Three Choirs Festival - Kit and Kaboodle tickets

Kit Hesketh Harvey was born in 1957 in Nyasaland, East Africa, where his father was District Commissioner. He was sent to England to be educated, first as a cathedral chorister at Canterbury, then at Tonbridge and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a choral scholar under John Rutter, as well as a member of the Footlights.

After a stint at the BBC Music and Arts department, producing arts documentaries, he left to write screenplays for Merchant Ivory, including Maurice. Subsequent screenwriting has included Full Throttle and The Vicar Of Dibley, for Tiger-Aspect, and Hans Christian Andersen and Treasure Island/Return to Treasure Island for Hallmark.

In 1982, he began working at the Comedy Store with Kit and the Widow, a two-man musical satire which has thrice been nominated in the West End for Olivier Awards. Apart from their own radio and TV series, and playing all over the world, they have starred in Salad Days at the Vaudeville Theatre, and their guide to opera, The Fat Lady Sings.

As a librettist/lyricist, he won the Vivian Ellis award for Writing Orlando, and did a post-graduate degree at Oxford under Stephen Sondheim. Since then, his work has included Yusupov, at the Bridewell Theatre, The Caribbean Tempest in Sydney, Barbados and Edinburgh, and opera translations for the English National Opera and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, including The Daughter of the Regiment, The Turk In Italy and The Bartered Bride.

He presents TV and radio programmes on antiques, cabaret, chanson and domestic architecture, and is a regular panellist on Radio Fours Just A Minute. Married to the actress Kate Rabett, they have two children, and divide their time between homes in Norfolk, London and Cornwall. Kits hobbies include riding, mushrooming, surfing, and painting almost as badly as he plays the piano.

www.3choirs.org