Thick Of It star disgraced by child porn conviction

Chris Langham, the star of The Thick Of It whose career ended when he was arrested for downloading child pornography, has died at the age of 77.

He died on June 24 - but the news has has only been revealed today via obituaries in The Times and The Telegraph.

The comedian began his career writing comedy for Spike Milligan in the 1970s and went on to become the sole British writer on Jim Henson's The Muppet Show and made an unscheduled appearance on screen when Richard Pryor didn’t make it to the recording.

In 1979, he became a leading member of the Not The Nine O'Clock News team, but he was unceremoniously dropped after the first series, to be replaced by Griff Rhys-Jones. 

He said the sacking left him distraught, and that he would ‘burst into tears’ if he saw co-stars Rowan Atkinson, Pamela Stephenson or Mel Smith in the newspapers up to two years later. At the time, he also suffered drink and drug addictions, although he later overcame these problems admitting: ‘I stopped drinking and taking drugs because they were taking over my life.

Other early credits included playing Arthur Dent in the first professional theatrical version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in 1979;  roles in Alas Smith and Jones, Ben Elton’s sitcom Happy Families and Chelmsford 123 –plus a brief appearance as a centurion in Monty Python’s  Life of Brian.

However he was largely absent from TV screens for much of the Nineties, until the 1998 BBC One sitcom Kiss Me Kate, which he wrote and starred in alongside Caroline Quentin and Amanda Holden.

His stock rose further with the acclaimed People Like Us, a spoof in which he played the hapless documentary-maker Roy Mallard, with typical understatement. Beginning  life on Radio 4 before transferring to BBC Two, it  was created by John Morton, who used the same techniques to create his later hits Twenty Twelve and W1. 

He was probably best known for playing Hugh Abbot in The Thick Of It, a role which won him the Best Comedy Performance Bafta and the British Comedy Award for Comedy Actor in 2006.

His career effectively ended the following year when he was convicted of 15 counts of downloading indecent images of children, having been arrested in 2005 as part of Operation Ore. 

He argued at trial that he had accessed the material for research into a paedophile character he was developing for Help,  a sketch show co-written with Paul Whitehouse –  a defence the judge rejected.

He was sentenced to ten months, reduced to six on appeal. He was placed on the sex offenders' register for a decade.

He returned to acting only sparingly afterwards, with a lead role in the low-budget 2011 film Black Pond among his few subsequent credits; he later said he had struggled to find work. Looking back on the case, Langham said: ‘It completely messed up my own life. It wasn't circumstances. I'm not blaming it on anything or anybody.’

He was married twice, first to actress and politician Sue Jones-Davies, with whom he had three children, and later to theatre director Chrissie Cartwright, with whom he had two more. He is survived by his wife and children.

Published: 3 Sep 2026