And his on/off double-act together with Richard Herring is great too - I still use their "You want the moon on a stick!" retort to this day (as some here may have noticed).

 

Most other stand-ups suffer a little from over-exposure of limited material - Lee Mack is pretty good live and has managed not to become too irritating through too much TV exposure, but Michael McIntyre and Jason Montford haven't.

 

I quite enjoy Shaparak "Shappi" Khorsandi.

 

 

Oh yeah, Lee and Herring were great. Like Stewart Lee, Richard Herring's done some great solo stand-up shows since they stopped working together. His free podcast series http://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/as_it_occurs_to_me/ - As It Occurs To Me is well worth checking out, if you haven't already.

I also like Louis CK, although he swears too much and a lot of his subject matter is cliche, although he brings some freshness to it. Louie is better than his standup because of that. I used to really like Demetri Martin, but then he got annoying. So, I don't know, Bill Cosby and Seinfeld? I like the idea of standup but I can never name any really good ones.

By the way, one time I was listening to the "Family Comedy" XM radio station in my dad's car, and before we turned it off because of the shocking racism, I heard Seinfeld doing the opening bit from the episode where his check bounce, but it was obviously many years later because he inflection was flat and he sounded absolutely exhausted. It was really sad.

Wow, that's really terrible. Someone needs to teach her how to speak in public.

My top funny men...

 

Bob Hope - had all his jokes written for him but his delivery and timing were perfect, it's the way he told 'em.

 

Bob Monkhouse - a walking encyclopaedia of funny gags.

 

Benny Hill - underrated misunderstood genius.

 

Tommy Cooper - master of the art of the bumbling incompetent.

 

Robin Williams - very talented stand up always has me in fits.

 

Marty Feldman - genius of stage and screen, took British humour way ahead.

 

Jasper Carrot  - wasted on that silly game show.

 

Billy Connolly - very funny guy but the swearing is a big turn-off.

 

Bill Bailey - will  he ever get a tune from that guitar?

 

Jack Dee - the best comics, they say, never laugh, Jack is a master of the dead pan.

 

Jo Brand - from the Jack Dee mould, very funny lady.

 

Omid Djalili - very clever muslim comedian treads a very fine line...

 

Ricky Gervais - more than a silly dance.

 

Lenny Henry - very talented opened new doors for black comedians.

 

Michael Mackintyre - king of the "everyday observation" style of comedy, heard it all before but very funny man.

 

 

 

Ones i can't stand..

 

 

Ken Dodd - silly unfunny idiot should be on at kiddy time, a saddo.

 

Roy Chubby Brown - smutty northern workingmen's club comic.

 

Julian Clary - sick homosexual innuendos rubbed in your face.

 

Jim Davidson - not much material after nick nick and chalky got very boring.

 

Lee Evans - based his whole act on Norman Wisdom and failed.

 

Harry Hill - holiday camp nonsense.

 

Russell Grant - dangerous talentless clown.

 

Peter Kay - his videos and books are wasting space in charity shops...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harry Hill misunderstood? i understand him to be a poor version of Harry Worth

 

When he first appeared in the 1970s he was a complete revelation - along with Connolly, Boyce, and Harding, he came out of the early 70s folk scene doing extended chats between songs, then the songs became shorter and shorter until they were just one-liner gags ("If I were a Carpenter, I'd screw you to the bed" ... "Hangman, hangman, come slacken your noo-")  and was alternative before alternative became the lame buzz-word of the PC 80s.

mystic fred wrote:   Harry Hill misunderstood? i understand him to be a poor version of Harry Worth

Then you've misunderstood him Steve,  though I do now understand that he's one of those comedians you either get ot you don't. That he can subvert prime-time TV and get away with it is a materstroke of surreal comedy genius.

-------------
What?

Bill Cosby

Robin Williams

Seinfeld

George Carlin

Lewis Black

Steven Wright

Ralphie May

Alonzo Bodden

Larry Miller

and on, and on, and on.......................................

