Ben Cottam is a prolific writer of radio adaptations, comedies and dramas. He is best known for the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Plum House, starring Simon Callow and Jane Horrocks, which ran for six years and was nominated for a BBC Audio Drama award, as well as his episodes of the hit podcast Wooden Overcoats. Other work for audio includes multiple series of the medical drama The Latvian Locum, the original play The Receiver of Wreck and an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s The Signal-Man.
Although currently based in Kent, much of Ben’s work is set around, or inspired by, his native north-west of England, especially the Fylde coast where he was born and raised. This preoccupation extends to a series of documentaries he has written and presented for BBC Radio 3 such as Cave Life for Beginners and Walking the Causeways, which have featured him living in a Cumbrian mine working and navigating the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay.
Ben began his career working in production and development for the BBC, before writing a number of episodes of the Cartoon Network series The Amazing World of Gumball. He is currently adapting one of his favourite films, Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death, into a feature-length drama for BBC Radio 4, and is working on his first book.