Alternative comedy and sketch comedy, consisted of Manchester University and Royal Central School graduates Ade Edmondson, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Dawn French, and Jennifer Saunders, who began to aim their talents at television. As "The Comic Strip Presents", the group made over 40 television films for both Channel 4 and BBC. Ben Elton, who had by then become the Comedy Store's next MC, was invited by Rik Mayall to join him as co-writer of BBC2's TV hit sitcom "The Young Ones". However, it was as MC of Channel 4's new comedy show "Saturday Live" that Elton found fame in his own right.
Ben Thompson (writer) employee, and in April 2014 devoted himself to the site full-time, operating on a "freemium" subscription model. As of April 2015, Thompson had more than 2,000 paying subscribers. Thompson's success with Stratechery has drawn comparisons to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish and Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight. However, Thompson has stated his primary inspiration was John Gruber, author of the site Daring Fireball. Thompson's undergraduate education was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his graduate education at Northwestern University, where he received an MBA from the Kellogg School as well as an MEM from the McCormick School of Engineering. Ben Thompson (writer) Ben