The production company behind Have I Got News For You has bounced back into the black after launching the hit panel show in the US for the first time.
Hat Trick, which also makes Mastermind, Derry Girls and Whose Line is it Anyway?, reported pre-tax profits of almost £857,000 last year. In 2023, the company reported a pre-tax loss of £377,000.
However, turnover at the company, the maker of hits including Father Ted, Trigger Point and Outnumbered, fell almost 28% from £48.4m to £35m year on year.
The return to profit came as Hat Trick successfully debuted a 10-episode series of Have I Got News for You in the US on CNN in the run-up to last November’s US presidential election, with a further 20 episodes running this year.
The number of series produced, a key measure of the company’s performance, rose from seven to 10 last year.
In total, the London-based company paid out an interim dividend of £1m, down on the £4.7m in 2023.
Of this, £900,000 was paid to Jimmy Mulville and his wife, Karen, who received a £4.2m payout in 2023, while the chair, Patrick McKenna, received £100,000.
Hat Trick was founded in 1986 by Mulville – an aspiring standup turned TV executive – and his ex-wife, Denise O’Donoghue, who together created comedy shows including Drop the Dead Donkey and Room 101 before her departure from the company in 2005.
Earlier this year Mulville spoke about his attempt to “buy out” Graham Linehan from a planned Father Ted musical. Mulville said Linehan, the co-creator of the hit series that ran between 1995 and 1998, refused to grant Hat Trick permission to make it even if he “drops dead”.
In light of Linehan’s activism and outspoken views on transgender issues, Mulville said he suggested to him the controversy would be a hindrance to getting the Father Ted musical into theatres.
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“The book and the songs were written, and we were ready to go but that’s when it all turned very sour,” he told the Insiders: The TV Podcast, which he co-hosts with the TV executive Peter Fincham. “I had a conversation with Graham in which I said: ‘Look, this show isn’t going to get made with your name on it, there’s no reputable theatre that will make it.’
“Things went from bad to worse … he even said that if he drops dead it’s in his will that we can’t do the musical.”
Linehan has previously said he was “prepared to minimise my involvement, just coming along to the odd rehearsal to see how it was going. ‘No,’ I was told; they wanted a clean break.” He ultimately rejected a proposed deal, which he described as an “insult”.
Last month Linehan appeared in court to face charges of criminal damage and harassing a teenager, which he denies.
