Development ProducerVanessa Haynes joined LWT Comedy in the mid Nineties where she worked in development under Humphrey Barclay and Gareth Edwards. As a trainee script person, she was an early champion of Bain & Armstrong (Peepshow) and Riley & Cecil (Black Books and Hyperdrive) and discovered Seamus Hilley, who went on to win a Channel Four writing award. She then moved to The Bill where she became a script editor, senior editor and, later, storyliner.

She was reunited with Humphrey at Celador Productions in 2002 where she looked after new comedy and comedy-drama. As Head of Comedy Development, she discovered and developed the first project from Beth & Emma Kilcoyne, under their writer-performer moniker Live! Girls! The BBC3 show, Live! Girls! Presents Dogtown drew a cult following and brought the Kilcoyne writing team to French and Saunders attention. Vanessa also developed and produced Skin Deep as a C4 Comedy Lab, and Angel Cake, a comedy-drama one-off for BBC1 with Sarah Lancashire.

She went on to work with Assembly TV and Baby Cow where she was tasked with finding new writing and writer-performer talent and nurtured several exciting projects including a TV vehicle for the Idiots of Ants.

She recently moved to Belfast and now develops drama and comedy for Kudos Generator TV. Vanessa loves her adopted city and wonders where wheaten bread has been all her life.
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