NIALL ASHDOWN is many different things and that usually depends upon who he is speaking to. He improvises comedy onstage with the Comedy Store Players, Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, Impropera and with Ross Noble. He’s done quite a bit of acting, too, most recently in Little Match Girl and Other Happier Tales at Shakespeare’s Globe, as well as in Kneehigh’s Tristan and Yseult in the UK and the US, The Secret Keeper, Annie Get Your Gun and Public Enemy at the Young Vic, Lifegame, The Patriotic Traitor, Never Try This At Home and Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Sometimes television companies will ask him to do things, such as Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Dark Angel, Outnumbered, Chambers and Parents. He writes stuff too: Hungarian Birdsong and Tunnel Vision for BBC Radio 4; two series of Losers for BBC Radio 4; three series of Confessions for BBC1; a weekly Robbo column BBC Sport Online website; Barking for Channel 4. Oh, and poetry and prose for BBC Radio 3’s The Verb and Nightwaves. And songs, too, often when uncalled for. He teaches improvised performance when asked, which people seem to enjoy, and his children call him Dad (and other things under their breath).