English actor and screenwriter Mark Gatiss was BOTD in 1966. Born in Sedgfield, County Durham, he went to drama school at the University of Leeds. In 1995, he and school friends Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton created The League of Gentlemen, a darkly funny sketch comedy about the residents of the fictional town of Royston Vasey. After winning the Perrier Comedy Award at the 1997 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the show was adapted for radio. The 1999 TV adaptation became a cult hit, playing for four seasons, followed by the 2005 film The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse. In 2005, Gatiss wrote and appeared in celebrated reboot of sci-fi TV series Doctor Who. Further success followed as the co-creator and writer of Sherlock, a wildly successful modern-day TV series based on the Sherlock Holmes stories, making a star of Benedict Cumberbatch and winning a BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series. Gatiss was wittily cast as Mycroft, Holmes’ censorious elder brother, appearing in all three seasons of the series. His other screenwriting work includes three episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot and a 2020 TV miniseries based on Bram Stoker‘s Dracula. He has acted extensively in theatre and television, specialising in effete ginger homosexuals. Notable performances have included Robert Louis Stevenson in the TV series Jekyll, Joan Crawford in the sketch comedy show Psychobitches, Major Benjy in the 2014 TV adaptation of E. F. Benson‘s Mapp and Lucia stories, vengeful bishop Stephen Gardiner in Wolf Hall, fruity politician Peter Mandelson in Coalition, George the Prince Regent in historical drama Taboo and a medieval banker in Game of Thrones. In 2016, he won an Olivier Award for his performance in a London production of Patrick Marber’s play Three Days in the Country. In recent years, he wrote and starred in Bookish, an historical TV series about a bookseller who helps the police solve crimes. Openly gay since forever, he married his partner Ian Hallard in 2008.