Nick Mohammed has been faithful to the stage for a very long time; his helium-voiced comedy character Mr Swallow has been a fixture at comedy venues for 16 years. But he reckons he landed the gig hosting the Oliviers, the biggest night in theatre, because of a strong performance elsewhere: The Celebrity Traitors. There, he sleuthed his way to the end, almost taking down eventual winner Alan Carr, before falling at the final hurdle. “I’m sure Celebrity Traitors is one of the biggest, if not the single reason I’m getting to host the Oliviers,” the funnyman tells me. “I could have gone out on day one or two, and then I probably wouldn’t be doing it.”
Mohammed is an inspired choice, picking up the mantle from Beverley Knight, Billy Porter, and his Ted Lasso co-star Hannah Waddingham, who hosted in 2023 and 2024. In the past two decades, he’s become one of the most reliable comedy actors, making guest appearances in myriad 2010s sitcoms, including Miranda, Life’s Too Short and Stath Lets Flats, before creating his own in 2020: Intelligence, co-starring David Schwimmer. That same year, Mohammed shot to global recognition playing football-kit man turned callous manager Nathan “Nate” Shelley in Ted Lasso – and provided the teeth-itchingly twee series, one of the biggest small-screen hits of the last 10 years, with its edgiest character.
