Ben Willbond's stock in trade is the man in charge whom nobody obeys, played straight-backed and slightly hurt. In Ghosts he turned it into the most quietly affecting figure in a nine-strong cast, and he co-wrote the house around him.
Fi1m perspective
Ben Willbond stands very straight. That is the joke, and he has been refining it for the best part of fifteen years: chest out, chin up, the voice pitched for a parade ground, and behind it a man who has just realised nobody is listening. In Ghosts (2019) he is the Captain, a Second World War officer still in battledress that has not creased in eighty years, briefing a household of the dead who would rather be doing something else. He plays it without a wink. The Captain does not know he is funny, and Willbond never tells him.
He came up in the late 1990s as half of the comedy duo Ben & Arn and in solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, then in sketch and radio work. The turn came with Horrible Histories (2009–2013), where he was one of the principal performers, playing Henry VIII and Alexander the Great among others. The cast he met there, Laurence Rickard, Mathew Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas and Jim Howick, has been his working life since. Together they made Yonderland (2013–2016), a family fantasy that stretched their sketch style into a story with puppets in it, and Bill (2015), a film about the young Shakespeare that he co-wrote with Rickard. Then Ghosts, which he co-created, co-wrote and played in for five series.
What works is that he writes for the people he acts with, himself included. Our review of Ghosts said the show was far better built than its silliness suggested, and the Captain is the clearest case: Lucy Williams's uniform tells you who he is before he opens his mouth, and the script then spends five series slowly letting the air out of him. Willbond has said the Captain owes a good deal to Basil Fawlty, 'a frustrated authority figure who has no authority', and a good deal to his own military upbringing. Both show. We laughed at the Captain from the first episode; we did not expect, a series or two in, to feel a little sorry for him, and that is down to how still Willbond keeps his face while the others carry on around him.
He has rarely worked outside the collective, and it shows in the parts: the stuffed shirt, the bore, the officer, the king, each of them a variation on the same upright man. The only reservation anyone raises is that the six of them make each other laugh too easily and it occasionally shows on screen. That is not much of a charge. He is next working with Rickard on an animated comedy. If it gives him a character who is obeyed for once, we would be curious to see what he does with the quiet.
Biography
Ben Willbond is an English actor and screenwriter. Born on 18 January 1973 in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, he studied at St Catherine's College, Oxford. He began performing in comedy, including as part of the duo 'Ben & Arn', which won the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer in 1999, and appeared in solo shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
He is best known for his work with the Them There collective on the children's sketch show Horrible Histories (2009–2013), the fantasy comedy Yonderland (2013–2016), which he co-created, co-wrote and starred in, and the sitcom Ghosts (2019–), in which he plays The Captain. Other television credits include recurring roles in The Thick of It and Rev.
Willbond has appeared in films including Bill (2015), which he co-wrote, Bridget Jones's Baby (2016) and St Trinian's (2007). He played Jeremy in the 2014 episode 'Sardines' of the anthology series Inside No. 9.
