Murray Lachlan Young

Murray Lachlan Young (born 14 March 1969) is a British poet, stand-up performer, broadcaster, playwright, screenwriter and children's author. He came to prominence during the Britpop era of the mid-1990s, when he became the only poet to sign a recording contract worth £1m.

Murray Lachlan Young was born the youngest of two boys in Washington DC, to a Scottish father and an English mother.[citation needed ]

He was brought up in Sevenoaks, Kent, where he attended Wildernesse School, graduating from Salford University with a degree in media performance.[citation needed ]

In 1998, he married singer Zoë Pollock and after moving to a smallholding near St Leonards-on-Sea, they had two children. They moved to St Levan, Cornwall later in 2004, but separated in 2009.[citation needed ]

In 2014, he married singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cavendish and set up home in Dalston, London, before separating in 2016.[citation needed ]

Young lives in London.

Since Young's early shows supporting such acts as Julian Cope, the Pretenders and Dita von Teese on the music and cabaret circuit in London, live stand-up poetry has been a key part of his career.[citation needed ]

Tom Hodgkinson, editor of The Idler magazine, writes "Murray is both an actor and a wit, a poet who can perform and a performer who can write poetry, rolled into one."[citation needed ]

Live solo shows include:

Features:

Shorts:

In 2021, Murray Lachlan Young teamed up with Orbital's Paul Hartnoll for a lockdown inspired album called The Virus Diaries under the name Hartnoll & Young. In June 2021, the pair released a single from the album called "Garden Centre (Push the Trolley)" as a follow-up to "I Need a Haircut".