After university, Joly was a diplomat, based in
Prague.
Television Trigger Happy TV The original series ran for two series on Channel 4 from 2000 to 2003. In 2003, a new series of
Trigger Happy TV was made for an American audience with an altered format that featured a band of different comedians who performed skits without Joly although he cameoed. Joly was not happy with the US version. Following the success of
Trigger Happy TV on
Channel 4, Joly was secured by the
BBC for a rumoured £5 million.
This is Dom Joly This is Dom Joly was a spoof chat show presented by Dom Joly, originally shown on BBC Three in 2003.
World Shut Your Mouth World Shut Your Mouth was a hidden camera television series starring Joly. It ran on Friday nights in 2005 on BBC One.
''Dom Joly's Happy Hour'' In this series which aired in 2006, Joly and his partner Peter Wilkins travelled the world and tried the unique alcoholic beverages of each country. It ran on
Sky One.
Made in Britain In 2009, Joly fronted a show titled
Made in Britain, shown on the
Blighty channel in the UK.
Fool Britannia In 2012–13, Joly made two series of
Fool Britannia, a hidden camera show that aired on Saturday evenings on ITV1.
Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls In 2016, Joly was marooned on a desert island for two weeks for
Celebrity Island with Bear Grylls.
Pilgrimage In 2020, Joly walked the
Sultans Trail from Belgrade to Istanbul for the BBC One series
Pilgrimage.
Writing Joly was a columnist for
The Independent on Sunday from 2003 until the paper closed in 2016. He was thought to be the writer of a spoof column in
The Independent and then
i called "Cooper Brown: He's out there", and later confirmed in his autobiography that this was the case. The column was presented as the work of an American character named Cooper Brown and revolves around his putative adventures as "a garrulous American showbiz type". Joly was a special correspondent for the
Independent at the
2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. While in Beijing, he also appeared daily on the
Drive programme on Five Live. In 2010, Joly published a travel book called ''The Dark Tourist: Sightseeing in the World's Most Unlikely Holiday Destinations'', investigating
dark tourism. In the book Joly travels to places that witnessed great tragedy and death, including
Chernobyl, which he visited on 4 May 2009; his childhood home of
Lebanon;
North Korea; various spots in the United States including locations of famous assassinations; the
Killing Fields of Cambodia; and Iran for a skiing holiday. The book was published on 2 September 2010 in the UK. Joly published his second travel book,
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, in 2012. In the book, he travels the world in search of six
cryptids such as
Bigfoot and the
Yeti. In 2019, Joly published the travel book
The Hezbollah Hiking Club, in which he documented his walk across Lebanon with two friends. In 2023, Joly published a book
The Conspiracy Tourist, in which he travels the world investigating conspiracy theories and the people who believe them including QAnon, hunting for UFOs in Roswell, chasing Alex Jones of Infowars around Austin, trying to prove that Finland exists and taking a flat-earther to the edge of the world.
Political career In the
1997 general election, Joly stood in
Kensington and Chelsea against
Alan Clark. Hiring out hundreds of
teddy bear costumes, he staged mock protests at
Westminster and came fifth out of nine candidates, receiving 218 votes (0.6%).
Podcast On 29 June 2018, Joly released the first episode of his comedy podcast,
Earworm. In 2020 the second series of the podcast was released by
Audible. ==Personal life==