• Absurdity
• Adrian Edmonson
• Al Murray
• Alan Davies
• Alan Partridge
• Alexei Sayle
• Alternative comedy
• Andrew Dice Clay
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• Black Books
• Black comedy
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• Blue comedy
• Bo Burnham
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• Brother Theodore
• Bruce McCulloch
• Bruno (character)
• Buster Keaton
• Carl Barron
• Carrot Top
• Category Comedy
• Catherine Tate
• Chappelle's Show
• Character comedy
• Chevy Chase
• Chip Esten
• Chris Farley
• Chris Rock
• Chris Rush
• Christian comedy
• Christopher Ryan
• Christopher Titus
• Clown
• Colin Mochrie
• Comedian
• Comedians
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• Comedic genres
• Comedy
• Comedy (drama)
• Comedy album
• Comedy club
• Comedy festival
• Comedy film
• Comedy horror
• Comedy music
• Comedy of remarriage
• Comedy rock
• Comedy-drama
• Comic novel
• Comic opera
• Comic timing
• Conan O'Brien
• Cringe comedy
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• Dad's Army
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• Daniel Tosh
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• Demetri Martin
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• George Carlin
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• War
• Wayne Brady
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• Wit
• Woody Allen
• Word play
• Zombie comedy
• 
  

• 
  Colorado
  Colorado (ⁱ/kɒləˈrædoʊ/ or /kɒləˈrɒdoʊ/) is the US state that encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, and the Mountain States. Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 22nd most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,116,796 on July 1, 2011, an increase of +1.74% since the 2010 United States Census.
  The state was named for the Colorado River, which early Spanish explorers named the Río Colorado for the red colored (Spanish: colorado) silt the river carried from the mountains. On August 1, 1876, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed a proclamation admitting Colorado as the 38th state. Colorado is nicknamed the "Centennial State" because it was admitted to the Union in 1876, the centennial year of the United States Declaration of Independence.
  
  wn.com/Colorado
• 
  Connecticut
  Connecticut (ⁱ/kəˈnɛtɨkət/) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south (with which it shares a water boundary in Long Island Sound).
  Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately bisects the state. Its capital city is Hartford. Much of southern and western Connecticut (along with the majority of the state's population) is part of the New York metropolitan area; three of Connecticut's eight counties are statistically included in the New York City combined statistical area, the same area is widely referred to as the Tri-State area. Connecticut's center of population is in Cheshire, New Haven County, which is also located within the Tri-State area.
  Connecticut is the 3rd least extensive, the 29th most populous, and 4th most densely populated of the 50 United States. Called the Constitution State, Nutmeg State, and "The Land of Steady Habits", Connecticut was influential in the development of the federal government of the United States.
  
  wn.com/Connecticut
• 
  South Korea
  South Korea ( listen), officially the Republic of Korea (Hangul: 대한민국; Hanja: 大韓民國; Daehan Minguk  listen), is a sovereign state in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. The name "Korea" is derived from Goryeo, a dynasty which ruled in the Middle Ages (an initial "G" in Korean is pronounced like an English "K").
  Its neighbors are China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the Korea Strait to the south. South Korea lies in the north temperate zone with a predominantly mountainous terrain. It covers a total area of 99,392 square kilometers and has a population of almost 50 million. The capital and largest city is Seoul, with a population of 9,794,304.
  Archaeological findings show that the Korean Peninsula was occupied by the Lower Paleolithic period.Korean history begins with the founding of Gojoseon in 2333 BC by the legendary Dan-gun. Following the unification of the Three Kingdoms of Korea under Silla 668 AD, Korea went through the Goryeo Dynasty and Joseon Dynasty as one nation until the end of the Korean Empire in 1910, when it was annexed by Japan. After liberation and occupation by Soviet and U.S. forces at the end of World War II, the nation was divided into North and South Korea. The latter was established in 1948 as a democracy, though political turmoil and times of military rule and martial law characterized much of the period until the foundation of the Sixth Republic in 1987.
  
  wn.com/South_Korea
• 
  Virginia
  Virginia (ⁱ/vərˈdʒɪnjə/), officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state located in the South Atlantic region of the United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond; Virginia Beach is the most populous city and Fairfax County the most populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's population is over eight million.
  The area's history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607 the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent New World English colony. Slave labor and the land acquired from displaced Native American tribes each played a significant role in the colony's early politics and plantation economy. Virginia was one of the 13 Colonies in the American Revolution and joined the Confederacy in the American Civil War, during which Richmond was made the Confederate capital and Virginia's northwestern counties separated to form the state of West Virginia. Although the Commonwealth was under conservative single-party rule for nearly a century following Reconstruction, both major national parties are competitive in modern Virginia.
  
  wn.com/Virginia

• 
  Al Murray
  Alastair James Hay "Al" Murray (born 10 May 1968), is a British comedian best known for his stand-up persona, The Pub Landlord, a stereotypical xenophobic public house licensee. In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy. In 2007 he was voted the 16th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and again in the updated 2010 list as the 25th greatest stand-up comic.
  Murray was born in Stewkley, Buckinghamshire, the son of Lieutenant Colonel Ingram Bernard Hay Murray (through whom he is a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of John Murray, 3rd Duke of Atholl) and Juliet Anne Thackeray Ritchie (through whom he is a great-great-great-grandson of William Makepeace Thackeray). His grandfather was diplomat Sir Ralph Murray. Murray attended Bedford School and is a graduate of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he studied modern history. There he performed in the comedy group, the Oxford Revue in a show directed by Stewart Lee.
  Murray married Amber, in 2000. The couple, who have two daughters, Scarlett and Willow, separated in 2008.
  
  wn.com/Al_Murray
• 
  Alan Davies
  Alan Roger Davies (born 6 March 1966) is an English comedian, writer and actor best known for starring in the TV mystery series Jonathan Creek and as the permanent panellist on the TV panel show QI. He also appeared in the teen comedy film Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.
  Davies was born in Loughton, Essex. His childhood years were spent in Chingford. Davies' mother died when he was six; he was subsequently raised along with an older brother and younger sister by his father, an accountant.^{[citation needed]}
  Davies attended Staples Road School in Loughton and was privately educated at the independent Bancroft's School in Woodford Green, where he gained eight O-Levels. He then moved on to Loughton College of Further Education where he gained four more O-Levels and two A-Levels (Communications & Theatre Studies). He graduated in Drama from the University of Kent in 1988 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the university in 2003.
  Davies began performing stand-up comedy in 1988 at the Whitstable Labour Club. In 1991, he was named Time Out's Best Young Comic. He continued touring and performing in the UK and Australia, winning the Edinburgh Festival Critics Award for Comedy in 1994. That show was released on video and audio cassette in 1995 as Alan Davies Live at the Lyric recorded at the Lyric Theatre as part of the Perrier Pick of the Fringe season in October 1994.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Davies
• Alan Partridge
  Alan Gordon Partridge OBE (Honour Removed) is a fictional radio and television presenter portrayed by English comedian Steve Coogan and invented by Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring for the BBC Radio 4 programme On The Hour. A parody of both sports commentators and chat show presenters, among others, the character has appeared in two radio series, three television series and numerous TV and radio specials, including appearances on BBC's Comic Relief, which have followed the rise and fall of his career.
  Whereas many of his personality defects are apparent in his appearances in shows such as The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, it is largely from I'm Alan Partridge onwards that his creators began to explore his personality in depth, and most of the observations that follow originated in that show.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Partridge
• Alexei Sayle
  Alexei David Sayle (born 7 August 1952) is a British stand-up comedian, actor and author. He was a central part of the alternative comedy circuit in the early 1980s. He was voted the 18th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-ups in 2007. In the updated 2010 poll he came 72nd.
  Much of Sayle's humour is in the tradition of Spike Milligan and Monty Python, with riffs based on absurd and surreal premises. His act is noted for its cynicism and political awareness, as well as physical comedy.
  Sayle was born and raised in Anfield, Liverpool, the son of Molly (Malka) Sayle (née Mendelson), a pools clerk, and Joseph Henry Sayle, a railway worker, both of whom were members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Sayle's mother was of Lithuanian Jewish descent, and some members of his immediate family were very devout Jews, as he mentioned on the BBC Radio 4 programme Great Lives when he nominated the Palestinian rights advocate, Edward Said on the programme. In the aftermath of the May 1968 French uprising, he joined the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). In later years he has said that, while no longer active in left politics, ‘I still would adhere to those philosophical and economic ideas of Marxism that I got when I was sixteen...it’s seemed to me as true now as it did then...’. From 1964-1969 he attended Alsop High School in Walton, and was expelled half way through sixth form. After that, Sayle took a foundation course in art at Southport, before attending Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. He attended Garnett College, Roehampton, a training college for teachers in Further Education. He has been married to Linda Rawsthorn since 1974.
  
  wn.com/Alexei_Sayle
• Andrew Dice Clay
  Andrew Dice Clay (born Andrew Clay Silverstein; September 29, 1957) is an American comedian and actor who played the lead role in the film The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.
  Clay has been in several movies and has released a number of stand-up albums. He is the only comedian in history to sell out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row, a feat he accomplished in 1990.
  Clay was born in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, the son of Doris and Fred Silverstein, who worked in real estate sales. Clay is of Jewish heritage. Clay was doing impressions and entertaining his family in the living room by the time he was 5. He was a fairly proficient drummer at James Madison High School, and played bar mitzvahs and casual dates as "Clay Silvers."
  In 1978, he auditioned at Pips, a local comedy club in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, doing comedic impressions, then headlined there the following week as "Andrew Clay." His act at the time included an impression of John Travolta in Grease and Jerry Lewis as The Nutty Professor. Clay graduated to the major Manhattan comedy clubs, including Budd Friedman's The Improv, Catch a Rising Star and Dangerfield's. His move to Los Angeles came in 1980. He was "adopted" there by Mitzi Shore, owner of the famed Comedy Store. His work at the Store led to sitcom appearances on M*A*S*H and Diff'rent Strokes. He later landed roles in movies such as Making the Grade (1984) and Pretty in Pink (1986).
  
