Kryten starts life in Red Dwarf as a Series 4000 mechanoid with a problem. He'd been programmed to serve but he doesn't have anyoneto serve - his previous crews on the Nova 5 were skeletons with about as much meat on them as a Chicken McNugget. The Dwarfers redeploy him on their ship - Rimmer, in particular, taking advantage of Kryten's handy 'I serve therefore I am' philosophy, gives him a planet-sizes list of domestic chores. Fortunately for Kryten, Lister takes him under his wing and teaches him how to rebel. No longer a silicon doormat, the rubberised robot ditches his frilly apron, paints a portrait of Rimmer on the toilet, mounts Lister's bike and turns into Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Kryten returns in Red Dwarf III with a mid-Atlantic accent and a body made of reinforced plastic, becoming an integral part of the crew. Rimmer even attempts to teach him to fly Starbug 1, but nerves play merry hell with Kryten's anxiety chip and he ends up taking theship through a Time Hole and onto another version of Earth. Since these shaky beginnings, however, Kryten has gone on to become the team's most resourceful member.

Robert Llewellyn only joined the cast of Red Dwarf as Kryten by a happy accident. In the original Kryten episode, the Jeevesian mechanoid was played by actor David Ross. The character was such a success that Grant and Naylor decided to keep him in, but Ross was unavailable. Instead Llewellyn took over as the perpetually apologetic valet.

Unlike the others, Kryten has to go through the weekly ordeal of being fully made up until Llewellyn is completely unrecognisable: "That's the toughest part of the gig without a doubt. They've got it down to 2 hours now. The first time it took about six, then it was four. Which means if you are starting at 9am - which I never did, because it meant being in the make-up chair by 5am - it is very debilitating and tiring. I complain an enormous amount - it's the way I get through the day, by moaning and whinging."

Llewellyn's favourite episode is 'Polymorph', where he had the hoover attachment emerging from an unmentionable orifice: "I've never done any performing on a show where I couldn't hear the other performers' lines because people were laughing so much. Craig was shouting and I was right next to him, but I couldn't hear a thing. When Chris/Rimmer had said the line 'You'll bonk anything, Lister' in rehearsals, I can remember being in real physical pain laughing.

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