Rob Grant

Grant was born in Salford on 25 September 1955. He met future collaborator Doug Naylor at Chetham's Hospital School, which he attended from the age of nine.^[1] The pair later studied Psychology at Liverpool University for two years, before both dropping out to persue a writing career, while doing shift work.^[2][3]

After providing a variety of comedy material on a freelance basis, the pair were hired to a staff writer position for BBC Radio, working on programs such as the sketch shows Cliché and Son of Cliché, the original sitcom Wrinkles, and the topical show The News Huddlines.^[3]

In 1982 the duo started to also work in television, with a job on Three of a Kind, leading to them meeting producer Paul Jackson, and contributing towards Carrott's Lib. In 1984 they began work on an original television sitcom pilot, based on a sketch from Son of Cliché, Red Dwarf. The BBC initially declined to commission the show and instead Grant and Naylor took a position as head writers on Spitting Image, joining midway through the first season. Apart from sketchwriting, Grant would, with Naylor, write the lyrics to Spitting Images's "The Chicken Song", which topped the UK singles chart for three weeks in 1986.^[3][4]

In 1986, the BBC would eventually pick up Red Dwarf, with a commission from BBC North West. A first series, after some production delays, would be broadcast in 1988, and was followed by another later that year. Grant and Naylor became producers of the show from its third series in 1989, and in a short period collaborated on two novelisations of Red Dwarf, travelled for work on an American spin-off, and worked on four more British series. They would also work together on a new sitcom set in a theatrical agency called The 10%ers.^[3]

By the time of series one of The 10%ers, Grant had broken up the writing partnership with Naylor. Grant himself later described this decision as being "basically 'musical differences'", and would also say he "didn't want Red Dwarf to the only thing on [his] tombstone".^[5][6]

Grant would create two more television comedies, being ITV's Dark Ages (1999), and Sky One's The Strangerers (2000). He would write four solo science fiction novels, starting with a Red Dwarf novel, Backwards (1996), Colony, Incompetence and Fat.

In the 2010s Grant started a new collaboration with Andrew Marshall, previously writer on 1990s British sitcom 2point4 Children. Together they would produce, direct and write The Quanderhorn Xperimentations^[2] for BBC Radio 4, along with a novelisation published by Gollancz, and then also a sketch show called The Nether Regions.^[7]

Grant also began re-engaging with Red Dwarf in the late 10s. He would appear at a Red Dwarf convention in 2018, and then with Paul Jackson and director Ed Bye provided the Quarantine Commentaries of the first three series of Red Dwarf during the 2020 coronvirus lockdown. In February, 2021, a short Red Dwarf script, Into the Gloop, which was performed live via Zoom as part of the Official Red Dwarf Fan Club's Holly Hop convention.^[8]

A legal dispute over the Red Dwarf rights was resolved in 2023.^[9], and a prequel spin-off, Red Dwarf: Titan, to be written by Grant with Marshall, would be announced soon thereafter.^[10] This would be formally announced as a novel on 19 February 2026, to be published in July 2026.^[11] Grant died suddenly less than a week later on 25 February 2026, at the age of 70. His death was announced the following day.^[12][1]