  wn.com/Andrew_Dice_Clay
• 
  Andy Hamilton
  Andrew Neil Hamilton (born 28 May 1954) is a British comedian, game show panellist, television director, comedy screenwriter and radio dramatist.
  Hamilton was born in Fulham, south-west London. He has only four fingers and no thumb on his right hand. Hamilton is 5 ft 3ins tall. He was educated at a grammar school, and later read English at Downing College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Cambridge University Light Entertainment Society (CULES).
  Hamilton first came to notice while performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the 1970s.
  His early radio work, mostly on BBC Radio 4 included Week Ending, The News Huddlines and The Million Pound Radio Show (with Nick Revell). He has since appeared regularly in Chelmsford 123, Have I Got News for You, The News Quiz, QI, and If I Ruled the World. Hamilton is frequently invited as a panellist on The News Quiz and as a guest panellist on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. His voice is very similar to that of Jeremy Hardy, another regular on these two shows.
  
  wn.com/Andy_Hamilton
• Andy Kaufman
  Andrew Geoffrey "Andy" Kaufman (January 17, 1949 – May 16, 1984) was an American entertainer, actor and performance artist. While often referred to as a comedian, Kaufman did not consider himself to be one. He disdained telling jokes and engaging in comedy as it was traditionally understood, referring to himself instead as a "song-and-dance man." Elaborate hoaxes and pranks were major elements of his career. His act maintains a cult following and he continues to be respected among comedians for his original material, performance style, and unflinching commitment to character.
  Kaufman was born in New York City, on January 17, 1949, the first son of Janice (née Bernstein) and Stanley Kaufman. He grew up in a middle-class Jewish family, in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, and began performing at age nine. He attended the now defunct two-year Grahm Junior College, in Boston, graduating in 1971. He then began performing stand-up comedy at various small clubs along the East Coast.
  Kaufman first caught major attention with a character known as Foreign Man, who claimed to be from Caspiar (a fictional island in the Caspian Sea) and would appear on the stage of comedy clubs to play a recording of the theme from the Mighty Mouse cartoon show and sing only the chorus. He would proceed to tell a few jokes and perform a number of impersonations such as television character Archie Bunker or President Richard Nixon. Some variations of this performance were broadcast in the first season of Saturday Night Live; the Mighty Mouse number was featured in the October 11, 1975 premiere, while the joke-telling and Bunker impression were included in the November 8 broadcast that same fall.
  
  wn.com/Andy_Kaufman
• 
  Aubrey Plaza
  Aubrey Christina Plaza (born June 26, 1984) is an American actress and comedian who has gained popularity through her deadpan-style comedy, and currently co-stars in Parks and Recreation as April Ludgate.
  Plaza was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the daughter of Bernadette, an attorney, and David Plaza, a financial advisor. She has two younger sisters, Renee and Natalie, the latter of whom she uses as inspiration for her teenage character April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation.
  Plaza was named after the song "Aubrey" by Bread. Her father is Puerto Rican and her mother is of Irish and English descent. Plaza has stated: "I was like the only diverse kid in my high school, and I'm half-Puerto Rican. But yeah, I have a huge family and tons of cousins in Puerto Rico." She participated in productions with the Wilmington Drama League.
  Plaza graduated from Ursuline Academy in 2002, and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2006. While at NYU in 2004, Plaza suffered a stroke that caused temporary paralysis and expressive aphasia, but she has fully recovered.
  
  wn.com/Aubrey_Plaza
• 
  Ben Elton
  Benjamin Charles "Ben" Elton (born 3 May 1959) is an English-Australian comedian, author, playwright and director. He was at the forefront of the British alternative comedy movement of the 1980s, as a writer on such cult series as The Young Ones and Blackadder, as well as also a successful stand-up comedian on stage and TV. He was a high-profile frontman of 1980s left-wing political satire. Since then he has published thirteen novels and more lately become known for writing the musical We Will Rock You (2002) and Love Never Dies (2010), the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera.
  Elton was born in Catford, London, the son of Mary (Foster), an English teacher, and physicist and educational researcher Professor Lewis Elton. He is the nephew of the historian Sir G. R. Elton. Elton's father is of German Jewish descent and his mother is of English background. He studied at Stillness Junior School and Godalming Grammar School in Surrey, South Warwickshire College in Stratford-upon-Avon and the University of Manchester. Elton is married to Sophia Gare (an Australian saxophonist) and has three children (two sons and one daughter). He lives in Fremantle, Western Australia and in East Sussex, England. Elton has had dual British/Australian citizenship since 2004.
  
  wn.com/Ben_Elton
• 
  Bernard Manning
  Bernard John Manning (13 August 1930 – 18 June 2007) was an English comedian and nightclub owner. He was born and raised in Manchester in northwest England.
  Manning told irreverent jokes about people from all walks of life, and his act was best known for material involving ethnic stereotypes and minority groups. This led to frequent criticism that his act was racist, which he always denied, saying: "I tell jokes. You never take a joke seriously." Manning became famous on British television during the 1970s, appearing on shows including The Comedians and The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club. The controversy surrounding his act meant that Manning was rarely seen on television in the later part of his career, but he continued to perform in theatres and pubs until his death.
  Manning was born in the Ancoats district of Manchester. He had Russian Jewish ancestry on his father's side, as well as roots in Ireland, and was raised a "strict Catholic". He named his house in Alkrington, Greater Manchester "Shalom," the Hebrew word for "peace."
  
  wn.com/Bernard_Manning
• 
  Bill Bailey
  Bill Bailey (born Mark Bailey; 13 January 1964) is an English comedian, musician and actor. As well as his extensive stand-up work, Bailey is well known for his role in Black Books and his appearances on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You, and QI.
  Bailey was listed by the Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy in 2003. In 2007 and again in 2010, he was voted the 7th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups.
  Bailey was born in Bath, Somerset and spent most of his childhood in Keynsham, a town situated between Bath and Bristol in the West of England. His father was a medical practitioner and his mother was a hospital ward sister. His maternal grandparents lived in an annexe, built on the side of the house by his maternal grandfather who was a stonemason and builder. Two rooms at the front of the family house were for his father's surgery.
  Bailey was educated at King Edward's School, an independent school in Bath where he was initially a highly academic pupil winning most of the prizes. However, at about the age of 15 years, he started to become distracted from school work when he realised the thrill of performance as a member of a school band called Behind Closed Doors, which played mostly original work. He was the only pupil at his school to study A-level music and he passed with an A grade. He also claims to have been good at sport (captain of KES 2nd XI cricket team 1982), which often surprised his teachers. He would often combine music and sport by leading the singing on the long coach trip back from away rugby fixtures. It was here that he was given his nickname Bill by his music teacher, Ian Phipps, for being able to play the song "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey" so well on the guitar.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Bailey
• 
  Bill Cosby
  William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. (born July 12, 1937) is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the situation comedy The Bill Cosby Show. He was one of the major characters on the children's television series The Electric Company for its first two seasons, and created the educational cartoon comedy series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, about a group of young friends growing up in the city. Cosby has also acted in a number of films.
  During the 1980s, Cosby produced and starred in what is considered to be one of the decade's defining sitcoms, The Cosby Show, which aired eight seasons from 1984 to 1992. The sitcom highlighted the experiences and growth of an affluent African-American family. He also produced the spin-off sitcom A Different World, which became second to The Cosby Show in ratings. He starred in the sitcom Cosby from 1996 to 2000 and hosted Kids Say the Darndest Things for two seasons.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Cosby
• Bill Hicks
  William Melvin "Bill" Hicks (December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and musician. His material largely consisted of general discussions about society, religion, politics, philosophy, and personal issues. Hicks' material was often controversial and steeped in dark comedy. In both his stand-up performances and during interviews, he often criticized consumerism, superficiality, mediocrity, and banality within the media and popular culture, describing them as oppressive tools of the ruling class, meant to "keep people stupid and apathetic".
  Hicks was 16 years old when he started performing stand-up comedy at the Comedy Workshop in Houston, Texas, in 1978. During the 1980s he toured the United States extensively and performed a number of high profile television appearances. It was in the UK, however, where Hicks first amassed a significant fan base, packing large venues with his 1991 tour. Hicks died of pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the age of 32. In the years after his death, his work and legacy achieved acclaim in creative circles. In 2007 he was voted the fourth-greatest stand-up comic on the UK's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups on Channel 4, and appeared again in the updated 2010 list as the fourth-greatest comic.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Hicks
• 
  Bill Maher
  William "Bill" Maher, Jr. ( /ˈmɑːr/; born January 20, 1956) is an American stand-up comedian, television host, political commentator, author, and actor. Before his current role as the host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher hosted a similar late-night talk show called Politically Incorrect originally on Comedy Central and later on ABC.
  Maher is known for his political satire and sociopolitical commentary, which targets a wide swath of topics including religion, politics, bureaucracies of many kinds, political correctness, the mass media, greed among people and persons in positions of high political and social power, and the lack of intellectual curiosity in the electorate. He supports the legalization of marijuana and same-sex marriage, and serves on the board of PETA. He is also a critic of religion and is an advisory board member of Project Reason, a foundation to promote scientific knowledge and secular values within society. In 2005, Maher ranked at number 38 on Comedy Central's 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time. Bill Maher received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star on September 14, 2010.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Maher
• 
  Bill Murray
  William James "Bill" Murray (born September 21, 1950) is an American actor, comedian and golfer. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack (1980), Ghostbusters (1984), and Groundhog Day (1993). Murray gained additional critical acclaim later in his career, starring in Lost in Translation (2003), that earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination, and a series of films directed by Wes Anderson, including Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012).
  Murray was born and raised in Wilmette, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago, the son of Lucille (née Collins), a mail room clerk, and Edward Joseph Murray II, a lumber salesman. Murray's father died in 1967 from complications of diabetes when Bill was 17 years old. Murray, along with his eight siblings, was raised in an Irish American family. Three of his siblings are actors: John Murray, Joel Murray and Brian Doyle-Murray. A sister, Nancy, is an Adrian Dominican nun in Michigan, who has traveled the United States in a one-woman programme, portraying St. Catherine of Siena.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Murray
• 
  Billy Connolly
  William "Billy" Connolly, Jr., CBE (born 24 November 1942) is a Scottish comedian, musician, presenter and actor. He is sometimes known, especially in his native Scotland, by the nickname 'The Big Yin' ('The Big One'). His first trade, in the early 1960s, was as a welder (specifically a boilermaker) in the Glasgow shipyards, but he gave it up towards the end of the decade to pursue a career as a folk singer in the Humblebums and subsequently as a soloist. In the early 1970s, he made the transition from folk-singer with a comedic persona to full-fledged comedian.
  Connolly is also an actor, and has appeared in such films as Indecent Proposal (1993); Muppet Treasure Island (1996); Mrs. Brown (1997), for which he was nominated for a BAFTA; The Boondock Saints (1999); The Man Who Sued God (2001); Water (1985); The Last Samurai (2003); Timeline (2003); Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004); Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006); Open Season (2006); The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008); and Open Season 2 (2008). Connolly reprised his role as Noah "Il Duce" MacManus in The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. Connolly appears as the King of Lilliput in the 2010 remake of Gulliver′s Travels.
  
