Paul Kaye
Paul Kaye
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Paul Kaye

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Paul Kaye

Paul Kaye (born 15 December 1964) is an English comedian and actor. He is perhaps best known for his role as Thoros of Myr in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones (2013–17). He started as shock interviewer Dennis Pennis on The Sunday Show (1995–97). His other TV roles include Mike Strutter in the MTV series Strutter (2006–2007), Vince the fox in the BBC black comedy series Mongrels (2010–2011), Vinculus in the BBC fantasy mini-series Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015), Psychiatrist in the Netflix comedy series After Life (2019–20), Malcolm Donahue in the ITV crime drama Vera (2019–23), and Patrick Katz in the Netflix thriller mini-series The Stranger (2020).

In theatre, Kaye was nominated for the 2012 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical, for his work as Mr. Wormwood in the Royal Shakespeare Company's musical Matilda.

Kaye was born in the Clapham area of London on 15 December 1964. He and his twin sister were adopted by Jackie and Ivan Kaye and raised in Wembley, where their adoptive parents ran a sportswear shop. He is of Jewish background. He was a promising schoolboy athlete who achieved an impressive time in the 100-metre race. He later became a fan of punk rock, particularly the Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious. At the age of 16, he entered Harrow Art School on a two-year foundation course, and achieved a distinction before earning a first-class degree in Theatre Design from Nottingham Trent University (then called Trent Polytechnic).

On graduation, Kaye designed theatre posters for the King's Head, the Bush Theatre, and the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill. He was a scene painter at the Old Vic Theatre in Waterloo and illustrated regularly for the NME, i-D, Literary Review, Time Out and International Musician magazines between 1987 and 1989. He had two exhibitions of illustration and poster work between 1989 and 1990, firstly at the Soho House Theatre, and then at The Drill Hall.[citation needed]

Kaye formed and sang in many bands, including the dark psychedelic outfit We Are Pleb, who played extensively in Camden during 1988–89 (at the same time as Blur and Suede) and had a penchant for setting the stage on fire. Kaye was signed to Go Discs in 1992 with a group called TV Eye (formed with ex-members of the band Eat), which released two singles, "Killer Fly" and "Eradicator".[citation needed]

In 1993, Kaye filmed a prototype Dennis Pennis, interviewing his own band on a late-night indie music show on Granada TV called Transmission. After the interview, Kaye then went out with the crew, got very drunk and offended as many people as possible in Oxford Street. This tape somehow arrived on the desk of producers at Planet 24 six months later, and they offered Kaye the job of knocking on people's doors at 6.00am on The Big Breakfast. Kaye turned them down, preferring to stay on Jobseeker's Allowance and stick with We Are Pleb; Mark Lamarr eventually took the job.[citation needed]

Kaye was a graphic designer for Tottenham Hotspur. He had an office in White Hart Lane and designed in-house merchandise for Spurs, Derby County, Southampton and Aston Villa for Danish sportswear brand Hummel International (doing caricatures of Paul Gascoigne for school lunchboxes etc.). As an Arsenal fan, Kaye has said there are subliminal cannons contained within his work for Spurs, including a pen and ink drawing of Tottenham's new stand on a catalogue cover which features a minute cannon in the crowd: 70,000 were printed. Kaye became in-house theatre designer of the Bet Zvi Drama Academy in Tel Aviv for 12 months in 1994, designing all the in-house productions in their studio theatre.[citation needed]

His TV debut was on The Word being secretly filmed in Oliver Reed's dressing room. Kaye recalls "Reed had drunk two bottles of vodka, taken all his clothes off and I honestly thought he was going to kill me on live television. I swore in bed that I'd never do a celebrity interview again. Typically, six months later I'd come up with Dennis Pennis."[citation needed]

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