My comedy book “Go Quicker Sound Slower” about the joys of voicing and acting which was recently published by Jonathan Kydd Ltd (Squydd) and is available on Amazon has had some very good reviews! Here’s one!
I’ve finished editing my father’s second volume of his memoirs “Never Mind the Acting Just Say the Words”. It’s from 1953 to 1958 and full of anecdotes and stories from the second part of his prolific career. My aim is to make a documentary. I’ve shot a few interviews already! The book is on Amazon from 22nd March.
Here’s the first Volume, Be a Good Boy Sam
This is his bestseller about his days as a prisoner in WW2 ‘For You the War is Over’
Here’s the cover for the new one.
Here’s an F1 video I voiced for Channel 4
I’m directing a podcast for Made in Manchester productions called “The President and the Emperor”. This is a copy of Draft 20! Slowly but surely we’re getting there. It’s by the excellent Guy Smith and deals with the dropping of the Atom Bomb in WW2 on Hiroshima and how it was viewed from the perspective of both President Truman of the US and President Hiro Hito of Japan.
I was recently featured in the Chelsea FC programme v Morecambe in the FA Cup in the “We All Follow the Chelsea” Section.
My new straight Voice Over Showreel (above) Mixed by the rather fabulous Ben Aitken
My documentary voice over showreel (below)
This is my new animation/cartoon reel
This is my long CV
Actor/voice-over/musician/producer/publisher/writer/film-maker/father. Man of many hats. Was originally Tom in the classic kids’ series Pipkins with Hartley Hare. Was in a film when he was six with the line “Hello dad. Mum’s after you.” The Iron Maiden it was called. His real father Sam Kydd was playing his dad. Has been in lots of sitcoms One Foot in the Grave twice. Made a film with French legend Bertrand Tavernier called Laisser Passer. Two series of Chambers. 3 Minders. A Cat’s Eyes. A Gentle Touch. A Kavagnagh QC. Trial and Retribution. Very Big Very Soon. Comedy Wavelength. The Bill. (Twice). Doctors. Holby City. Ages ago. And done over 50 visual ads in England and abroad. Heinz, Twiglets, Mirror Bingo, Statoil, Allied Dunbar, Sunday Times, Lunn Poly (several ‘Get Away” ads) BT, Solos Crisps, NE gas, South Wales Electricity Board, Talk Talk, SAS for a year in Denmark. A series of ads for Esso in France. Magic Cookies for Holland, Insurance and cars in Milan. Rubber gloves in Hanover. They made a huge foam rubber dummy of him and hung it from the ceiling of the airport during the SAS airlines campaign in Denmark. He was the face of Citibank in Germany for a year feeding a dog in ads and posters. He was in the seminal “boy who buried the car in the sand” ‘AA’ ad. Mirror Bingo. Was in Norsemen on Netflix. He’s done thousands of voice overs. Over 20,000 in fact. Including the infamous ‘Ferrero Rocher Ambassadors Reception’ commercial, (Eccelente) He has also voiced for Allianz, Renault, Vauxhall, Fiat, Peugeot, Hitachi, Toyota, Datsun, Honda, Oral B, Barclays, Nat West, TSB, Co-Op, Lloyds, HSB, Saxa, Fox’s, Sarson’s, Tesco, Safeway, Aldi, Morrison’s, ASDA (for ten years. Part of the legendary “Asda players”) WH Smith, Kit Kat, Cadbury’s Creme eggs, Whole Nut, dairy Milk, Heinz Spaghetti, Tomato Ketchup, baked Beans, Surf, Daz, Bold, Ribena, Harpic, Branflakes, Sugar Puffs, Smarties, Twiglets, Colman’s Mustard, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Baker’s Meaty meals, Beecham’s, Lemsip, Benylin, Dove, Fuji, Sony, Canon, Wonderloaf, Castrol, John Lewis, Selfridge’s, AA, RAC, JVC, Agfa, Apple, Amstrad, Roland, McDonalds, Burger King, Puma, Slazenger, Colgate, Pepsi Cola (Lipsmakckin) Shake n Vac, Adidas, Nike, New Balance, the Guardian, The Times, The Sun, The Mirror, The Mail, the Star, the Telegraph, Lego, Fedex, Disney, Virgin, Shell, BP, Esso, Chopa Chops, animated toys, Walkers Crisps, Haribo, Oreos, McVities, Nescafe, Kleenex, Pizza Hut, e-on, British gas, Ford, Dell, Werther’s, Kellog’s Rice Krispies, Frosties, Honey Nut Loops (Loopy the Bee) Sky, Sky Cinema, Sky Travel, SkySport, Samsung, Durex, Vans, Budget cars, Air Italia, Sheba, RCA, Subway, IBM, Toblerone, Rolex, expedia, Burberry, LG, Whirlpool, Ikea, Siemens, Mastercard, Nestle, Red Bull, Bosch, Levi’s, HSBC, Carling, Carlsberg, Grolsch, Tennants, easyjet, Twinnings, Sunset and Vine Cricket, Quest Football, Prostate cancer awareness, Harrods, Boots, Milka, accenture, Lufthansa, Emirates Airways, Britvic, UPS, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Quorn, Beef, lamb, sausages, Cheese, Audi, Hand M, Budweiser, Amex, Waitrose, M&S, Weetabix, Mitsubishi, Sainsbury’s, Direct Line, Xerox, Vodaphone, Brother, Uhu, Honeywell, STP, o2, Visa, Wickes, B&Q, Timberland, Air France, Creda, BA, Jaeger, TJMax, VW, Ocean