  wn.com/Billy_Connolly
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  Bo Burnham
  Robert "Bo" Burnham (born August 21, 1990 (1990-08-21)) is an American comedian, singer-songwriter, musician, actor, and Internet celebrity. Writing comedic and satirical songs with a politically incorrect slant, he achieved fame when his YouTube videos took off and received more than 70 million views by October 2010. Comedy Central Records released his first EP (Bo Fo Sho, June 2008) and his first two full-length albums (Bo Burnham in March 2009 and Words Words Words in October 2010). On January 29, 2011, it was announced that Burnham finished #1 overall in voting in 2011's Comedy Central Stand-up Showdown.
  Bo Burnham was born the youngest of three on August 21, 1990 to Patricia and Scott Burnham.
  In February 2008, Patricia was a staff nurse at Burnham's school, and Scott owned a North Shore, Massachusetts construction company. Their two older children, Pete and Samm, were concurrently enrolled in their third and second years at Cornell University and Suffolk Law School, respectively.
  Burnham attended the all-boys' Catholic high school, St. John's Preparatory School in Danvers, Massachusetts, where he was on the school honor roll and was involved in theatre and the campus ministry program. The school's assistant principal, Wendy Olson, remarked in a February 2008 interview that while "[t]he Bo on YouTube is not the Bo we see around here, [...] no one at St. John's is surprised at his creativity or that he's pursuing his dream, which is to make a name for himself." Burnham graduated from St. John's in Spring 2008.
  
  wn.com/Bo_Burnham
• Bob Rivers
  Bob Rivers is a well-known American rock and roll radio on air personality in the Pacific Northwest as well as a prolific producer of parody songs, most famous for his Christmas song parodies.
  Rivers' most recent radio program, The Bob Rivers Show with Bob, Spike and Joe, is broadcast on Seattle oldies station KJR-FM after a previous iteration was aired on another local Seattle radio station KZOK-FM, ending in 2010.
  Previously, between late 1989 and August 2000, the show aired on Seattle, Washington Active Rock radio station KISW-FM under the title Bob Rivers Twisted Radio. The Bob Rivers Show was also simulcast on Portland, Oregon "1980s Rock Hits" radio station KVMX (now KXJM) "Mix 107.5" from 20 March 2006 until 5 October 2006, when the station dropped the morning show and switched to a Rhythmic Adult Contemporary format under the new branding "Movin' 107.5".
  Bob Rivers spent almost 6 years at WAAF in Worcester, Massachusetts (in the Boston market), as part of their successful Bob and Zip morning show with fellow on air personality Peter "Zip" Zipfel.
  
  wn.com/Bob_Rivers
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  Bob Saget
  Robert Lane "Bob" Saget (born May 17, 1956) is an American stand-up comedian, actor and television host. Although he is best known for his family-friendly roles as Danny Tanner in Full House and the original host of America's Funniest Home Videos, Saget is also known for his very vulgar stand-up routine.
  Saget was born in Philadelphia to Jewish parents. His father, Benjamin, was a supermarket executive, and his mother, Rosalyn, was a hospital administrator. Saget lived in Norfolk, Virginia, and Encino, California, before moving back to Philadelphia and graduating from Abington Senior High School. Saget originally intended to become a doctor, but his Honors English teacher, Elaine Zimmerman, saw his creative potential and urged him to seek a career in films.
  He attended Temple University's film school, where he created Through Adam's Eyes, a black-and-white film about a boy who received reconstructive facial surgery, and was honored with an award of merit in the Student Academy Awards. He graduated with a B.A. in 1978. Saget intended to take graduate courses at the University of Southern California but quit a few days later. Saget describes himself at the time in an article by Glenn Esterly in the 1990 Saturday Evening Post: "I was a cocky, overweight twenty-two-year-old. Then I had a gangrenous appendix taken out, almost died, and I got over being cocky or overweight." Saget talked about his burst appendix on Anytime with Bob Kushell, saying that it happened on the Fourth of July, at the UCLASS Medical Center and that they at first just iced the area for seven hours before taking it out and finding that it had become gangrenous. Saget credits the band Autistico for getting him through the tough times.
  
  wn.com/Bob_Saget
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  Brad Sherwood
  Bradley "Brad" Sherwood (born November 24, 1964) is an American actor and comedian. He has worked in entertainment as an actor, comedian, singer, writer, and producer.
  Sherwood was born in Chicago, Illinois and later grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He began acting at the age of eight. He attended Santa Fe Preparatory School and graduated from the Young Puffaz Academy. He went on to graduate from Wright State University with a BFA in Acting. His first acting job was his recurring role on six episodes of L.A. Law. In 1994-1995, Brad was a cast member on the syndicated, sketch-comedy series The Newz.
  In 1992, Sherwood became a recurring performer on three seasons of the British version of the award-winning improvisational comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway?. He was the only actor to make it on the cast from the Los Angeles auditions. He starred on all eight seasons of the American, Emmy nominated version of Whose Line on ABC. Some people and cartoon characters he impersonated were Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Fred Schneider, Tom Arnold, Roger Daltrey, Willie Nelson, Yogi Bear, Jimmy Stewart and Jim Backus.
  
  wn.com/Brad_Sherwood
• Brother Theodore
  Brother Theodore (November 11, 1906 – April 5, 2001), born Theodore Gottlieb, was a German-American monologuist and comedian known for rambling, stream-of-consciousness dialogues which he called "stand-up tragedy".
  He was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, where his father was a magazine publisher. Theodore attended the University of Cologne. At age 32, under Nazi rule, he was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp until he signed over his family's fortune for one Reichsmark. After being deported for chess hustling from Switzerland he went to Austria where Albert Einstein, a family friend and alleged lover of his mother, helped him escape to the United States.
  He worked as a janitor at Stanford University, where he demonstrated his prowess at chess by beating 30 professors simultaneously, and later became a dockworker in San Francisco. He played a bit part in Orson Welles's 1946 movie The Stranger. This was one of the several movie appearances he made beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1990s. These were mostly small parts in B-movies, although he did provide the voice of Gollum in the 1977 made-for-television animated version of The Hobbit and the follow-up adaptation of The Return of the King. He also voiced Ruhk - Mommy Fortuna's assistant and carnival barker in The Last Unicorn.
  
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  Bruce McCulloch
  Bruce Ian McCulloch (born May 12, 1961) is a Canadian actor, writer, comedian, and film director. McCulloch is best known for his work as a member of The Kids in the Hall, a popular Canadian comedy troupe, and as a writer for Saturday Night Live. McCulloch has also appeared on series such as Twitch City and Gilmore Girls. He directed the films Dog Park, Stealing Harvard and Superstar.
  He has also written and directed the romantic comedy Comeback Season which toured film festivals before its release on DVD in 2007. He was the writer of ABC's Carpoolers.
  McCulloch was born in Edmonton, Alberta. He attended Strathcona Composite High School in Edmonton and competed in both track-and-field and swimming, winning two individual provincial titles. McCulloch is a graduate of Mount Royal College located in Calgary, Alberta.
  As a member of The Kids in the Hall comedy troupe, McCulloch frequently wrote surreal monologues, films or songs. He also directed several of the filmed sketches. Memorable characters included the Flying Pig, Cabbage Head, talkative schoolchild Gavin, pop starlet Tammy, and grumpy middle-aged man Gordon.
  
  wn.com/Bruce_McCulloch
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  Buster Keaton
  Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".
  Buster Keaton (his lifelong stage name) was recognized as the seventh-greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Keaton the 21st-greatest male star of all time. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, [when] he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies."
  Orson Welles stated that Keaton's The General is "the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made."
  A 2002 worldwide poll by Sight & Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton films received votes in the magazine's survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.
  
  wn.com/Buster_Keaton
• Carl Barron
  Carl Barron (born 11 June 1964) is an Australian comedian. His style is based on observational humour. He was born in Longreach, Queensland, the son of a sheep shearer, and formerly worked as an apprentice roof tiler. Barron has released three DVDs, entitled Carl Barron LIVE!, Carl Barron: Whatever Comes Next and Carl Barron: Walking Down The Street. In November 2010 a box set entitled "All The Stuff I've Done So Far" was released, which included the three previous titles, plus a documentary and outtakes. In 1993 he was voted 'Comic of the Year' and 'Best Up and Coming Talent' and has since made many TV appearances in commercials and on shows such as Rove and Thank God You're Here. Barron made his first television appearance on the NRL Footy Show on the 17th of April, 1997.
  One of his perpetual jokes is that several people have mistaken him for people such as Australian musician Paul Kelly. He once stated "I reckon if Paul Kelly and Gandhi had a baby, I'd be it!". He has regularly sold-out shows at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Barron has been very successful in Australia with the DVD release of Carl Barron LIVE! going four times platinum, making it the most successful Australian comedy DVD in Australian history. He has appeared in Good News Week, Out of the Question, Thank God You're Here and several episodes of Rove.
  
