Tim FitzHigham FRSA FRGS, is an English comedian, author, artist and world record holder. The feats he has performed include paddling a paper boat down 257.5 km of the River Thames, rowing a bathtub across the English Channel, and inflating the world's largest man-inflated balloon.
Career
FitzHigham began telling funny stories in a rum shop in the West Indies while working as a pig and nutmeg farmer; this may have been the beginnings of his work as a stand-up comedian. Back in the UK in 1999, he performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with James Cary and Jonny Saunders in "Infinite Number of Monkeys – Sketch Comedy of Hypotheticals", where he was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award (now the Edinburgh Comedy Award) for best newcomer. In 2000 he established Infinite Number of Monkeys as a production company and in the same year won a Spirit of the Fringe Award. His live shows, with topics ranging from the Kama Sutra to Morris dancing, have been made Critic's Choice in various newspapers, including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, The Observer, The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, The Evening Standard, Time Out and Metro.
From around 2005 Tim and Andrew Maxwell hosted a late night comedy show at the comedy store and also Edinburgh Festival. It was described by Maxwell as a 'late night howling cult' and by Tim as a 'late night Hammer Horror Hip Hop Muppet Show'''. It was initially called Maxwell's Fullmooners then simply Fullmooners. It featured break dancers, a chanteuse and comedians such as Simon Pegg, Jimmy Carr, Dara O'Briain, Ed Byrne, Jason Bryne, Jim Jeffries. It has often been quoted as the late night show by which others have been rated. The last publicly recorded Fullmooners was to a sold out McEwan Hall in Edinburgh.
The solo shows he has performed include Don Quixote, in which he attempted to live like a medieval knight errant in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the novel Don Quixote. As a guest on BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity, he donated the novel Don Quixote to the museum. Eventually it was decided that Don Quixote would be better suited as the security guard on the museum steps where he could do less damage.
In 2011, he was nominated for the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. for his live show The Gambler The Guardian's Brian Logan wrote, "his unflappable pluck in the face of impossible (or at least ridiculous) odds seldom fails to amuse".
In 2012, he was nominated for the Malcolm Hardee Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid Award at the Edinburgh Fringe. He lost to the now millionaire Trevor Noah.
In 2013 he presented CBBC science show Super Human Challenge. In which he ran across Death Valley, pulled a Double Decker Bus and tried arrow catching. During this Tim recorded the highest measured resting tolerance to G-force.
His live show about historical Gambling became BBC Radio 4 series called Tim FitzHigham: The Gambler. The 2013 pilot episode involved a bet from 1753 and his nemesis Alex Horne. Since then, two four-part series of The Gambler have been made for BBC Radio 4 (first broadcast in 2014 and 2015), with repeats on Radio 4 Extra.
Alex Horne and Tim have a long-standing wager concerning who can live the longest of the two of them, Tim is currently winning by two years.
After drinking a pint of claret, Tim came joint-first in the initial live version of Horne brainchild Taskmaster losing to Mike Wozniak in a hastily added nod-off. Perhaps due to this Tim has never appeared in the TV version of the show. Backstage after the live show, Tim won a side bet with Horne that he would place in the top three. It has become a long running joke between Mark Watson and Tim that he is the only original member of the live show not to appear on the TV version (there are others Stu Goldsmith being one).
In 2017 the new comedy project Tim mentored for BBC Radio Norfolk began broadcasting on BBC Radio Suffolk and in November won support from the Director General Tony Hall, Baron Hall of Birkenhead Tim has been appointed to mentor a similar project for BBC Essex.
Since 2018 Tim has been involved in the project to keep the UK's oldest working theatre open and running. It is called the Guildhall of St George in King's Lynn and has a first recorded performance in 1445. He is a founding trustee of Shakespeare's Guildhall Trust (King's Lynn). As of 2022 he is the Creative Director of Guildhall of St George. In this role he delivers the redevelopment of the Guildhall to create a cultural centre with a Shakespearean theatre as its centrepiece.