After hosting Scrapheap Challenge and interviewing guests in his car, Robert has brought Kryten back to the screen whilst also writing, hosting YouTube series, and pursuing his love-hate relationship with tech.
View / Submit“Robert added a lot of value to the occasion. He really took an interest.”
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Robert Llewellyn is perhaps best know for his portrayal of Kryten, the anxious android in Red Dwarf. Still one of BBC2’s most watched series, the space sitcom has been given a new lease of life on comedy channel Dave, the home to much-loved repeats as well as new series and feature-length specials.
After the initial BBC run of Red Dwarf Robert went on to present Channel 4’s Scrapheap Challenge. The engineering-based show featured two teams competing to build a working machine from spare parts salvaged from a scrapyard. Showcasing the best of British ingenuity it also became an unexpected cult hit.
Robert’s series Carpool started out as a podcast before making the leap to YouTube and then television. It saw Robert interviewing celebrities whilst giving them a lift in his Prius. Guests included Stephen Fry, Brian Cox, Sir Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Ross, and Robert’s Red Dwarf co-stars. Robert’s love of electirc and hybrid vehicles has also seen him create another online series reviewing and testing electric cars, bikes, planes and more.
Robert has a long string of writing credits, including Therapy and How to Avoid It, co-written with Nigel Planer, Sold Out: How I survived a year of not shopping (based on another of his YouTube series) and the News From... series of science fiction novels. A technology entrepreneur at heart, he also devised the Womanwizard app. It allows men to create a virtual wife, then experiment and learn about their relationship without putting any real world relationships at risk (a concept that he also took to the live stage).
In speeches, Robert looks at everything from his life behind the Kryten make-up to his love of gadgets and his experience as a GEO - a Gullible Executive Officer: “I spend hours each day downloading, clicking through, endlessly checking my inbox, spamming, backing up, crashing, re-booting, re-installing and re-building my firewalls. I haven’t actually written anything in years.”