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  Carrot Top
  Scott Thompson (born February 25, 1965), better known by his stage name Carrot Top, is an American comedian known for his bright red hair, prop comedy, and self-deprecating humor.
  Scott Thompson lived in Cocoa, Florida, during part of his youth. In 1983, he graduated from Cocoa High School and enrolled later that year at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. While still a freshman at Florida Atlantic, he appeared in his first standup comedy routine with Josh Abelson. Two months later, he performed on campus at an open-mic night.
  Carrot Top has appeared in the television programs Larry the Cable Guy's Christmas Spectacular, Gene Simmons Family Jewels, Space Ghost Coast To Coast, Criss Angel Mindfreak, Scrubs (2001), George Lopez, and Tugger: The Jeep 4x4 Who Wanted to Fly (2005). His movie roles include the 1998 film Chairman of The Board, and he also served as a spokesman in commercials for 1-800-CALL-ATT. In 2002, he recorded a commentary track for the Roger Avary film The Rules of Attraction. In 2006, Carrot Top appeared in the Reno 911! episode "Weigel's Pregnant" as an enraged version of himself who trashed his hotel room, resisted arrest and stole a police car. In 2008, he was a guest judge for NBC's Last Comic Standing in a contest wherein the participants had to perform prop comedy at a Bed, Bath and Beyond, using store items with only an hour to prepare.
  
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  Catherine Tate
  Catherine Tate (born Catherine Ford on 12 May 1968) is an English actress, writer and comedienne. She has won numerous awards for her work on the sketch comedy series The Catherine Tate Show as well as being nominated for an International Emmy Award and seven BAFTA Awards. Following the success of The Catherine Tate Show, Tate played Donna Noble in the 2006 Christmas special of Doctor Who and later reprised her role, becoming the Doctor's companion for the fourth series in 2008. In 2011, she began a recurring role as Nellie Bertram on The Office.
  Tate was born in Bloomsbury and brought up in the Brunswick Centre. Her mother, Josephine, was a florist, and Tate has said that the character of Margaret in The Catherine Tate Show, who shrieks at the slightest of disturbances, is based largely on Josephine.
  Tate never knew her father, as he left very early on in her life, and consequently, she was brought up in a female-dominated environment, being cared for by her mother, grandmother and her godparents. As a child, Tate suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder which centred on word association. For example, Tate was not able to leave a jumper on the floor or it might have brought misfortune to her mother whose name began with the letter "J" like jumper.
  
  wn.com/Catherine_Tate
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  Chevy Chase
  Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase (/ˈtʃɛvi/; born October 8, 1943) is an American comedian, writer, and television and film actor. Born into a prominent New York family, Chase worked a plethora of odd jobs before moving into comedy acting with National Lampoon. He quickly became a key cast member in the inaugural season of Saturday Night Live, where his Weekend Update skit soon became a staple of the show. Chase is also well known for his portrayal of the character Clark Griswold in four National Lampoon's Vacation films, and for his roles in other successful comedies such as Caddyshack (1980), Fletch (1985), and ¡Three Amigos! (1986). He has hosted the Academy Awards twice (1987 and 1988) and briefly had his own late-night talk show, The Chevy Chase Show. Since 2009, he has appeared as Pierce Hawthorne on the NBC comedy series Community.
  Chase was born in Lower Manhattan, New York City. His father, Edward Tinsley "Ned" Chase, was a prominent Manhattan book editor and magazine writer. His mother, Cathalene Parker (née Browning), a concert pianist and librettist, was the daughter of Miles Browning, who served a critical role at the Battle of Midway in World War II; she was adopted as a child by her stepfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane, heir to Crane Plumbing, and took the name Cathalene Crane. As a child, Chase vacationed at Castle Hill, the Cranes' summer estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  Chip Esten
  Charles Esten Puskar III (born September 9, 1965) professionally known as Chip Esten, is an American comedian, actor and singer known for his appearances on the improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway?.
  Esten is known by his nickname "Chip" in improv comedy shows but is always credited as "Charles Esten".
  Esten was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but moved to Alexandria, Virginia at age 9. He attended T.C. Williams High School and the College of William and Mary, where he was a brother of Theta Delta Chi. At William and Mary, he was the lead vocalist in the band N'est Pas from 1985 until 1988, one year after his graduation. After graduating from college and marrying his wife, Esten moved to the United Kingdom to make his theatrical debut, winning massive acclaim for his title role in the musical Buddy in the early 1990's.
  In 1992, the makers of Whose Line Is It Anyway? asked him to audition for an episode, which he did successfully. Consequently, Esten made his debut on the Channel 4 show in the fourth series and "won" the episode. He subsequently appeared in more episodes later the same year when the show did a run in New York. At the time, the show needed a second specialist improvisational singer to fill in for Mike McShane.
  
  wn.com/Chip_Esten
• Chris Farley
  Christopher Crosby "Chris" Farley (February 15, 1964 – December 18, 1997) was an American comedian and actor. Farley was a member of Chicago's Second City Theatre and cast member of the hit NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live between 1990 and 1995. Farley and Chris Rock were introduced as two of the show's new cast members in early 1990. Like his idol, John Belushi, Farley died of a speedball overdose at the age of 33. On August 26, 2005, Farley was posthumously awarded the 2,289th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which is located in front of iO West.
  Farley was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Mary Anne (née Crosby), a housewife, and Thomas "Tom" Farley, Sr., who owned an oil company. He had four siblings: Tom Jr., Kevin, John, and Barbara. His cousin, Jim, is a vice president at Ford Motor Company. Farley's family is traditionally Irish Catholic, and Farley and his siblings attended Catholic schools in his hometown, including Edgewood High School of the Sacred Heart. According to Joel Murray, a fellow Second City cast member, Chris would "always make it to Mass". Many of his summers were spent as a camper and counselor at Red Arrow Camp, near Minocqua, Wisconsin.
  
  wn.com/Chris_Farley
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  Chris Rock
  Christopher Julius "Chris" Rock III (born February 7, 1965) is an American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director.
  After working as a standup comic and appearing in small film roles, Rock came to wider prominence as as a cast member of Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s. He went on to more prominent film roles, and a series of acclaimed comedy specials for HBO.
  He was voted in the US as the 5th greatest stand-up comedian of all time by Comedy Central. He was also voted in the UK as the 9th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups in 2007, and again in the updated 2010 list as the 8th greatest stand-up comic.
  Rock was born in Andrews, South Carolina. Shortly after his birth, his parents moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. A few years later, they relocated and settled in the working-class area of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His mother, Rosalie (née Tingman), was a teacher and social worker for the mentally handicapped; his father, Julius Rock, was a former truck driver and newspaper deliveryman. Julius died in 1988 after ulcer surgery. His younger brothers Tony, Kenny and Jordan are also in the entertainment business. His older half-brother, Charles, died in 2006 after a long struggle with alcoholism. Rock has said that he was influenced by the performing style of his paternal grandfather, Allen Rock, a preacher.
  
  wn.com/Chris_Rock
• Chris Rush
  Chris Rush (born February 11, 1948) is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor, radio personality and author. He is best known for his stand-up routines and albums along with being a writer and editor on the satirical publication National Lampoon Magazine.
  Rush was born in Brooklyn, New York. He is of Italian descent and was raised in the Roman Catholic faith. He attended Brooklyn Technical High School^{[citation needed]} and graduated from City College of New York in 1968. Before becoming a comedian Rush was a molecular biologist, working at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital for two years. He embarked on a professional comedy career following an open mic night at a comedy club.
  Rush is a conservationist and supporter of Greenpeace. Though raised in the Catholic faith he left the church when in the seventh grade. He considers himself to be a Taoist and can be seen wearing the Yin and Yang symbol on his shirt during his performances.
  Chris Rush wrote for National Lampoon Magazine in the early 1970s. making his first appearance in the August 1970 issue. During his time at Lampoon he was involved in another comedy magazine titled Drool, which came out with only one issue in 1972. He left the magazine when he was signed to Atlantic Records by Ahmet Ertegun to release his first comedy album First Rush in 1973. In 1974 he appeared in yet another magazine titled Harpoon.
  
  wn.com/Chris_Rush
• Christopher Ryan
  Christopher Ryan (born 25 January 1950) is an English actor. Ryan is perhaps best known for his role as Mike "The Cool Person" in the BBC comedy series The Young Ones.
  Ryan was born in Bayswater, London and trained at East 15 Acting School from 1968 to 1971. He began his professional acting career with Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1971.
  Ryan was the only Young Ones cast member who was not already well known in British comedy circles; he was a last-minute replacement for Peter Richardson, for whom the role of "straight man" Mike was originally intended along with The Comic Strip members Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Alexei Sayle.
  He played Lucky in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot at the Queen's Theatre in the West End in 1991, alongside Mayall and Edmondson. Ryan later played Dave Hedgehog in Bottom and Marshall Turtle, one of Edina's unloved ex-husbands on Absolutely Fabulous. He has also appeared in two major sitcoms: he played one of the Driscoll brothers in an episode of Only Fools And Horses and spin-off The Green Green Grass, a pair of identical twin builders in the One Foot in the Grave episode "Hole In The Sky" and also a plumber in the episode "The Valley of Fear". He also appeared in Mr. Bean Goes Back To School, in two episodes of My Family, in Saxondale. Ryan also joined up again with Jennifer Saunders in two episodes of The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle.
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Ryan
• Christopher Titus
  Christopher Todd Titus (born October 1, 1964) is an American comedian and actor. He grew up in Newark, California. Titus came to national attention with the eponymous FOX show Titus, of which he was the star, executive producer and co-creator. Time called the show "brutal, hilarious and audacious", while Newsday called him "TV's most original comic voice since Seinfeld". He is also a stand-up comedian whose act revolves around his dysfunctional family and shocking life experiences.
  Titus was born in Castro Valley, California to Ken and Juanita C. (née Holmes) Titus. His parents divorced when he was a young child, and he was raised largely by his father, Ken, a judgmental, chain-smoking, hard drinker who was married six times and divorced five times. His mother suffered from schizophrenia and spent time in and out of mental hospitals. At the age of four he was taken away from his father and given to his grandparents on his mother's side. His father went to kidnap him back and told the local district attorney of his plans without them knowing. Rather than arrest him, the attorney gave him legal tactics he could use to get his son back which he used and eventually regained custody of Christopher. When he was 12 he ran away from his father to live with his mother, during which he lived in her garage but he shortly moved back with his father.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Titus
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  Colin Mochrie
  Colin Andrew Mochrie (/ˈmɒkri/; born November 30, 1957) is a Scottish Canadian actor and improvisational comedian, most famous for his appearances on the British and U.S. versions of television improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway?.
  Colin Mochrie was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, the oldest of three children. He was shy as a child, stating that neighbours would have commented that he "watched way too much television." In 1964, his family moved to a French neighbourhood just outside Montreal, Quebec, and five years later moved again to Vancouver, British Columbia. Mochrie attended Killarney Secondary School, where he was a self-proclaimed loner who wanted to become a marine biologist. He was persuaded by a friend to try out for a play entitled The Death and Life of Sneaky Fitch where Mochrie played the role of the undertaker. He was hooked when he got his first laugh, which paved the way for a career in entertainment. After graduating from high school, where he was valedictorian, Mochrie attended the Studio 58 theatre school in Vancouver for four years, where he discovered the art of improvisational comedy.
  