Bill Bailey

Ricky Gervais

Billy Connoly

Tim Vine

Jack Dee

Michael McIntyre

Eddie Izzard

Rhod Gilbert

Sean Locke

and more I will add because my brain won't remeber their names

Oh  and i agree with TP about Jo Brand. Cannot stand her. And Omid Jalili not  VERY funny.

 

 

 

 

Forgot Dylan Moran too.

 

 

A man applied for a fermentation operator post at a famous  firm based in Devon.   A Polish man applied for the same job and since both had similar qualifications, they were both asked to take a test by the Manager and were left to do the test together. 

When the results were in, both men had scored 19 out of 20.

 
The manager went to the the first applicant and said, "Thank you for coming to the interview, but we’ve decided to give the Pole the job." 

 
"...and why would you do that - we both got 19 questions correct ?... we are in  England and me being English, surely I should get the job." 

 

Manager, "We have made our decision not on the correct answers, but on the question you got wrong."

  
"And just how would one incorrect answer be better than another?" 

Manager, "Simple. On question number 7 the Pole wrote down, 'I don’t know.'

You put down,

‘Neither do I’.“

 

 

"I'd like to finish my act tonight with a positive story.... but I don't have any..... So here's two negative ones."

Sean Lock

 

If you are American and easily offended don't watch!

 

You know, this is going to sound sexist, but it's just how it is. I rarely find women funny. This is no exception. 

But my dislike of comedians isn't limited to just women. Bob Saget is also quite the hack, in my opinion.

You should change it from 'and' to 'or'. I'm American, and found that to be hilarious. 

OK. 

 

If you are American or easily offended don't watch! 

 

Better?

 

 

But yeah, the moon on a stick fell flat to me, Shappi was just poor generally and Maria's persona would be amusing as a character in a sketch but is insufferable in isolation.

"On some occasions, audiences would show up to one of Kaufman's stage performances expecting to see him perform as his character Latka from the TV show Taxi where he had first become famous, and heckling him with demands when he did not. Kaufman would punish these audiences with the announcement that he was going to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby - The Great Gatsby by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald - F. Scott Fitzgerald to them. The audience would laugh at this, not realizing that he was serious, and Kaufman would proceed to read the book to them, continuing despite audience members' departure. At a certain point, he would ask the audience if they wanted him to keep reading, or play a record. When the audience chose to hear the record, the record he cued up was a recording of him continuing to read The Great Gatsby from where he had left off."

 

Genius.

Mild very British (With one exception) humour.

 

 

But Andy Kaufman, in his own words, was not a comedian. He was more of an ironic humorist. He found humor in more unconventional things, and enjoyed pushing himself to the limit, and other people's buttons. I realize he is widely regarded as a comedian, but I think he wanted us to consider him as something different, and out of respect, I think we should. 

But yes, that bit, much like everything he did, was absolute genius. 

A bit plain? oh well good job we're all different

 

Flag Hippo, Flag Hippo, Flag Hippo......  That;s gonna really irritate me now!

I love Louis CK. He puts me in tears every time. Best one out there today IMO.

 

Sadly Mitch Hedberg is the late great Mitch Hedberg

 

It's really good

 

Tim Minchin, a rare occasion where he is standing up:

 

 

Somewhere between the messianic worship of Hicks as the ultimate truth-teller and the backlash of those claiming he is overrated and thus crap, there is a comedian who was very good at what he did and pushed stand-up in new and fruitful directions. On a personal level though, he doesn't tend to thrill me.

I worried about using that Lee clip because, like all of his work, it's best kept in context. Lee tends to do long shows on a central theme which slowly build towards an often rather profound climax. Taken out of context the pace can seem arduous (having not had time to adjust) and the more challenging elements (like the 'chiseling' bit) tend to lose some of their impact. My advice is to go to gofasterstripe.com and buy his 90's Comedian DVD, and watch 70-or-so minutes of the finest stand-up ever committed to film.

