[4] In the same year, Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight, a stage show written by Holness and Ayoade and starring the pair along with Alice Lowe, was nominated for the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe.

[7] About the same time, he appeared in the comedy stage play The Mighty Boosh, filling the role of Bob Fossil while regular cast member Rich Fulcher was overseas.

A year later he played the part of a bandleader in Cemetery Junction, a dramedy film by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

This was a short film written and directed by Holness in which he plays an angry loner who writes pulp-fiction crime novels about a vigilante called the Reprisalizer.

[7] Holness wrote and directed a 2012 short film for Sky Arts' Playhouse Presents series entitled "The Snipist", which depicted a dystopian alternative 1970s Britain stricken by rabies.

[9] Holness wrote and directed the 2016 "Smutch", a Halloween Comedy Short shown on Sky Arts, in which he played an embittered author haunted by a ghost writer.

[10] In 2018, he played the part of brooding Swedish detective Knut Ångström in the BBC Radio 4 Nordic noir parody Angstrom.