  wn.com/Colin_Mochrie
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  Curb Your Enthusiasm
  Curb Your Enthusiasm is an American comedy television series produced and broadcast by HBO, which premiered on October 15, 2000. As of 2011, it has completed 80 episodes over eight seasons. The series was created by Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, who stars as a fictionalized version of himself. The series follows David in his life as a semi-retired television writer and producer in Los Angeles and later New York City. Also starring are Cheryl Hines as David's wife Cheryl, Jeff Garlin as David's manager Jeff, and Susie Essman as Jeff's wife Susie. Curb Your Enthusiasm often features guest stars, and many of these appearances are by celebrities playing versions of themselves fictionalized to varying degrees.
  The plots and subplots of the episodes are established in an outline written by David and the dialogue is largely improvised by the actors themselves. Much like Seinfeld, the subject matter in Curb Your Enthusiasm often involves the minutiae of daily life, and plots often revolve around Larry David's many faux pas, and his problems with certain social conventions and expectations, as well as his annoyance with other people's behavior. The character has a hard time letting such annoyances go unexpressed, which leads him often into awkward situations.
  
  wn.com/Curb_Your_Enthusiasm
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  Dane Cook
  Dane Jeffrey Cook (born March 18, 1972) is an American stand-up comedian and film actor. He has released five comedy albums: Harmful If Swallowed; Retaliation; Vicious Circle; Rough Around The Edges: Live From Madison Square Garden; and Isolated Incident. In 2006, Retaliation became the highest charting comedy album in 28 years and went platinum. He performed an HBO special in the Fall of 2006, Vicious Circle, a straight-to-DVD special titled Rough Around The Edges (which is included in the album of the same name), and a Comedy Central special in 2009 titled Isolated Incident.
  He is credited as one of the first comedians to use a personal webpage and MySpace to build a large fan base and in 2006 was described as "alarmingly popular". As an actor, Cook has appeared in films since 1997, including Mystery Men, Waiting..., Employee of the Month, Good Luck Chuck, Dan in Real Life, Mr. Brooks (in a non-comedic role), and My Best Friend's Girl.
  Cook was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the second son of Donna Jean (née Ford) and George F. Cook. Cook has an older half-brother, Darryl, and five sisters. He was raised in a Roman Catholic family in Arlington, Massachusetts, where he attended Arlington High School.
  
  wn.com/Dane_Cook
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  Daniel Tosh
  Daniel Dwight Tosh (born May 29, 1975) is an American stand-up comedian and host of the Comedy Central television show, Tosh.0.
  Tosh was born in Boppard, Rhineland-Palatinate, West Germany but grew up in Titusville, Florida, the son of a preacher. He has one brother and two sisters. After graduating from Astronaut High School in 1993, Tosh attended the University of Central Florida, graduating in December 1996 with a degree in marketing. Among his first jobs was a telemarketer at Central Florida Research Park. He said later, "Hey, $15 an hour to annoy people! I really was not preparing myself for the future at all. I had interviews lined up. I sat through one real interview, and I was like ‘I wouldn’t hire me.’ I left halfway through the orientation. That’s the closest thing I ever got to a real job." Tosh moved to Los Angeles. He attributes his decision to work in comedy to having been raised in Florida, which he considers "flat, hot, and dumb." Tosh has stated that he suffers from social anxiety. He is an avid Miami Dolphins and Miami Hurricanes fan.
  
  wn.com/Daniel_Tosh
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  Dave Attell
  Dave Attell (born January 18, 1965) is an American stand-up comedian and the host of Comedy Central's Insomniac with Dave Attell and The Gong Show with Dave Attell.
  Born in Queens, New York, to a Jewish family, he grew up in Rockville Centre, New York and now lives in New York City. Attell's initial motivation to perform stand-up comedy is attributed to his indecisiveness as to what he should do after college. In 1987 he graduated from New York University with a degree in communications. Like many other fledgling comedians, he worked menial jobs during the day and put in his time at comedy clubs at night. He worked his first gig at Governor's in Levittown and, according to Attell, "totally bombed".^{[citation needed]} After years of honing his act, he found himself being described as a "comedian's comedian".^{[citation needed]} When working a club, the other comedians, such as Mike Royce (a producer/writer on Everybody Loves Raymond), David Juskow (a performer on TV Funhouse), Kevin Brennan (from Saturday Night Live and HBO's One Night Stand) and Jon Stewart, would come in to watch his act. While the audience didn't always follow his up-front delivery, fellow comedians were refreshed by his originality.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Dave_Attell
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  Dave Chappelle
  David Khari Webber "Dave" Chappelle (/ʃəˈpɛl/; born August 24, 1973) is an American comedian, screenwriter, television/film producer, actor, and artist. Chappelle began his film career in the film Robin Hood: Men in Tights in 1993 and continued to star in minor roles in the films The Nutty Professor, Con Air, and Blue Streak. His first lead role in a film was in Half Baked in 1998. In 2003, he became widely known for his popular sketch comedy television series, Chappelle's Show, which ran until his abrupt retirement from the show in 2005. Chappelle is ranked forty-third in Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time.
  Chappelle was born David Khari Webber Chappelle in Washington, D.C. on August 24, 1973. His father, William David Chappelle III, was a professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. His mother, Yvonne (née Reed), was a professor at Howard University, Prince George's Community College, and the University of Maryland and is also a Unitarian Universalist minister. Chappelle grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland and attended Woodlin Elementary School. During young Chappelle's formative years, his comic inspiration came from various comedians, particularly Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor.
  
  wn.com/Dave_Chappelle
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  Dave Gorman
  David James "Dave" Gorman (born 2 March 1971) is an English author, stand-up comedian and presenter. He has performed comedy shows on stage in which he tells stories of extreme adventures and presents the evidence to the audience in order to prove to them that they are true stories. He was a stand-up comedian before he became famous for Are You Dave Gorman?, then took a break from normal stand-up. He returned to stand-up in 2009 with a show called Sit Down, Pedal, Pedal, Stop and Stand Up whose unique feature was that he cycled 1,563 miles from the southernmost point of Great Britain to the easternmost to the westernmost and then to the northernmost with a gig following each night.
  Gorman was born in Stafford, England to parents Derek Gorman and Fay Collins, who are now divorced. He has two elder brothers, Jonathan and Richard, and a fraternal twin called Nick. Dave attended Walton High School. He married his wife Beth in October 2010. He studied mathematics at the University of Manchester (but never graduated) and before his solo successes was in demand as a writer, having co-written three series of The Mrs Merton Show, as well as writing for many other TV series in the UK, including The Fast Show. In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
  
  wn.com/Dave_Gorman
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  Dave Hughes
  David William "Hughesy" Hughes (born 26 November 1970, Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia), an Australian stand-up comedian, and a radio and television presenter. He is currently a co-host on Network Ten's The Project and Before the Game, as well as on the breakfast radio show Hughesy and Kate. He is known for his larrikin personality, drawling Australian accent, and deadpan comedic delivery.
  After graduating from high school in 1988, Hughes studied commerce at Deakin University in Warrnambool for two-and-a-half years.
  He married Holly Ife, a reporter with the Herald Sun, on 31 December 2006. The two have a son, Rafferty David (born April 2009), and a daughter, Sadie May (born April 2011).
  He does not drink, and has not had an alcoholic drink since he was 22.
  He is an avid Carlton supporter.
  After leaving[?] university, it was seven years before Hughes found work as a stand-up comedian.
  He is a regular performer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Some of his efforts have been released on CD (Dave Hughes: Whatever), and on DVD (Dave Hughes Live, as well as his latest, Dave Hughes - Handy).
  
  wn.com/Dave_Hughes
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  David Cross
  David Cross (born April 4, 1964) is an American actor, writer and stand-up comedian perhaps best known for his work on HBO's sketch comedy series Mr. Show and for his role as Tobias Fünke in the Fox sitcom Arrested Development.
  Cross starred in The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, had main roles in the Comedy Central animated sitcom Freak Show and the Fox sitcom Running Wilde and currently has a recurring role in the ABC sitcom Modern Family.
  Cross was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Susi and a father who immigrated from Leeds, England. Six months after his birth, Cross's family moved to Florida. After additional moves to New York and Connecticut, the family settled back in Roswell, Georgia, where Cross remained for nearly a decade. His family was poor and his father left the family when Cross was ten years old, and Cross and his father have not spoken since he was 19, though they both primarily resided in New York City until Cross sold his home there in 2011. Cross and his family were evicted from their home while living in Georgia. He spent some time living in motels and at friends' homes while growing up. He has two sisters, and once bailed his youngest sibling out of jail.
  
  wn.com/David_Cross
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  David Letterman
  David Michael Letterman (born April 12, 1947) is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC. Letterman recently surpassed friend and mentor Johnny Carson for having the longest late-night hosting career in the United States of America.
  Letterman is also a television and film producer. His company Worldwide Pants produces his show as well as its network follow-up The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Worldwide Pants has also produced several prime-time comedies, the most successful of which was Everybody Loves Raymond, currently in syndication.
  In 1996, David Letterman was ranked #45 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
  Letterman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father, Harry Joseph Letterman (April 1915 – February 1973), was a florist of British descent; his mother Dorothy Letterman (née Hofert, now Dorothy Mengering), a Presbyterian church secretary of German descent, is an occasional figure on the show, usually at holidays and birthdays.
  