A lot of the stuff other people have posted doesn't really work for me either. Never enjoyed Shappi Khorsandi's stuff and I don't tend to like American stand-ups at all. In fact, there is a pretty obvious divide in this thread between British and US comedians. I'd take Sean Lock or Dylan Moran any day over any of the US stand-ups mentioned so far, including Hicks.

Finally, that duck rape bit was pretty weak, IMO. Sorry to bang on about Stewart Lee, but watch how he tackles the same subject matter in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28ZILUSQHz0#t=5m29s - this clip (it should start at about 5 and a half minutes in). He uses it as a way of exploring issues of religion, media accuracy and morality. The Irish bloke used it as an excuse to do a crude mime. Makes for a nice little comparison study, I think.

Proletariat: Thanks for finding that Ed Byrne clip, I thought it was hysterical.

 

 

This must be a truncated version he did for the show, live he expanded it immensely but I always admired him because you think it would get boring to do about a third of your show on Ironic but it wasn't at all, he really made it work. He also does a hilarious Eddie Vedder parody where he sings like Vedder and renders any song you like utterly imcomprehensible, as well as playing Pearl Jam songs and transcribing the lyrics phonetically for the audience.

Also saw Pablo Francisco- great clip but more as incredible voice work than comedy.

 

 

 

And here he is doing stand-up. Wait for the Nigerian accent speech.

 

Can't get much into Richard Pryor, what with all the recordings of crappy quality. As for Bill Hicks, I'm getting into him, though I don't always find him as funny as his live audience on the albums does. Mitch Hedberg and Steven Wright ... sorry, I'm not a fan of absurd one-/two-liners, though there are rare times when they could get me to chuckle.

 

 

Jim Jefferies

 

 

Steve Hugues

 

 

 

Not enough stand-up comedy science in this thread

 

Robin Ince

 

Marcus Brigstocke

 

Josie Long

 

Ben Goldacre

 

 

Dara O'Briain

 

 

I'd say the most impressive current-day comedian I've heard (and I've listened to lots of em) is undoubtedly Doug Stanhope.  He's like Bill Hicks squared.  Self-destructive and uninhibited to the point where I start to worry about him, but incredibly smart and right-on with his observations.  You feel like you're talking to a drunk (but lucid) friend at a wild party when he's on stage, emptying cathartic shovelfuls of bile about any topic that ticks him off, without sounding self-righteous, just sounding like an honest friend.

As far as standup goes, I love Sarah Silverman but my all time fave is Henry Rollins...though I don't know if he's technically considered standup or spoken word.  I've seen Henry 4 times and he never fails to put on a great show.

I never understood the appeal of Steve Martin I've seen countless of flicks featuring him in a supposedly funny character, yet he always fails to make me laugh. I kinda liked the Father Of The Bride movie(Yeah, well shoot me), but he wasn't remotely funny in that either.... 

I should give Sarah Silverman a listen. I've read that she has an awesome stand-up career.

Good call on cinema...Steve Martin films are very different animals compared to his standup.  It's like Monty Python, I love the Flying Circus TV episodes but think the movies are awful...they move so slow and except for a couple good lines, I just don't find much good there...seems they dumbed things down for the big screen.  Getting back to Steve Martin, his best comedy album was the 1st, 1977's "Let's Get Small" before he became popular...after that, seems everything went downhill...

There's quite a few Sarah stand up clips on youtube you can check out, and there's her 2005 film "Jesus is Magic" that's mostly stand up interspersed with some comedy sketches.  She also had a tv series for a couple seasons that was pretty uneven...though most of the best episodes were season 1.

I really liked Bobcat Goldthwait's stand up in the 80's.  I 1st saw him as the crazy biker in the Police Story comedy films and later checked out his stage act and thought he was great.

the worst one for me is Bill Bailey......i worked backstage at one of his gigs and he is a real arsehole......he aint what you see on telly thats for sure.