THE 11 O'CLOCK SHOW

Jon was originally meant to appear on The 11 O'Clock Show's fifth series once a week doing his band listings - a gig guide consisting of made up bands playing at made up venues, which was basically an excuse for a stream of childish swearing. He would also be writing for the show.

He did just this for the pilot show of series five, which was made two weeks prior to the new series,  going out on air at the end of 2000. But the week before the new series was to start, the male presenter, Iain Lee, left the building. This left the show with a female presenter, Sarah Alexander, on her own.

Several people were up for the job, most of which were already involved in the show in some capacity. 'Posh Boy' Will Smith was in contention, as was the now substantially richer and more famous Jimmy Carr.  But at the end of the day, the telly-unknown Mr Jon Holmes was handed the job. 

The show was slightly critically better received than previous series had been - probably because the new production team, with Peep Show's Phil Clarke at the helm, had tried to up the satirical elements and reduce the out and out nob gaggery of the previous seasons.

The series ran for 9 weeks with nightly as live broadcasts five nights a week - up to Christmas 2000 when the 11 O'Clock show was finally killed forever. Several of the shows stars - notably Sasha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais - have since gone on to massive worldwide success. Meanwhile Jon is approximately the 12th best known person ever to have come out of the 11O'Clock show. 

GASH

Armando Iannucci's daily topical satire show, broadcast to coincide with the week of the 2003 local elections. Jon co-wrote the four shows, and appeared on a couple of them discussing the day's events. Went out as live and featured discussion, pre filmed items, messing around with video footage, (eg Vernon Kaye's risible CH4 offering 'Girls and Boys' as seen through the videophone of a war reporter in Iraq)  and for the first (and last) time the TV debut of a topical balloon modeller. ("Here's a suicide bomber, using two long ones and a roundy one.")

Gash wasn't recommissioned by C4 executives  who decided it "didn't make the right noise for Channel 4." This led to Armando pointing out that, in fact, the right "noise" for Channel 4 is that of Vernon Kaye having his testicles attached to Harrier jump-jets that then take of in opposite directions.

V GRAHAM NORTON

Jon was 'programme consultant' (read 'writer') of this multi award winning 5 series success. Mostly Jon would spend most days sitting around with Graham and a couple of other writers trying to think of new and original ways to show a dildo to Westlife.

The run ended when Graham left to present glittery spin-off reality shows about dancing on BBC1. Jon didn't follow.

HARRY HILL

Back in, oh about 1999, Jon (with Andy Hurst) co-wrote bits of Harry Hill's first TV series for Channel 4. They  had previously worked with Harry on Radio 4's Fruit Corner and, when it transferred to TV, Harry took Jon and Andy along. They mostly had a hand in the musical items writing such memorable* songs such as Burt Kwouk's one about hens and Harry's performance of 'Ted Heath - The Musical'.

*unmemorable