  wn.com/David_Letterman
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  Demetri Martin
  Demetri Martin (born May 25, 1973) is an American comedian, actor, artist, musician, writer and humorist. Martin is best known for his work as a stand-up comedian, contributor on The Daily Show and for his Comedy Central show Important Things with Demetri Martin.
  Demetri Martin was born to a Greek American family in New York City, New York, and grew up in Toms River, New Jersey. He is the son of Lillian, a nutritionist, and Dean C. Martin, now deceased, a Greek Orthodox priest. Martin graduated from Yale University in 1995. Although he was accepted into Harvard Law School, he went to New York University School of Law after he received a full scholarship.
  In 2001, Martin caught his first big break in stand-up comedy when he appeared on Comedy Central's stand-up showcase Premium Blend. At the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe he won the Perrier award with his show If I.... The show was turned into a British television special in 2004. From 2003 to 2004, Martin wrote for Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In 2004, Martin had his own Comedy Central Presents stand-up special. His special was divided into three parts. In the first, he performed in traditional stand-up comedy fashion. In the second segment, he used humorous drawings as visual aids, which would serve either as the punchline or a background. During the third segment, he played a guitar and put on a pseudo-play where he would strum his guitar while alternating between playing harmonica and talking; some of his comedian friends dressed as fairies and dragons acted according to the story he was telling, detailing the magical land where his jokes came from. Martin's mother and grandmother also appeared.
  
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  Denis Leary
  Denis Colin Leary (born August 18, 1957) is an American actor, comedian, writer and director. Leary is known for his biting, fast paced comedic style and chain smoking. He is the star and co-creator of the television show Rescue Me, which ended its seventh and final season on September 7, 2011.
  Leary was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants. His mother, Nora (née Sullivan), was a maid, and his father, John Leary, was an auto mechanic. As both of his parents are from Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland, Leary holds both Irish and U.S. citizenship. Through marriage, Leary is a third cousin of talk show host Conan O'Brien. He attended Saint Peter-Marian High School, in Worcester.
  Leary is a graduate of Emerson College, in Boston. While at Emerson, he met fellow comic Mario Cantone, whom to this day Leary considers his closest friend. Comedian Steven Wright and actress Gina Gershon also attended Emerson at the same time as Leary.^{[citation needed]} At the school, he founded the Emerson Comedy Workshop, a troupe that continues on-campus as of 2011. After graduating with the Emerson Class of 1979, he took a job at the school teaching comedy writing classes and maintained the job for five years. Leary received an honorary doctorate and spoke briefly at his alma mater's undergraduate commencement ceremony on May 16, 2005; he is thus credited as "Dr. Denis Leary" on the cover of his 2009 book, Why We Suck.
  
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  Dennis Miller
  Dennis Miller (born November 3, 1953) is an American stand-up comedian, political commentator, actor, sports commentator, and television and radio personality. He is known for his critical assessments laced with pop culture references. He rose to fame as a cast member of Saturday Night Live in 1985, and subsequently hosted a string of his own talk shows on HBO, CNBC and in syndication. He currently hosts a daily, three-hour, self-titled talk radio program, nationally syndicated by Dial Global.
  Although in his early years of fame he was perceived to be quite liberal and anti-Republican, in recent years, Miller has become known for his right-leaning political opinions. He is a regular political commentator on Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor in a segment called "Miller Time", and previously appeared on the network's Hannity & Colmes in a segment called "Real Free Speech".
  Miller was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Castle Shannon, a suburb of Pittsburgh, where he graduated from Keystone Oaks High School in 1971. His parents separated and Miller was raised by his mother, Norma, a dietitian. Miller is of Scottish descent. At Point Park University, he majored in journalism because he thought it would be easy: "I remember seeing All the President's Men and thinking Redford looked cool in his crinkled tie."^{[citation needed]} He was a member of Sigma Tau Gamma Fraternity. About his social status during this period, Miller writes: "When I went to college, I lived on campus, and the guys I hung out with made me do some things I'm not proud of, although they made the characters in Revenge of the Nerds look like the Rat Pack in 1962. I myself made that kid Booger look like Remington Steele" (I Rant, Therefore I Am). Miller graduated from Point Park University in 1976.
  
  wn.com/Dennis_Miller
• Don McMillan
  Don McMillan is an American comedian from San Francisco, California, United States. He graduated from Stanford University with a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1982. (He has a BSEE from Lehigh University) He went to work for AT&T Bell Laboratories where he worked as part of the team that designed the world’s first 32-bit microprocessor. He then moved to the Silicon Valley (San Jose, California) where he worked at VLSI Technology as a computer chip designer. During his 6 years at VLSI he designed more than 50 standard and ASIC designs many of which are still out there today. He is known for comedy on politics and American politicians.
  After winning the 16th Annual San Francisco International Stand-Up Comedy Competition in 1991, McMillan turned in his chips for a microphone. He went on to be $100,000 Grand Champion on "Star Search" in 1993. He’s had numerous television appearances including The Tonight Show on NBC, CNN’s The Larry King Show, MTV’s Half Hour Comedy Hour, and A&E’s Evening at the Improv. Later McMillan has been headlining comedy clubs from the "Improvisation" to "Catch-A-Rising Star" across USA.
  
  wn.com/Don_McMillan
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  Don Rickles
  Donald Jay "Don" Rickles (born May 8, 1926) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. A frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Rickles has acted in comedic and dramatic roles, but is best known as an insult comic.
  Rickles was born in the New York City borough of Queens to Max Rickles, who had emigrated in 1902 with his parents Joseph and Frances Rickles from Kaunas, Lithuania (then in the Russian Empire), and Etta (Feldman) Rickles, born in New York to immigrant parents from the Austrian Empire. His family was Jewish and spoke Yiddish at home. Rickles grew up in the Jackson Heights area.
  After graduating from Newtown High School, Rickles enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served during World War II on the USS Cyrene as a seaman first class. He was honorably discharged in 1946. Two years later, he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and then played bit parts on television. Frustrated by a lack of acting work, Rickles began doing stand-up comedy. He became known as an insult comedian by responding to his hecklers. The audience enjoyed these insults more than his prepared material, and he incorporated them into his act. When he began his career in the early 1950s he started calling ill-mannered members of the audience a "hockey puck". His style was similar to an older insult comic, "Mr. Warmth" Jack E. Leonard, though Rickles denies that Leonard influenced his style.
  
  wn.com/Don_Rickles
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  Doug Stanhope
  Douglas Gene "Doug" Stanhope (born March 25, 1967) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and author known for his on-stage drinking and abrasive comedy routines.
  Stanhope quit high school after his freshman year. His comedy career began in 1990 in Las Vegas.
  Stanhope has made appearances at several major comedy festivals, including the Montreal Just For Laughs, US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, the Chicago Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, where he won the Strathmore Press Award in 2002.
  Stanhope was the winner of the 1995 San Francisco International Comedy Competition where he edged out notable comedic actor Dane Cook in a three-week contest. He's appeared in dozens of national and international standup comedy television specials. He claims that his appearance on the BBC television show, Live Floor Show, (broadcast March 20, 2003) was fueled by "ecstasy". According to Stanhope, "TV is just for the money; live performance is where it’s at."
  In 2003 and 2004, Stanhope co-hosted the fifth and sixth seasons of The Man Show with Joe Rogan.
  
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  Drew Carey
  Drew Allison Carey (born May 23, 1958) is an American actor, comedian, sports executive, and game show host. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and making a name for himself in stand-up comedy, Carey eventually gained popularity starring on his own sitcom, The Drew Carey Show, and serving as host of the U.S. version of the improv comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, both of which aired on ABC.
  Carey has appeared in several films, television series, music videos, a made-for-television film, and a computer game. As of 2012, he hosts the television game show The Price Is Right. He is interested in a variety of sports, has worked as a photographer at U.S. National Team soccer games, is a minority owner of the Major League Soccer team Seattle Sounders FC and a member of the WWE Hall of Fame. Carey has written an autobiography, Dirty Jokes And Beer: Stories Of The Unrefined, detailing his early life and television career.
  Carey was the youngest of Lewis and Beulah Carey's three sons and raised in the Old Brooklyn neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. When he was eight years old, his father died from a brain tumor. According to his autobiography, he was born with six toes on his right foot and he played the cornet and trumpet in the marching band of James Ford Rhodes High School, from which he graduated in 1975. Drew is of Scottish heritage from both parents.^{[citation needed]}
  
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  Dylan Moran
  Dylan Moran (born 3 November 1971) is an Irish stand-up comedian, writer, actor and filmmaker. He is best known for his sardonic observational comedy, the UK television sitcom Black Books (which he co-wrote and starred in), and his work with Simon Pegg in Shaun of the Dead and Run Fatboy Run. Moran also appeared as one of the two lead characters in the Irish black comedy titled A Film with Me in It in 2008. He is a regular performer at national and international comedy festivals including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Kilkenny Comedy Festival. In 2007 he was voted the 17th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and again in the updated 2010 list as the 14th greatest stand-up comic. In 2012, he became the first professional English-speaking comedian ever to perform in Russia, after two sold-out shows in neighboring Estonia, with his routine referencing Russia's new law banning "homosexual propaganda" and jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
  
  wn.com/Dylan_Moran
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  Eddie Izzard
  Edward John "Eddie" Izzard (born 7 February 1962) is an English stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. His comedy style takes the form of rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime. He had a starring role in the television series The Riches as Wayne Malloy and has appeared in many motion pictures such as Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, Mystery Men, Shadow of the Vampire, The Cat's Meow, Across the Universe, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Valkyrie. He is also the voice of Nigel in the 2006 animated film The Wild and Miles Axlerod in the 2011 Disney/Pixar animated film Cars 2.
  He has cited his main comedy role model as Monty Python, and John Cleese once referred to him as the "Lost Python". In 2009, he completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief in spite of having no prior history of long distance running. He is also known for his transvestism. He has won numerous awards including a Primetime Emmy Award for Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program for his comedy special Dress to Kill, in 2000. Izzard's web site won the Yahoo People's Choice Award and earned the Webby Award.
  
