Saturday, August 08, 2009

Top Five Comedians

Courtesy of Gilder (and yes, the exclamation mark is compulsory!)

5. Frankie Boyle. Legendarily offensive, and all the better for it. Best in small doses I think



4. Milton Jones. Conversely, Milton Jones is best on his utterly surreal Radio 4 shows.



3. Mitch Benn. Is he primarily a comedian or a musician, or does it even really matter? Enormously versatile, clever and consistently funny.



2. Harry Hill. Who would have thunk that one of the very funniest programmes on tv would be on ITV on a Saturday tea time? Also worth seeking out some of Harry's earlier shows particular 'Harry Hill's Fruit Corner'



1. Richard Herring. By dint of sheer hard work and dogged persistence, Richard Herring is now one of best stand ups working today. He produces a daily blog, a weekly podcast, an annual Edinburgh show, books and dvds, a forthcoming internet topical sketch show as well as regular standup gigs. Watch him deal with a particularly bothersome heckler:

2 comments:

Anonymous Me said...

Those were fun! Milton Jones seems like the English version of Steven Wright, who would be in my top five list of comedians. The Richard Herring clip was great.

Adam Gilder said...

The only one of these I haven't seen very much of is Harry Hill, who is strangely probably the most famous of all of them.

Frankie Boyle seems to be manic in this run of Mock the Week, its like since saying that he is going to retire in the next few years he's loosened up and started laughing manically at things. His purple-faced yelp asking if no one else is afraid of the Chinese is probably a highlight for me.

I think Another Case of Milton Jones is one of my favourite radio comedies, I think linking his puns together with a storyline like that certainly helps counteract the feeling that you are just listening to a series of puns for no reason.

Mitch Benn's Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation song truly caught me off guard. I think I'd prefer Minchin or the Conchords in terms of musical comedy mind. Still, Mitch Benn is a stalwart.

I love Rich Herring as well, I should be in the front row in his Headmaster's Son DVD. I don't know how much of the audience they'll show though, the room was like a sauna and everyone just sat there marinading in their own melt. That was a good night.