Natalie Haynes

Natalie Louise Haynes (born 1974 in Birmingham) is an English writer and broadcaster and a former comedian. She attended King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham then read Classics at Christ's College, Cambridge, and was also a member of Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club. She was made a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association in April 2010.

Haynes has been a panellist on Wordaholics, We've Been Here Before, Banter, Quote... Unquote, Personality Test, and Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive on BBC Radio 4. She has contributed to BBC 7 comedy review show Serious About Comedy and reviews films for Front Row.

Her stand-up featured on Front Row and Loose Ends on BBC Radio 4, and on BBC 7's Spanking New. She has also appeared in the BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Fringe in 2004 and 2005. She has also appeared on Radio Five Live's Anita Anand Show, and MacAulay and Co. on BBC Scotland.

In 2005 and 2006 Haynes wrote and presented documentaries on comic writers, for BBC Radio 4; modern female writers including Jessica Mitford and Dorothy Parker, and Aristophanes, Juvenal and Martial.

She appears as a critic on Saturday Review on BBC Radio 4.

On 4 February 2013 she was the feature of the BBC Radio 4 programme With Great Pleasure. Her guests included novellist Julian Barnes, who read from one of his own books.

Haynes was a regular panellist on BBC's The Review Show and was the most-booked guest on More4's The Last Word. She appeared as a panellist on BBC 4's The Book Quiz, and on their Poetry Special alongside Andrew Motion and George Szirtes. She also appeared on Backlash, a BBC2 documentary on voluntary childlessness, wrote and performed in the STV/Assembly Television Best of the Fest in August 2005. Haynes has been a panellist on BBC Four's quiz show Mindgames, featured on Must Try Harder on BBC Two in 2006 and was the art and literature expert on the BBC Two quiz show Knowitalls.

In August 2007, she appeared on BBC Four's The Book Quiz hosted by David Baddiel. On the programme she admitted researching a book on Wikipedia in order to bluff having read it.

In April 2008 Haynes was a member of stand-up comedians team on University Challenge: The Professionals. Her team lost to the Ministry of Justice by 100 points to 215. In November 2009 she appeared on BBC One's Question Time.

Haynes has been a Guest Contributor for The Times since October 2006, and a regular contributor to New Humanist. She has also written for The Sunday Times Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph, The Big Issue, Loaded, and The Independent.

Haynes has toured from Dublin and Berlin to Manhattan – and has performed five Edinburgh Fringe sell-out runs and national tours

• 2002 Six Degrees of Desolation (nominated for Perrier Award Best Newcomer)
• 2003 Troubled Enough
• 2004 Still Not Sorry
• 2005 Run Or Die
• 2006 Watching the Detectives

Haynes is the only comedian to have appeared at every Newbury Comedy Festival.

Haynes has written a non-fiction book, The Ancient Guide To Modern Life, on the subject of how living well in the present requires some recourse to the ancient world. It was published by Profile Books in November 2010.

Her first children's novel, The Great Escape, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2007. It won a PETA Proggy award, for best animal-friendly children's book, in 2008.

Haynes' debut novel Amber Fury (titled The Furies in the U. S.) was released in 2014.

Haynes' contributed an essay to Serenity Found, a book about Joss Whedon's television show Firefly, edited by Jane Espenson, which was published in 2007 by BenBella Books. Her entries on subjects from Agatha Christie to E.F. Benson can be found in Cassell's Little Black Book of Books, published in 2007.