[4] Lewis-Smith was born in 1957, the son of a neurosurgeon, and grew up in Chadwell Heath, Essex,[5][6] although according to The Telegraph, he "never knowingly gave an interview discussing his parents, background or childhood.

He worked for Radio Medway before going on to study music at the University of York, where he presented the "bizarre student TV show" Intimate Freshness under the name "Damien Filth".

During his time as a student he was arrested, convicted and fined £20 for causing a public disturbance after climbing up scaffolding at York Minster in the middle of the night and reciting the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, from a ledge, having previously played "I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside" on the cathedral's organ.

[9] Lewis-Smith contributed to a number of productions for British television: On 1 January 2021, the Sky Documentaries Channel aired "Steve McQueen: The Lost Movie", presented by David Letterman.

This included biographies of Nick Griffin, then leader of the British National Party, Lottery winner Michael Carroll, the TV cook Keith Floyd (who died two hours before the programme was transmitted), and the "child prodigy" Lauren Harries.

[citation needed] From 1983 to 1985 Lewis-Smith produced and presented the Sunday morning programme, Snooze Button for BBC Radio York.

[16] Following this he became a producer at BBC Radio 4, working on Start the Week and Midweek: during his stint on the latter programme he recruited cockney comedian Arthur Mullard as a stand-in host for regular presenter Libby Purves.

[18] Writing about Lewis-Smith's hoax phone calls in The Times Higher Education, Sally Feldman observed that "He chooses his victims carefully, pricking the pompous and the powerful in the very best traditions of satire.

[21] Beginning in 1993, he was the compiler of the "Funny Old World" column of bizarre news items in Private Eye, where he replaced Christopher Logue.

[25] On 28 July 2006, hypnotist Paul McKenna successfully sued the Daily Mirror for libel over articles written by Lewis-Smith from 1997 alleging that McKenna had deliberately misled the public with a fake PhD, having obtained the qualification from the non-accredited LaSalle University in the United States, whose principal had since been imprisoned for making misleading claims about the status of degrees he handed out to candidates.