About Andy
Andy Riley is an Emmy-winning scriptwriter, cartoonist and children’s author from Britain.
He has created a series of best-selling cartoon books:
The Book of Bunny Suicides , Return Of The Bunny Suicides, Great Lies To Tell Small Kids, Loads More Lies To Tell Small Kids, D.I.Y. Dentistry, Selfish Pigs, Dawn of the Bunny Suicides, Wine Makes Mummy Clever and Beer Makes Daddy Strong.
His King Flashypants children’s books are aimed at 5-8 year-olds. The five books in the series are King Flashypants and the Evil Emperor, King Flashypants and the Creature from Crong, King Flashypants and the Toys of Terror, King Flashypants and the Boo-Hoo Witches and King Flashypants and the Snowball of Doom.
He drew a weekly strip cartoon for The Observer Magazine called Roasted, which is also collected in hardback edition. So far his books have sold around one and a half million copies and have been published in twenty languages, producing calendar, greetings card and poster spin-offs.
His comedy scriptwriting is done in partnership with Kevin Cecil. They won Emmys in 2015 for their work on the acclaimed HBO series Veep. They’ve won two BAFTAS, for the sitcom Black Books in 2005 and the animated special Robbie The Reindeer in 2000. They created and wrote the sitcoms Year of The Rabbit for Channel 4/IFC, The Great Outdoors and Hyperdrive for the BBC, and Slacker Cats for the ABC Family Channel. Other television writing credits include Gangsta Granny, The Boy In The Dress, Tracey Ullman’s Show, Little Britain, The Armando Iannucci Shows, Tracey Breaks The News, The Friday Night Armistice, Come Fly With Me, Trigger Happy TV, So Graham Norton, Smack The Pony, The Armstrong and Miller Show, Bob and Margaret, Spitting Image, Harry and Paul, Alexei Sayle’s Merry Go Round, Big Bad World, Man Stroke Woman, Walliams and Friend and Big Train. Their Radio 4 panel game, The 99p Challenge, won a Sony silver award.
As well as writing comedy, they are experienced writers of feature-length animation: their credits include Gnomeo and Juliet (2011) Ron’s Gone Wrong (2021)and The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists (released 2012). They did an uncredited rewrite of Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride.
Andy is an experienced public speaker, and often appears at book festivals and schools to talk about King Flashypants and draw cartoons live. He occasionally appears on podcasts such as Iszi Lawrence’s Z List Dead List.
Andy is originally from Aylesbury but now lives in London. He used to be the stage dancer for The Pod, Julian Barratt’s comedy techno band which was the forerunner of The Mighty Boosh.
Despite rival claims on the internet, Andy Riley is the true originator of the tradition of cross-dressing at the Towersey folk festival.