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Dean Earle Wilkinson (born 18 April 1967) is an English comedy writer. He wrote the multi-award-winning SMTV Live and Chums for Ant & Dec, and scripted the Sony console game series LittleBigPlanet.

Early life

Dean Earle Wilkinson was born in Guisborough.

Writing career

Wilkinson began writing in 1989 for adult and children’s comics including Smut and Zit. He was appointed editor of the anarchic children’s comic Acne before releasing his own titled Fizog. His first TV scripts were performed by Charlie Chuck (Uncle Peter from The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer) on The James Whale Show.

Other breaks came on The Brian Conley Show, Six Pairs Of Pants and We Know Where you Live.

In 1997 Wilkinson provided many sketches for the penultimate series of Alas Smith & Jones. Greater success came when Chris Pilkington, then of Children’s BBC, paired him with the Geordie pop duo P.J. & Duncan, later more widely known as Ant and Dec, with whom he worked for 7 years.

Wilkinson wrote The Ant & Dec Show, Ant & Dec Unzipped and several TV specials for the duo. The biggest success was the Saturday morning show SMTV Live which featured the sitcom Chums.

Wilkinson quit the show not long after Ant and Dec left to work for the BBC. Whilst working for the BBC he wrote 2 series of his sitcom Bad Penny starring John Shuttleworth actor Graham Fellows, and two series of his sketch show Stupid!, starring Marcus Bridgstock and Phil Cornwell. Wilkinson co-created and co-wrote the radio 4 show John Shuttleworth’s Open Mind. In 2006 the BBC commissioned to write his radio sketch show I'm an Alien Beam Me Off Here starring Blake's 7 star Paul Darrow.

Wilkinson co-wrote Harry Hill's Shark Infested Custard with Harry Hill in 2005.

Other TV work has seen him writing for BBC pre-school channel CBeebies's forthcoming Teacup Travels and Doodle Do as well as Casper’s Scare School, Aardman’s Planet Sketch, links for Noel Edmonds on Are You Smarter than a 10 Year Old? and all 26 episodes of the Malaysian action comedy animation series Jinggo, produced by Backbone Entertainment.

Console Games

Wilkinson has had much success writing for games and is the writer on all Sony’s LittleBigPlanet titles. He has also written for two of Team 17’s Worms games, Worms Revolution which featured the voice of Matt Berry as Don Keystone and Worms Clan Wars with the voice of Katherine Parkinson as Tara Pinkle; both Berry and Parkinson can be seen in TV's The IT Crowd. Other games such as Driver: San Francisco, Trivial Pursuit, Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Disney’s Fantasia: Music Evolved are also brought to life thanks to Dean's dialogue.

For LittleBigPlanet 3, Dean Wilkinson returned as one of the writers, providing witticisms and puns for Stephen Fry. He also wrote the new villain’s dialogue, voiced by Hugh Laurie. In addition, Dean worked on general dialogue, quests, character names and bios, Popit puzzles, and general consistency in the LittleBigPlanet tone.

Dean Wilkinson also wrote for and worked with Monty Python star John Cleese on the Sony brain training game Smart As.

Books

In 2003 Scholastic published his first two novels, The Legend of Arthur King and Arthur King and the Curious Case of the Time Train.

For Penguin he has written the Plants Versus Zombies puzzle book and The Beano’s Prankipedia.

He also wrote the SMTV Live annual and has self-published Sarkylocks & The Three Bears and The Greenies.

For adults he has published The Tees Bally Fibber, the best of the spoof newspaper website he used to write and performed stories from on Teesside’s TFM Radio, and the darkly humoured Disturbing Bedtime Tales For Very Bad People.

For Apex Publishing he wrote The Classic Children’s Television Quiz Book, a thousand questions on classic children’s TV.

MX Publishing publish his supernatural kid's comedy book series Sheerluck Versus The Paranormal.

Wilkinson writes more grown up comedy books, such as Swearlot Holmes, under the name Earle Wilkinson.

Board Games

Wilkinson has designed the upcoming board game The Madcap League, based on his own comedy intellectual property and a Sherlock Holmes Monopoly game, commissioned by the Sherlock Holmes Museum, Baker Street, London.

Personal life

Dean lives with his long term girlfriend Joanne Kitching. He has 3 daughters to a previous marriage; Emily Wilkinson, Alice Wilkinson and Grace Wilkinson.

References

1. "Ant and Dec's SMTV Live scriptwriter, Dean Wilkinson, helps celebrate library birthday". The Northern Echo.
2. "LittleBigPlanet (2008) PlayStation 3 credits - MobyGames". MobyGames.
3. "Interview: Dean Wilkinson Scriptwriter on LittleBigPlanet & Driver: San Francisco". 4 February 2011. Archived from the original on 4 February 2011.
4. "A Day in the Life of a Videogame Scriptwriter [Feature]". 31 August 2012.
5. "They're back: Fry, Laurie, Wilkinson Nov 2014". Sidelines. Archived from the original on 2014-12-05. Retrieved 2015-10-02.
6. Turbill, Marie (18 August 2012). "Ingelby Barwick writer's delight at working with John Cleese".
7. Wilkinson, Dean (15 August 2003). The Legend of Arthur King. Scholastic. ASIN 0439978351.
8. Wilkinson, Dean (14 November 2003). Arthur King and the Curious Case of the Time Train. Scholastic. ASIN 043997836X.
9. Wilkinson, Dean; Donnelly, Dec; McPartlin, Ant (17 July 2011). The Classic Children's Television Quiz Book. Apex Publishing Ltd – via Amazon.
10. "Home | Sheerluckpi". Archived from the original on 2020-10-22. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
11. "About Us". Archived from the original on 2014-07-12.

External links

• Official website
• "Sheerluck PI". Archived from the original on 2020-10-22.

• 1967 births
• Living people
• Video game writers