Biography

Hayden was born in Britain and spent his childhood in Manchester, a pupil of King David School and Oldham Grammar, before his parents moved to Florida when he was 13.

He pursued a career in writing for television, working for MTV and CNN, before moving into scripting and producing programme trailers, but left after finding it unfulfilling.

It was while he was attending an improvisation course, that Hayden, now based in LA, became interested in the potential of putting comedy onto the internet. He took a script he had written for a 30-minute TV show and cut it to five minutes, filming it with his classmates. This was the pilot for Goodnight Burbank which has since been downloaded millions and millions of times to huge critical and commercial acclaim and won a heap of awards.

For his next series, “Abigail’s Teen Diary”, Hayden spent seven months planning and researching the character before launching in Oct ’07. Abigail quickly reached and in many cases surpassed Goodnight Burbank’s popularity with a whole new audience, also winning awards and glowing press reviews.

Hayden still misses his hometown, where he still has a lot of family. During the opening scene of Abigail’s Diary there is footage of a young girl, Haydens sister Lisa, shot when the Black family lived in Salford. His Yorkshire Terrier, who stars in Abigail’s Diary as ‘Federline’, is even called Salford.

Recently Hayden has written and starred in the first half-hour episodes of Goodnight Burbank that are exclusive to Hulu, and these are now going to be shown on TV in North America and Canada.

And he loves Vimto.