MELON COMEDY PRODUCTIONS: Est. 2017, Melbourne & London
Melon Comedy is a global cause-powered comedy collective born in London, Melbourne & Manchester, founded by author & comedy writer/performer Lorelei Mathias – with Emmy McMorrow, Nathalie Turton, Yasser Kayani and Ch’lu. It’s been performed by our core team and guest cast from Josh Glanc to Joe Davies, Michael Spicer, to Sarah Smart, Joseph Adelakun… and many other talented comics from Edinburgh and Melbourne comedy festivals.
We have a core crew of Lauren Laroth & Tristan Alice Nieto, and guest directors from Peter Lydon to Chris Goulder. For the full cast see here. Along the way we’ve been mentored by everyone from Dick Fiddy (BFI) to Victoria Pile.
Many of our team like are recovering advertising creatives. Our founder Lol did 20 years in Advertising with our other writer Nat… where they met our Steve. All the animations you see are made by the amazing animator Steve Cutts, who has been described as a ‘Melancholy Gilliam’.
We worked as Creative Directors/Copywriters in for 17 years – everywhere from BBH to Mother to AMV BBDO. So we’ve lots of experience in production, and loved supervising every part of the process, from casting to sound design. And we’ve programmed and run live comedy nights in London, Los Angeles and Melbourne Comedy Festival.
Between us, the melonheads have more three letter words to describe our melons than you’ve had anti-depressants. Together we are an ADHD-er. An ASD-er. A PMDD-er. So we have an unusual take on the world, which we hope is sometimes funny. Our comedy likes to kick the ass of things that are melancholy in modern life….misogyny, pollution, mental illness, and the horrors of modern dating. We reckon Comedy is a beautiful platform for helping people feel less alone…
What’s our secret? Pairing ASD editors with ADHD writers. Using neurodivergent superpowers to balance out our differences and create magic out of stories other companies might have given up on – in doing so give ‘square peg’ writers their time in the sun…. (and a bunch of gongs too). See our Awards in the above tab – from Edinburgh TV Festival to British Comedy Guide.
While we’re neurodiverse-led, we are a team that adapts to every brief – we’ve a huge network of writers and producers and directors that we bring in as needed.
We’ve had sponsorship from The Farm and British Comedy Guide, and mentoring from the BBC and Green Wing’s Victoria Pile, and BFI’s Dick Fiddy. We’ve made award-winning films that have been adopted by causes from Surfers against Sewage to The ADHD Foundation and won awards and nominations from Edinburgh TV Festival to British Comedy Guide.
Lorelei Mathias Creative Director
Lorelei Mathias is award-winning comedy writer/performer/show-runner. Her novel ‘Break Up Club’ (Harper Collins) is currently being developed as sitcom.
BBC Writers Room and Academy alumni, Lorelei has a large following as a content creator, and a flair for sketch, comedy drama, laugh-out-loud dialogue. Featured in the Guardian , BBC Radio and TV, she’s appeared on stage with Sam Campbell and Stephen Merchant. She’s creator of ‘Life in ADHD’ – Best Web Series finalist at Ed TV Fest. She’s sat in writers rooms for pulped.com and DMS are Open (Radio 4), and made small contributions to Dead Ringers and Green Wing (S3). Lorelei came to comedy after 20 years creative directing comedy TV Ads and content for brands – from Film 4 to Yorkshire Tea. After years supervising the casting, sound design and voiceovers – with various comedians from Kayvan Novak to Morgana – she made the move to writing comedy for TV. Melon Comedy was born in 2017 when she was helping judge for Melbourne Comedy Festival, producing live comedy while writing the TV adaptation for her novel The Break-up Club, which is now in optioned development as a sitcom.
She’s also a literal mermaid performing her comedy parody ‘Under the Pee’ at for Surfers Against Sewage and other activist organisations.
Katie Bennett Producer
Katie is a Director and Producer, currently working on a variety of productions. She started her career in corporate short films, working alongside production companies such as 1721 Studio, Buzzword Creative and Millstream Productions as well as securing her own independent clients.
Katie has been producing comedy sketches with Quirks & Foibles comedy trio since 2020 and recently produced two premiere’s during Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025, including the Quirks & Foibles debut live comedy show Sketch Show Bingo!
Her work has received a variety of nominations and awards; most recently winning the DEI Charity Film Award at The Big Syn Film Awards for short film ‘The Unseen Women’ for Portsmouth City of Sanctuary.
Katie is also a Director of Chichester Fringe, Est in 2021.