You’re getting closer, but no cigar yet …

9. My comedy acts led to more rewarding behind-the-scenes work as a writer for TV shows.

Mel Brooks

Buck Henry

Bill’s got it! Mel Brooks it is. These would have been my remaining clues:

10. The TV shows and stars I wrote for became house-hold names.
11. I gained success as a Hollywood film director, and some of my films were adapted into Broadway musicals.
12. I am one of the few people to have received an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony, and a Grammy.
13. Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman and Cloris Leachman regularly starred in my movies.

I detect a Get Smart theme.

I believe you're up, Bill.

I'll try to come up with someone this weekend.

1. I was born in Lincolnshire.

2. As a youngster I played piano and field hockey.

3. I earned a BS degree in chemistry, specializing in x-ray crystallography.

The Butterfly Man?

I don't know who that is.

Robert Nelson: Busker. He had a butterfly tattoo on top of his head.

I'm pretty sure he had a chemistry degree so I went for it.

! To be fair, he didn't give you three clues, maybe.

To be honest, I would have said that myself, if I had thought of it.

Good one, Laurie!

Not Robert.

4. After graduating, I got a job as a research chemist at a plastics engineering company.

Alan Turing.

DuPont.

Neither Turing nor DuPont.

5. I later applied for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), but was rejected after the personnel department described me as "headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated".

Ken Kesey?

Not Ken.

6. I received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President George H. W. Bush.

Marcel Marceau