Scroobius Pip

David Peter Meads (born 3 August 1981), known professionally as Scroobius Pip, is an English actor and podcaster as well as a former spoken word poet and hip hop recording artist from Stanford-le-Hope, Essex. He first gained prominence as one half of hip hop duo Dan le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip sparked by their debut single "Thou Shalt Always Kill". He manages his own record label, Speech Development Records. He hosted the award-winning weekly radio show The Beatdown on XFM in the late 2000s and currently hosts the Distraction Pieces Podcast. In August 2016, he released a book entitled Distraction Pieces. He appears as French Bill, an assistant to Atticus, in the eight-part historical fiction series Taboo (2017) on BBC One and FX. Early career As a teenager, Scroobius Pip was inspired by punk music to buy a guitar and form various bands with his friends. His musical tastes quickly grew to encompass genres including hip hop and jazz and he became interested in spoken word artists Gil Scott-Heron, Sage Francis and Saul Williams. This encouraged him to go solo; the idea of having no one to rely on or blame other than himself was an appealing challenge.