Hooked on classic sitcoms, haunted by family tragedies - the truth about the real comedian behind... Count Binface

Published: 00:25, 9 July 2026 | Updated: 00:25, 9 July 2026 Sky News' chief political correspondent Jon Craig was delivering a piece to camera during the Makerfield by-election last month when one of the novelty candidates hove into view. It was Count Binface, the self-described 'intergalactic space warrior' who dresses in a pseudo Star Wars outfit and ​silver cape, with a dustbin on his head, complete with lid and side handles. A clearly uncomfortable Craig attempted to hand back to the studio before being persuaded by his producer to engage the serial prankster in conversation. In the ensuing exchange, Binface promised to price-cap Wigan kebabs at £2, make cyclists who disobey the Highway Code ride unicycles and reroute HS2 through rail executives' homes. It prompted one viewer to post the interview on X under the line: 'This may be the greatest 2 minutes and 44 seconds of television I've ever seen.' Given that Binface is, in fact, a 46-year-old comedy writer and producer called Jon Harvey, who has worked on award-winning series such as Have I Got News For You and The Thick Of It, this is not entirely surprising. And now he is set to achieve global notoriety as Nigel Farage's most formidable challenger in the Clacton by-election following the news that all the main political parties have refused to enter the contest, which has been variously dismissed as a 'desperate stunt' and a 'circus'. Indeed, the most extraordinary aspect of this affair is that it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that, with Farage on just 46 per cent of the vote, Binface could pull off the greatest coup in British political history by attracting enough disaffected voters to beat the Reform UK leader and take the seat. Bin to parliament? Analysts say Count Binface could pull off the greatest coup in British political history by attracting enough disaffected voters to beat Farage and take the seat Nigel Farage is on 46 per cent of the vote - with experts predicting that he could be beaten into second place if enough disaffected voters go to the polls Binface is 46-year-old comedy writer and producer Jon Harvey, who has worked on award-winning series such as Have I Got News For You and The Thick Of It That said, the Speaker would not allow him to get away with his Binface get-up in the Commons, as MPs are expected to wear 'business-like attire'.  In his first interview of the campaign, Binface told Radio 4's flagship Today programme that he had been heading back to Sigma IX, his home planet, when he learned of Mr Farage's resignation. 'I got wind of that and I've turned around the starship pronto!' he said. 'How about that? Lovely.' Asked what would make him attractive to voters, he quipped, 'I'm not Nigel Farage', before saying of the absence of other candidates: 'Are they running scared from old Binny, or do they think that Nigel's running a cunning stunt? And I pronounced that carefully at 8.55 in the morning.' The Count has already received a number of heavyweight endorsements, with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch describing him as the people's candidate, while Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis took time out from the Nato summit in the Turkish capital Ankara to wish him luck. Count Binface first came to prominence in 2019, when he stood against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge on a manifesto which included a pledge to have the hand dryer in the men's toilet at the constituency's Crown And Treaty pub moved to a 'more sensible position'. On that occasion he secured just 69 votes and lost his deposit of £500 as he had polled less than 5 per cent of the total. Not that it put him off. Since then he has stood in three other parliamentary elections and two London mayoral polls, losing his deposit on each occasion. But when he stood against former Tory MP Rishi Sunak in his Yorkshire constituency in the General Election of 2024, he did at least get his vote into three figures, with a haul of 308. Jon Harvey would appear to have been inspired to become a satirical election candidate by the example of Screaming Lord Sutch, the founder of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, who stood in 39 parliamentary elections between 1963 and 1997. The connection comes through his father, a musician before embarking on a varied career that included jobs as an estate agent and a policeman, who once played drums for Lord Sutch. Harvey also credits his father – who fed him a diet of classic British sitcoms when he was growing up – with giving him his comedy chops, but admits that he was also an alcoholic who could be 'verbally poisonous'. Last month he wrote a piece for The Mail on Sunday's You magazine in which he described his father as 'Jekyll and Hyde sponsored by Strongbow', adding that 'for decades we tiptoed around his Hyde because we deeply loved his Jekyll'. Harvey's life has also been marked by tragedy. Not only did his father die in 2005 at the relatively early age of 57 but, ten years later, it was Harvey who found his much-loved, obese older brother, Dan, dead in his London flat.  An undiagnosed diabetic, he had fallen into a hypoglycaemic coma. In a bid to exorcise his grief, Harvey embarked on what has been described as 'an obsessive sports odyssey'. 'Everyone's grief is unique,' he said in an interview three years ago. 'For me, the shock of having your oldest friend ripped away from you was the start point for the journey I went on. 'It started as a coping mechanism. I inherited his Crystal Palace season ticket. I'm a Spurs fan, but I couldn't imagine Dan not being represented at Selhurst Park [Crystal Palace's home ground].'  He went on to spend a year attending a bewildering variety of sporting events, from rugby and tennis to snooker and handball – even the Rubik's Cube world championship. He chronicled all this in a book called A Fan For All Seasons, A Journey Through Life And Sport, which was hailed by one critic as 'warm, sad and funny'. Despite all this emotional upheaval, Harvey has built a stable home life of his own. Fearful that he might be doomed to repeat his dad's fate, he stayed teetotal until he was in his 30s and is now happily married to the actress and voiceover artist Sarah Daykin, with whom he has two children, aged four, and five months. As Count Binface, Harvey is fond of releasing long lists of madcap policies in advance of elections, with promises ranging from a pledge to give Traitors presenter Claudia Winkleman's fringe a Grade I-listing to replacing London's 'night tsar' with a 'night mayor' – with headquarters on Elm Street. He has been less open about his own political philosophy, however. But perhaps there is a clue to it in the list of celebrity plaudits attached to Count Binface's 2022 book, What On Earth?: An Alien's Guide To Fixing Britain. Jon Harvey would appear to have been inspired to become a satirical election candidate by the example of Screaming Lord Sutch, the founder of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party Harvey's original alter ego was a character called Lord Buckethead. Indeed, it was in this incarnation (right) that he fought his first election in Theresa May's constituency of Maidenhead at the 2017 General Election With names such as Emily Maitlis (the oh-so-right-on co-presenter of The News Agents podcast), Rory Stewart (the ultra-liberal Remoaner who presents The Rest Is Politics) and Armando Iannucci (the Alan Partridge creator who has described Brexit as 'a catastrophe') singing its praises, we can assume that Harvey is a 'centrist dad' with all the prejudices of the sort of bien-pensant who makes up the metropolitan elite. In the weeks to come, we can expect Count Binface to rise from politics' C-list to its A-list. But we might never have heard of him in the first place were it not for a litigious American film-maker called Todd Durham. Harvey's original alter ego was a character called Lord Buckethead. Indeed, it was in this incarnation that he fought his first election in Theresa May's constituency of Maidenhead at the 2017 General Election. It may have been decades after Durham released his Star Wars spoof Gremloids (aka Hyperspace) in 1984 – which featured a Lord Buckethead – but when the film director saw Buckethead's Twitter following top 100,000 and his YouTube views reach the millions, he called in the lawyers. Unwilling to cross swords with a deep-pocketed Hollywood type, Harvey agreed to stop using the Buckethead moniker and Binface was born. Now it's about to become a household name. And, if he wins in Clacton, Jon Harvey will be in a position to give up his day job.