At school I didn't say a word for the first four weeks – I called it my Silent Month. I think it was because everyone was speaking so differently from how it had been in Wales. Then, after four weeks, I came home one day and said, 'Muumm, I wanna go to Sarfend!' For her that was the end because I had lost my lovely Welsh lilt. So I became very conscious of speech and the effects it can have. But when I went back to Wales I would start talking all Welsh, 'lyke that you see' before going all Alf Garnett while coming back the other way.
Paul Julian Whitehouse was born on 17 May 1958, in Stanleytown, Glamorgan, Wales. His father worked for the National Coal Board and his mother was a singer with the Welsh National Opera. The family moved to Enfield in north London, England when he was four years old, which led to his discovering his talent for mimicry:
Whitehouse attended the University of East Anglia from autumn 1976, where he made friends with Charlie Higson. The pair spent little of their first year studying, instead playing sitar and performing with their jazz fusion combo, the Right Hand Lovers, along with other university friends Duncan Beamont, Kevin Buckland and Dave Cummings.
The pair began working as tradesmen on a house shared by comedians Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball, which inspired them to start writing comedy. They moved to an estate where in a pub they met Harry Enfield, a neighbour with a stage act, and after he gained a place on Channel 4's Saturday Live, the pair were invited to write for him. Whitehouse created Enfield's character Stavros a London-based Greek kebab shop owner, and then Loadsamoney an archetypal Essex boy made good in Margaret Thatcher's 1980s; he also appeared as Enfield's sidekick Lance on Saturday Live.
In 2001 and 2002, Whitehouse wrote and performed in two series of the BBC comedy drama Happiness, in which he played a voice-over actor with a mid-life crisis.
Whitehouse and Charlie Higson produced and appeared in a spoof phone-in show Down the Line on BBC Radio 4. The first series was broadcast May–June 2006. A second series was broadcast 16 January–20 February 2007, during which they won a Sony Radio Academy Award. A third series was broadcast in January 2008, a fourth in January 2011 and a fifth in May 2013. In February 2014, Radio 4 broadcast Nurse, written by Whitehouse and David Cummings and starring Esther Coles in the title role, with Whitehouse playing a variety of characters, including Graham Downs who had previously appeared in Down the Line.
Whitehouse starred alongside Charlie Higson in the BBC2 comedy series Bellamy's People, with the first episode broadcast on 21 January 2010. The comedy evolved from the BBC Radio 4 program Down the Line. The show originally had the working title of Bellamy's Kingdom.
He also starred alongside Eddie Large and Russ Abbott in episode 4 of Horne & Corden. Comic Relief 2011 contained a new parody video of Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind) directed by MJ Delaney featuring Whitehouse and other Welsh celebrities lip-syncing to the song. It is available to download via iTunes.
Whitehouse is divorced and has three daughters – Molly, Sophie and Lauren. He lives in Islington, is a supporter of football team Tottenham Hotspur and has appeared on fellow Comedian Phil Cornwell's podcast.
In October 2014, Harry Enfield and Whitehouse returned to the characters of Frank and George in a Sketch for Channel 4's testicular cancer awareness comedy series The Feeling Nuts Comedy Night.
In August 2015, Whitehouse, alongside Enfield, in celebration of their 25-year partnership, presented An Evening With Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse.
