[1] One of three children born to a Devonshire farmer and a Welsh nurse, he was educated at a grammar school in mid-Devon and read Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, followed by a year's PGCE teacher training course.
Orchard succeeded Geoffrey Perkins as president of Oxford University's student revue company, the Etceteras, and gathered a talented team of sketch-writers that included former TW3 scriptwriter and chemistry tutor, John Albery, and fellow-students Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis, who met here for the first time.
[5] He has written numerous articles for the UK Parliament's The House magazine, the BBC News website, the Hansard Society, and also lectures on politics and the media.
Documentaries he wrote and presented for BBC Radio 4 include Fool's Gold, on the 19th-century Welsh Goldrush; a series for You & Yours assessing the privatisation of water, nuclear power and the Royal Mail; The Age of Ming, on ageism in politics; Hung, Drawn and Thwarted, on the prospects and perils of a hung parliament; a 70th-anniversary tribute to Today in Parliament; and A Very Welsh Coup, 25 years after the fall of Margaret Thatcher.
After leaving the BBC, he has returned to acting, this time with London's The Tower Theatre and, most recently, with his own company's production of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, which toured to Malta in 2019.