David Quantick (born 14 May 1961) is an English novelist, comedy writer and critic, who has worked as a journalist and screenwriter. A former staff writer for the music magazine NME, his writing credits have included On the Hour, Blue Jam, TV Burp and Veep – for the latter of these he won an Emmy in 2015.
Quantick was born in Wortley, West Riding of Yorkshire (now South Yorkshire), adopted, and moved at an early age with his family to Plymouth. Quantick went to Woodford Junior School and Plymouth College, then Exmouth Comprehensive School.
David Quantick began writing for the music publication NME in 1983, where with Steven Wells he concentrated on comedy writing until 1995. Alongside this, he also contributed material to British comedy shows such as Spitting Image. In 1992, he joined the writing team for the Radio 4 spoof news programme On the Hour, before writing for the television follow-up The Day Today in 1994. He appeared regularly on Collins and Maconie's Hit Parade (Radio 1, 1994–1997), with his Quantick's World slot and on the weekly show, The Treatment on BBC Radio Five Live, which was an hour-long satirical news round-up. In 1995, Quantick presented a pilot show called Now What? to Carlton Television but he series was not picked up for development. He wrote with Chris Morris for Brass Eye in 1996 (broadcast in 1997) and Blue Jam (Radio 1, 1997), as well as the subsequent television version Jam (Channel 4, 2000). He also provided material for Smack the Pony (Channel 4, 1999–2001), Harry Enfield's Brand Spanking New Show (Sky One, 2000) and featured on Radio 4's The 99p Challenge.
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Links to Peel[]
In Record Collector that was published on 20th March 2020, David Quantick mentioned that when he was young, he recorded John Peel's shows from the radio. [1] He also mentioned in another article on Record Collector in March 2021 that he was in a band in the 70's called, Furious Baton Charge, with sixth form friends, Graham and Ewen, whose demo album recorded on cassette was sent to John Peel:
"We even formed a bedroom band, Furious Baton Charge, and recorded an album (Tales Of The Wise Old Frog) on cassette in Graham’s bedroom which we sent to Peel (he sent it back with a kind letter saying we were the worst band he’d ever heard)." [2]
As a fan of the DJ, David Quantick wrote a book called Go West published in 2018, which featured the main character being obsessed with old John Peel shows, to the extent that he digitizes tapes of them to play in his car. This detail was based on David's experience in his youth when he would record Peel shows on the radio.