While working at a series of odd jobs in London, Fountain wrote a few fringe plays, including one called My Grandmother Is a Time Lord, produced in 1995. In the same year, he began writing sketches for the radio programmeWeek Ending. It was while working on Week Ending that he met Tom Jamieson, with whom he has written most of his subsequent radio and television work. Fountain and Jamieson contributed to many radio and television comedy programmes, including Have I Got News for You, 2DTV, The News Quiz, Loose Ends and Big Impression. Their most notable work, however, has been for Dead Ringers in which Fountain occasionally makes cameo appearances. The pair are also responsible for the historical comedy Elephants to Catch Eels and wrote "Txt Mssg Rcvd", a 2005 episode of the BBC Three anthology series Twisted Tales.
Fountain is a fan of Doctor Who and has contributed to several audio dramas based on the programme. His first licensed Doctor Who work was as script editor on the webcastDeath Comes to Time. He has also written several Doctor Whoaudio plays for Big Finish Productions, including Omega, The Kingmaker, and Peri and the Piscon Paradox. In addition, he wrote the narration script for the DVD documentary "The Last Chance Saloon" about the casting of Sylvester McCoy in the role in 1987. He appears occasionally as a host or MC at Doctor Who conventions. In 2020, Radio Times announced that Fountain had adapted the audio story The Doomsday Contract for Big Finish, which had been originally pitched to the television series by comedy producer John Lloyd while Douglas Adams had been its script editor.
Novelist
Fountain is also a novelist, and has written three humorous detective books and one serious thriller. The detective books, collectively titled 'The Mervyn Stone Mysteries' were published by Big Finish in 2010 and recount the exploits of an ex-script editor of science fiction television series called 'Vixens from the Void'. Mervyn Stone encounters murders wherever he goes, whether it be a sci-fi convention, the recording of a DVD commentary or the revival of the aforesaid television series. The serious thriller is called 'Painkiller', published by Sphere, and recounts the story of Monica Wood, a woman suffering from chronic neuropathic pain who discovers her own suicide note in a drawer - but she cannot remember writing it.
