lunch).

The two met whilst students at Cambridge, while Mel was a student of Trinity College, and both were members of the famous Footlights comedy club.

Giedroyc has also been a presenter on Channel 4's RI:SE. She narrated Celebrity Driving School in 2003. Some other ventures include being a contestant on the 2005 series of The Games, co-starring in the 2005 BBC One sitcom Blessed and co-presenting Richard Hammond's 5 O'Clock Show on ITV1. She was in one episode of The Vicar of Dibley.

Mel was the sixth student to be voted out of Comic Relief does Fame Academy and was a celebrity judge on the 2007 edition of Making Your Mind Up along with John Barrowman. Mel starred as one of the presenters in the show EUROBEAT: Almost Eurovision! at the Edinburgh Fringe and subsequently in the West End at the Novello Theatre. She recently finished playing the Fairy Liquid in a production of Jack and the Beanstalk at London's Barbican theatre in December 2007. She is currently performing in a children's sketch show for the BBC, called Sorry I've Got No Head.