Spray, Gillette, Wilkinson Sword, Philips, Castelmain 4x, Fosters, NBC, CNN, BBC, ITV, etc etc etc etc. It’s got boring now. His record was 22 in a week. He’s done hundreds of documentaries – Unsung Heroes of the Sky two hour documentary for Nat Geo and a SharvWhale and a Titanic and is a regular on Africa’s Wildest. And did 8 series of Airport Security. He has a home studio. He regularly did the BBC Inside Story doco series. He’s done hundreds of corporates (KPMG, British Aerospace, Scania Trucks, BMW, Audi, Toyota, Hyundai, etc), and over 70 video games including Assassin’s Creed Unity and Syndicate and Fable and Demon’s Souls. He does very good trolls and “death” apparently. He was in every Harry Potter game playing Hagrid and Peeves the Ghost and portraits and Death eaters etc.. On the stage he did a season at Chichester playing Caliban in the Tempest, and K2 and The Chalk Garden) was Alex Tyle in the hugely successful Hull Truck devised play ‘Still Crazy after All These Years’ (he got the review in the FT ‘it’s worth watching this play for Jonathan Kydd’s performance alone” and naturally didn’t work for 6 months after it finished) and was a Perrier award runner up at Edinburgh. His musical ‘Hey Get a Life’ was described in the Irish Times as ‘Convulsed with Laughter from Start to Finish.’ He wrote directed and performed in the much acclaimed ‘Hev Heversham Hour’ which was at the Battersa Arts Centre. He worked for the Sky Comedy channel in vision as 20 different characters advertising what was on, and as the announcer Howard Vant for a year which he wrote as well. His short film which he wrote and starred in, ‘Ahaarrrr’ won comedy awards at 17 film festivals. His short Shakespeare’s Wart starring him and Peter Wight has been universally praised. Amidst a mass of cartoons – he was Paddington Bear in a whole 76 episodes of “Paddington”, Dennis the Menace, Hilltop Hospital – four series of that – lots of characters – he was Ray Gon in Toy Story That Time Forgot. Was over 60 different characters in two series of Mr Bean and was Big Ears and Fuse the Robot and ten others in Noddy Toyland Detective. Was five characters in David Walliams audio book Slime. Has worked regularly for Film 4, Channel 5, Discovery, Fox, Nat Geo, Quest, Dmax, Food Network, BBC Panorama, Talksport, BBC World News, Really, and Al Jazeera. Did L’Oreal on TV for 9 years. Has done much Radio 4 work including Cat’s Whisker’s (he wrote for that too) Tintin, Cabin Pressure, 4 series of The Castle, Hal Cruttenden’s Hal, 3 series of Chambers, 3 series of Dial M for Pizza, Nightcap, an Actor’s Life For Me, Charles Paris, etc. He was in the “Trial of Timothy Evans”, playing several barristers, Professor Alice Roberts’ radio series playing many historical characters including Ptolemy and the “1918” flu pandemic drama doc on Radio 4. Was in 13 eps of Jonathan Ross’s first talkshow the Last Resort playing the Elephant Man and Commissionaires and doing sundry voices. He has written 4 musicals, all performed at fringe theatres, none of them a success. He is writing a fifth and recently did a workshop of another. He has sung with various bands over the last thirty years. Including the Kondos who were on the New Faces final in 1988 and the Amazing Singing Dentists. His current comedy creation is The Rudy Vees. His recent 1939 grime video “Posh” is up on his website, jonathankydd.com along with Sweet Little Zombie Girl and other favourites like I Want to be Your Piece of Cheese. These are all original comedy songs written by him. He’s the singer as well. (he used to write for Brian Conley for whom he appeared on TV in his sketch shows and wrote 24 songs) He has shot 12 videos of the Rudies over the last few years. He does a weekly football podcast which reaches 25000 called @thechelseafancast. He also does the ‘Fanbite’ an edgy two minute analysis of every Chelsea match which sometimes achieves 70 thousand hits. He has a Tik Tok page with over 218k followers. His father was the well known actor Sam Kydd who made over 290 films and thousands of TV appearances and he has edited and published two collections of his father’s memoirs , ‘Be a Good Boy Sam’, and ‘Never Mind the Acting Just Say the Words’. He has republished his father’s successful 1973 book (sold 60 thousand) about being a prisoner of War ‘For You the War is Over’. Info is on his father’s website Samkydd.com and his publisher site squydd.co.uk. He has written a book about being a voice over called ‘Go Quicker Sound Slower’. He put 20 “locked down vids” of his band “live” on Social media during Covid.
More info on jonathankydd.com Samkydd.com and Squydd.co.uk. (his publishing company)
He’s @jonathankyddcfc on Tik Tok
And JonathanKydd on Blue Sky Insta and X