James Thomas Mulville was born on the 5th of January 1955 in Wellbrow Road, Walton, Liverpool and, within earshot of Goodison, was brought up there and attended the local comprehensive Alsop High School. The only son of James, a boilermaker at Tate & Lyle, and June, a store waitress in the George Henry Lee Department store, Jimmy was always likely to develop a love of football since Everton were the team his father and uncles followed and he became an avid Everon supporter. He confounded most expectations of a working-class Scouse kid when he left his comprehensive school to read French and Classics at Jesus College, Cambridge, where in due course in 1977 he became president of the Footlights. There he began his career as an actor and writer for the Cambridge Footlights and met Rory McGrath with whom he both performed and wrote. He and McGrath wrote a revue which starred Cambridge Alumni Griff Rhys Jones and attracted the attention of the BBC following a triumphant Edinburgh show in the same year. After graduating, he went on to work for BBC Radio comedy for four years, producing shows such as 'Injury Time' (1980-82) alongside Julia Hills and Tony Robinson then 'Radio Active', before moving to television in 1984 as script editor and producer of 'Alas Smith and Jones'. 'Injury Time' attracted attention from TV executives who saw their talent for comedy and expressed an interest but Jimmy and Rory had alternative ideas and together with Jimmy’s then girlfriend Denise O’Donoghue, they created their own production company in 1986. Both avid football fans, they named the company Hat-Trick Productions and the rest is history. Having established the company, the trio quickly got to work attempting to transform 'Injury Time' from a cult Radio 4 series into the cult 80s TV sketch show 'Who Dares Wins' (1983-1988) which he co-wrote and starred in.
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| 'Who Dares Wins' |
Jimmy was one of the cast of the British comedy series 'The Steam Video Company' (1984) as well as the sitcom 'Chelmsford 123' (1988-90), a comedy set in Roman Britain, broadcast on Channel 4. Rory and Jimmy also co-wrote the radio comedy 'Glompus Van Der Hloed's Tales From The Crypt' (1981) which starred Andrew Sachs, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, which aired on Capital Radio in the early 1980s and subsequently released in an abridged version as an album. Continuing to pursue his acting career, in 1988 Jimmy was cast in the ITV sitcom 'Love Hurts' alongside Tony Slattery and Liza Goddard. Running for two series between 1988 and 1992, 'Love Hurts' centres on Jimmy’s hopeless romantic lawyer Donald who has an affair with his client Laurel, played by Liza Goddard while long time partner Patsy's (played by Diana Hardcastle) loyalties are questioned when it’s revealed that she hasn’t been up front about her sexual history. On reflection Jimmy remains adamant that there were many comedic aspects to the show and is curious as to why it sadly isn’t as fondly remembered as many shows from this era. Yet it was invaluable experience for his career as a comedy writer and executive as he had experience both in front and behind the camera.
His early marriage to a local girl Julia Kelly in 1974 had not survived his translation to Cambridge, but after a brief spell off the booze, he had wed Denise O’Donoghue in 1987, but the marriage unravelled when he started indulging again. Jimmy went to rehab in 1988 for an addiction to alcohol and cocaine, but has since been teetotal. He says, "I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous for 20 years." In an interview with Kirsty Young on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Jimmy revealed how his father’s suicide sparked his addiction to cocaine and alcohol and destroyed his marriage. Following his divorce from Denise in 1998 he married for the third time in 1999, a young widow Karen Page, but still credits O'Donoghue, who left Hat Trick in 2005, with winning contract battles with broadcasters that kept various programme rights for the company. Now a father of four, he lives with his third wife, Karen, their three sons and Paige, Karen’s daughter from her first marriage.
As a stand up comedian and performer, Jimmy played 'The Comedy Store' alongside Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson. During the mid eighties, Alternative Comedy was still on the fringes of entertainment and had still yet to enter the mainstream. Despite only playing the club just a handful of times, Jimmy was able to have first hand experience of what it was like to perform to a room full of people and recognised that the comedy landscape was changing. No longer did their generation need to be forced to consume jokes about mother-in-laws or Irishmen as here was comedy which reflected the changing times which Jimmy and his peers were living through. Indeed, by the dawn of the nineties, Alternative Comedy had established itself into the mainstream and the stars of this punk revolution in comedy were now part of the entertainment elite.Hat Trick Productions has produced such landmark British TV series as 'Father Ted', a sitcom about three exiled Roman Catholic priests, among others. The 1990s saw Jimmy earn some of his biggest successes; he produced numerous episodes of both the massively popular improv comedy series "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" which set the benchmark for all comedy panel shows hereafter and once again gave Hat-Trick a winning formula and made Hat-Trick a substantial force within the TV fraternity. When their next format was in the offering, the BBC weren’t going to make the same mistake. Based on Radio 4’s 'The News Quiz', 'Have I Got News For You' revelled in the biggest current affairs stories of the day and pushed satire to the very extreme. Beginning life on BBC2, the series generated a cult following before a promotion to BBC1 in 2000 with the comedic trio of Angus Deayton, Paul Merton and Ian Hislop. Over thirty years later, Jimmy is extremely proud of the longevity of the series, one of Hat-Trick’s greatest achievements. Jimmy has since produced numerous episodes of the critically acclaimed sitcom 'Outnumbered' (2007-14), about two overwhelmed parents and their three rowdy children, and wrote the 2006 TV special 'The Smith and Jones Sketchbook'. He also appeared in 'Underworld (1997) and 'Morons from Outer Space' (1985), 'Warren' (2019), 'That's Love' (1988), 'Just For Laughs' (1987) and 'Old Harry's Game' (1995-2012). He also had a non-comic acting role in Alan Bleasdale's 'G.B.H. (1991), playing a researcher hired by the lead character Michael Murray to trace his childhood nemesis
In 1999 Jimmy received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Creative Contribution to Television. He is a Fellow of the Royal Television Society and in 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool.
p.s. For Everton supporters, his book is a lovely nostalgic read of his passion for the football club and is highly recommended.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2024/03/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-kate.html
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