  wn.com/Eddie_Izzard
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  Eddie Murphy
  Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy (born April 3, 1961) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician.
  Box office takes from Murphy's films make him the second-highest grossing actor in the United States. He was a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1980 to 1984 and has worked as a stand-up comedian. He was ranked #10 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.
  He has received Golden Globe Award nominations for his performances in 48 Hrs, Beverly Hills Cop series, Trading Places, and The Nutty Professor. In 2007, he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of soul singer James "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls.
  Eddie Murphy's work as a voice actor includes Thurgood Stubbs in The PJs, Donkey in the Shrek series and the dragon Mushu in Disney's Mulan. In some of his films, he plays multiple roles in addition to his main character, intended as a tribute to one of his idols Peter Sellers, who played multiple roles in Dr. Strangelove and elsewhere. Murphy has played multiple roles in Coming to America, Wes Craven's Vampire In Brooklyn, the Nutty Professor films (where he played the title role in two incarnations, plus his father, brother, mother, and grandmother), Bowfinger, Norbit, and Meet Dave.
  
  wn.com/Eddie_Murphy
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  Ellen DeGeneres
  Ellen Lee DeGeneres ( /dɨˈdʒɛnərəs/; born January 26, 1958) is an American stand-up comedian, television host and actress. She hosts the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
  DeGeneres has hosted both the Academy Awards and the Primetime Emmys. As a film actress, she starred in Mr. Wrong, appeared in EDtv and The Love Letter, and provided the voice of Dory in the Disney-Pixar animated film Finding Nemo, for which she was awarded a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first and only time a voice performance won a Saturn Award. She was a judge on American Idol for one year, having joined the show in its ninth season. She also starred in two television sitcoms, Ellen from 1994 to 1998 and The Ellen Show from 2001 to 2002. During the fourth season of Ellen in 1997, DeGeneres came out publicly as a lesbian in an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Shortly afterwards, her character Ellen Morgan also came out to a therapist played by Winfrey, and the series went on to explore various LGBT issues including the coming out process. She has won thirteen Emmys and numerous other awards for her work and charitable efforts.
  
  wn.com/Ellen_DeGeneres
• Frankie Boyle
  Francis Martin Patrick "Frankie" Boyle (born 16 August 1972) is a Scottish comedian and writer, well known for his pessimistic, often controversial sense of humour. He was a permanent panellist on Mock the Week for seven series and has made guest appearances on several popular panel shows including Have I Got News for You, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Would I Lie to You?, You Have Been Watching, Never Mind the Buzzcocks (as guest host and team captain when Phill Jupitus was unavailable for recording) and Argumental, as well as writing for Jimmy Carr's show Distraction and Sean Lock's TV Heaven, Telly Hell.
  Boyle was born and brought up in Glasgow. After leaving school he attended Aston University for a year before leaving and starting a BA in English at the University of Sussex. Whilst doing a teacher-training course in Edinburgh at the age of 23, he began doing stand-up routines. He got his big break after performing at The Stand Comedy Club in Edinburgh, a venue that has also helped launch the careers of Stewart Lee, Johnny Vegas, Dara Ó Briain and Michael McIntyre.
  
  wn.com/Frankie_Boyle
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  George Carlin
  George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, actor and writer/author, who won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums.
  Carlin was noted for his black humor as well as his thoughts on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and various taboo subjects. Carlin and his "Seven Dirty Words" comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a narrow 5–4 decision by the justices affirmed the government's power to regulate indecent material on the public airwaves.
  The first of his fourteen stand-up comedy specials for HBO was filmed in 1977. In 1988, the 1990s and 2000s, Carlin's routines focused on socio-cultural criticism of modern American society. He often commented on contemporary political issues in the United States and satirized the excesses of American culture. His final HBO special, It's Bad for Ya, was filmed less than four months before his death.
  
  wn.com/George_Carlin
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  George Lopez
  George Lopez (born April 23, 1961) is an American comedian, actor, and talk show host. He is mostly known for starring in his self-produced ABC sitcom George Lopez. His stand-up comedy examines race and ethnic relations, including the Mexican American culture. He was the host of the late-night talk show Lopez Tonight on TBS until its cancellation on August 12, 2011.
  Lopez was born on April 23, 1961 in Mission Hills, California. He was deserted by his father when he was two months old and by his mother when he was 10 years old, but was raised by his maternal grandmother, Benita Gutierrez, a factory worker, and step-grandfather, Refugio Gutierrez, a construction worker.
  In 1999, Lopez hosted a major morning radio show for Clear Channel Communications in Los Angeles. He was the first Latino to have headlined the keystone morning radio slot on an English-language station in LA—the nation’s top radio market.
  In 2000, after several years of performing stand-up comedy, Lopez was approached by actress Sandra Bullock for Lopez to produce and star in a comedy. Bullock was concerned about the lack of Hispanic-oriented sitcoms on American television and pushed to get a sitcom on television that starred Hispanics without being exclusively about the Hispanic American community. Long criticized by Hispanic American groups for lack of Latinos on their television shows, ABC quickly picked up the television series. In 2002, Lopez became one of the few Latinos to star in a television comedy series, following in the footsteps of Desi Arnaz, Freddie Prinze, and John Leguizamo. George Lopez is an American situation comedy that originally aired on ABC from 2002–2007. Lopez is the co-creator, writer, producer, and star of the show.
  
  wn.com/George_Lopez
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  Greg Giraldo
  Greg Giraldo (December 10, 1965 – September 29, 2010) was an American stand-up comedian, television personality, and retired lawyer. Giraldo was best known for his appearances on Comedy Central's televised roast specials, and for his work on that network's television shows Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, Lewis Black's Root of All Evil, and the programming block Stand-Up Nation, the last of which he hosted.
  Gregory C. Giraldo was born in The Bronx and was raised in a predominantly Irish lower-middle-class neighborhood in Queens. His father, Alfonso, was from Colombia and worked for Pan Am, and his mother, Dolores, was from Spain. Giraldo was the oldest of three children (brother John and sister Elizabeth) and was raised Roman Catholic.
  Giraldo was an excellent student and was accepted into the prestigious Regis High School in Manhattan. He then went on to earn a bachelor's degree in English from Columbia University in 1987 and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1990. While at Columbia, he was an active member of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity.
  
  wn.com/Greg_Giraldo
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  Greg Proops
  Gregory Everett "Greg" Proops (born October 3, 1959) is an American actor, stand-up comedian and television host. He is widely known for his work as an improvisational comedian on the UK and U.S. versions of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. He also performed on Drew Carey's Green Screen Show and played Max Madigan on the Nickelodeon sitcom True Jackson, VP.
  Proops was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised in San Carlos, California, a suburb south of San Francisco, attending San Carlos High School. He attended the College of San Mateo and spearheaded the comedy duo "Proops & Brakeman". Later, he took courses in improvisation and acting at San Francisco State University though he never finished college.
  After college, he joined an improv group with Mike McShane. Both Proops and McShane impressed producers Dan Patterson and Mark Leveson, who put them on their show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?. He frequently instigated jokes and running gags concerning various idiosyncrasies and differences between British English and American English (e.g. "lift" vs. "elevator"), and would frequently banter with Clive Anderson on these matters (among others). He lived in London for four years when he was doing the show and lists McShane and Colin Mochrie as among his best friends.
  
  wn.com/Greg_Proops
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  Groucho Marx
  Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977) was an American comedian and film and television star. He is known as a master of quick wit and widely considered one of the best comedians of the modern era. His rapid-fire, often impromptu delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers and imitators. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born. He also had a successful solo career, most notably as the host of the radio and television game show You Bet Your Life. His distinctive appearance, carried over from his days in vaudeville, included quirks such as an exaggerated stooped posture, glasses, cigar, and a thick greasepaint mustache and eyebrows. These exaggerated features resulted in the creation of one of the world's most ubiquitous and recognizable novelty disguises, known as "Groucho glasses", a one-piece mask consisting of horn-rimmed glasses, large plastic nose, bushy eyebrows and mustache.
  In a 1950 radio episode of You Bet Your Life, Groucho stated that he was born in a room above a butcher's shop on 78th Street in New York City.
  
  wn.com/Groucho_Marx
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  Harry Enfield
  Henry Richard "Harry" Enfield (born 30 May 1961) is a BAFTA-winning English comedian, actor, writer and director.
  Born in Horsham, West Sussex, he is the oldest of three children, the son of English television, radio and newspaper journalist and presenter Edward Enfield. He has two sisters, Elizabeth (born 1966) and Lucy Katherine (born 1969). He was educated at the independent Arundale School in Pulborough, Dorset House School, Worth School, Collyer's Sixth Form College (all in West Sussex) and the University of York, where he was a member of Derwent College and read politics. He worked for a while as a milkman.
  Enfield first came to public attention when appearing on Channel 4's Saturday Live as several different characters created with Paul Whitehouse. These quickly entered the national consciousness. Among these characters were Stavros, a Greek restaurant owner with fractured English; and Loadsamoney, an obnoxious character who constantly boasted about how much money he earned. Loadsamoney spawned a hit single in 1988 and a sell-out live tour. As a foil to Loadsamoney Enfield and Whitehouse created the Geordie "Bugger-All-Money" and in 1988 Enfield appeared as both characters during the Nelson Mandela Birthday Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium. In time Whitehouse and Enfield became disturbed that Loadsamoney was being seen in a positive light, rather than as a satirical figure, and they had him run over during a Comic Relief Red Nose Day show while leaving the studio after presenting host Lenny Henry with "the biggest cheque of the night"—a physically huge cheque for ten pence.
  
