Neil Hannon

Edward Neil Anthony Hannon (born 7 November 1970) is a singer and songwriter from Northern Ireland. He is the creator and front man of the chamber pop group the Divine Comedy, and is the band's sole constant member. Hannon wrote the theme tunes for the television sitcoms Father Ted and The IT Crowd. Early life and education Hannon was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, the son of Brian Hannon, a Church of Ireland minister in the Diocese of Derry and Raphoe and later Bishop of Clogher. He spent some of his youth in Fivemiletown before moving with his family to Enniskillen, in County Fermanagh, in 1982. While there, he attended Portora Royal School. Hannon enjoyed synthesizer-based music as a youngster; he has identified the Human League and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) as "the first music that really excited [him]". In the late 1980s he developed a fondness of the electric guitar, becoming an "indie kid". Career Hannon is founder and mainstay of the Divine Comedy, a band which achieved their biggest commercial success in the mid- to late-1990s with the albums Casanova (1996), A Short Album About Love (1997), and Fin de Siècle (1998). Hannon continues to release albums under the Divine Comedy name, the most recent being Office Politics (2019). In 2000, he and Joby Talbot contributed four tracks to Ute Lemper's collaboration album, Punishing Kiss.