  wn.com/Harry_Enfield
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  Harry Hill
  Harry Hill (born Matthew Keith Hall on 1 October 1964),^{[citation needed]} is a Perrier Award–winning English comedian, author and television presenter. A former medical doctor (who remains on the General Medical Council's List of Registered Medical Practitioners), Hill began his career in comedy with the popular radio show Harry Hill's Fruit Corner.
  Hill was born in Woking, Surrey and spent part of his childhood living in Hong Kong where he attended Island School. The family then moved to Staplehurst, Kent where Hill attended the local primary school. He was educated at Angley School and then Cranbrook School in Kent and St George's Hospital Medical School before training in neurosurgery at the University of London. Hill worked as a house officer at Doncaster Royal Infirmary, before quitting the medical profession because he "didn't feel in control of what was happening".
  Hill married illustrator Magda Archer in 1996 in Wandsworth, London. They have three daughters, all born in Kensington and Chelsea, London: Kitty, Winnie and Frederica. He now resides in the seaside town of Whitstable, Kent.
  
  wn.com/Harry_Hill
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  Ian Hislop
  Ian David Hislop (born 13 July 1960) is a British journalist, satirist, comedian, writer, broadcaster and editor of the magazine Private Eye. He has appeared on many radio and television programmes, but is best known as a team captain on the BBC quiz show Have I Got News for You.
  Hislop was born on 13 July 1960 in Mumbles, Swansea, to a Scottish father, David Hislop, and a Channel Islander mother of English descent, Helen Rosemarie née Beddows.
  Hislop did not know his grandparents. His paternal grandfather, David Murdoch Hislop, died just before he was born. He was Scottish and became a deacon at a Presbyterian church and a school headteacher at Newton Academy in Ayr. In the First World War he fought in Northern France with the 9th (Glasgow Highlanders) Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry.
  Hislop's maternal grandfather, William Beddows, was originally from Lancashire. He joined the British Army in 1895 and fought in the Second Boer War with the King's Own Royal Regiment, and served in major campaigns including the Battle of Spion Kop. He moved to Jersey to serve as a Sergeant, having signed up in 1906 for another ten years in the army.
  
  wn.com/Ian_Hislop
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  Jack Dee
  James Andrew Innes "Jack" Dee (born 24 September 1961) is an English stand-up comedian, actor and writer known for his sarcastic, witty, and deadpan humour. He won Celebrity Big Brother 2001.
  Dee was the youngest of three children born to Rosemary A. (née Stamper) and Geoffrey T. Dee, after Joanna Innes Dee & David Simon Innes Dee. Jack Dee was born in Bromley, Kent and grew up in nearby Petts Wood before moving with his family to Winchester when he was young. His father, Geoffrey, was a printer and his mother, Rosemary, was the daughter of two unsuccessful repertory actors, Henry Lionel Pope "Lionel" Stamper (1906–1985) & Edna May Howard Innes (1904–1969) (and the great-niece of Charles William Stamper, motor engineer to King Edward VII).
  Dee was educated at both independent and state schools. His first school was The Pilgrims' School, a junior independent school in Winchester, followed by the state Montgomery of Alamein School for his secondary education, for some time he attended Frensham Heights School. He took his A-levels at Peter Symonds' College, and left with a D and an F grade. Following this, he planned to attend drama college, but his plans were scuppered when his mother persuaded him to get a vocation, and so he entered the catering industry and became a waiter.
  
  wn.com/Jack_Dee
• Jack Handey
  Jack Handey (born 25 February 1949) is an American humorist. He is best known for his Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey, a large body of surrealistic one-liner jokes, as well as his "Fuzzy Memories" and "My Big Thick Novel" shorts. Although many people assume otherwise, Handey is a real person, not a pen name or character.
  Handey was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1949. His family later moved to El Paso, Texas, where Handey attended Eastwood High School (where he was editor of Sabre, the school newspaper) and the University of Texas at El Paso.
  Handey's earliest writing job was for a newspaper, the San Antonio Express-News. He lost the job, in his words, after writing "an article that offended local car dealerships". His first comic writing was with comedian Steve Martin. According to Martin, Handey got a job writing for Saturday Night Live after Martin introduced Handey to the show's creator, Lorne Michaels. For several years Handey worked on other television projects: the Canadian sketch series Bizarre in 1980; the 1980 TV special Steve Martin: Comedy Is Not Pretty; and Lorne Michaels' short-lived sketch show on NBC called The New Show in 1984. Handey returned to Saturday Night Live in 1985 as a writer and co-producer.
  
  wn.com/Jack_Handey
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  Janeane Garofalo
  Janeane Garofalo ( /dʒəˈniːn ɡəˈrɒfəloʊ/; born September 28, 1964) is an American stand-up comedian, actress, progressive political activist and writer. She is the former co-host on the now defunct Air America Radio's The Majority Report. Garofalo continues to participate regularly in New York City's local comedy and performance art scene.
  Garofalo was born in Newton, New Jersey, the daughter of Joan and Carmine Garofalo. Her mother was a secretary, in the petrochemical industry, who died of cancer when Janeane was 24. Her father is a former executive at Exxon. Garofalo was raised as a conservative Catholic and is of Italian and Irish descent. She grew up in various places, including Ontario, California, Madison, New Jersey and Katy, Texas. Garofalo is quoted as having disliked life in Houston because of the heat and humidity and the emphasis on prettiness and sports in high school.
  While studying history at Providence College, Garofalo entered a comedy talent search sponsored by the Showtime cable network, winning the title of "Funniest Person in Rhode Island." Her original gimmick was to read off her hand, which was not successful in subsequent performances. Dreaming of earning a slot on the writing staff of the TV show Late Night With David Letterman, she became a professional standup upon graduating from college with degrees in History and American Studies. She struggled for a number of years, working briefly as a bike messenger in Boston.
  
  wn.com/Janeane_Garofalo
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  Jay Jason
  Jay Jason (1915–2001) was an American stand-up comedian who continuously performed in the show-business industry from 1933 to 2000.
  Jay Jason's parents had come from Eastern Europe and Russia. His parents, Lina and Ben, ran boarding houses in Rochester, New York to support their family of six children. His interest in show business began when he would imitate the dialects of some of the residents from different countries who lived in their boarding houses. Born in Rochester, he attended the University of Rochester where he majored in languages. He traveled to Buffalo for amateur shows, and success in these comedy contests led him to pursue a career as an entertainer.
  Barely 19 years of age, he left the University of Rochester after two years for his first major club date, and changed his name from Jonas Levy to Jay Jason (sometimes in the media his last name was spelled Jayson). He performed at clubdates throughout the Midwest during the 1930s before the second world war. During the war years, he entertained for the USO, and during one show, he performed in front of hundreds of Hollywood and night club personalities including Red Skelton and Mickey Rooney.
  
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  Jay Leno
  James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno /ˈlɛnoʊ/ (born April 28, 1950) is an American stand-up comedian and television host.
  From 1992 to 2009, Leno was the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. (Eastern Time, UTC-5), also on NBC. After The Jay Leno Show was canceled in January 2010 amid a host controversy, Leno returned to host The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on March 1, 2010.
  James "Jay" Leno was born in New Rochelle, New York, in 1950. His mother, Catherine (née Muir; 1911–1993), a homemaker, was born in Greenock, Scotland, and came to the United States at age 11. Leno's father, Angelo (1910–1994), who worked as an insurance salesman, was born in New York to immigrants from Flumeri, Italy. Leno grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, and although his high school guidance counselor recommended that he drop out of school, he later obtained a Bachelor's degree in speech therapy from Emerson College, where he started a comedy club in 1973. Leno's siblings include his late older brother, Patrick, who was a Vietnam veteran and a lawyer.
  
  wn.com/Jay_Leno
• Jay London
  Jay London (born September 12, 1966) is an American stand-up comic, whose one-liner jokes made him a favorite on NBC's Last Comic Standing. Although he did not win either of the two seasons in which he appeared (Seasons 2 and 3, both in 2004), his humble personality and clean comedy made him a favorite among the show's fans.
  London was born in The Bronx, but grew up in Flushing, Queens, before moving to Los Angeles in his adult years. He was a boxer and a taxicab driver, among other occupations, before becoming a stand-up comic in the 1980s.
  London is known for his long curly hair and bib overalls. His signature line is "You might recognize me, I'm the fourth guy from the left on the evolutionary chart," referring to his slouching posture and unkempt appearance. His comedy is usually self-deprecating and laden with quips such as "0 for 1", "This is death!" and his trademark line, "It's almost over." During his run on Last Comic Standing, he made a guest appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
  
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  Jeff Dunham
  Jeff Dunham (born April 18, 1962) is an American ventriloquist and stand-up comedian who has also appeared on numerous television shows, including Late Show with David Letterman, Comedy Central Presents, The Tonight Show and Sonny With a Chance. He has four specials that run on Comedy Central: Jeff Dunham: Arguing with Myself, Jeff Dunham: Spark of Insanity, Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special, and Jeff Dunham: Controlled Chaos. Dunham also starred in The Jeff Dunham Show, a series on the network in 2009. His style has been described as "a dressed-down, more digestible version of Don Rickles with multiple personality disorder". Describing his characters, Time observes, "All of them are politically incorrect, gratuitously insulting and ill tempered." Dunham has been credited with reviving ventriloquism, and doing more to promote the art form than anyone since Edgar Bergen.
  Dunham has been called "America's favorite comedian" by Slate.com, and according to the concert industry publication Pollstar, he is the top-grossing standup act in North America, and is among the most successful acts in Europe as well. As of November 2009, he has sold over four million DVDs, an additional $7 million in merchandise sales, and received more than 350 million hits on YouTube as of October 2009 (his introduction of Achmed the Dead Terrorist in Spark of Insanity was ranked as the ninth most watched YouTube video at the time).A Very Special Christmas Special was the most-watched telecast in Comedy Central history, with its DVD going quadruple platinum (selling over 400,000) in its first two weeks.Forbes.com ranked Dunham as the third highest-paid comedian in the United States behind Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, and reported that he was one of the highest-earning comics from June 2008 to June 2009, earning approximately $30 million during that period.
  
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  Jeff Foxworthy
  Jeffrey Marshall "Jeff" Foxworthy (born September 6, 1958) is an American comedian, television and radio personality and author. He is a member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, a comedy troupe which also comprises Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall and Ron White. Known for his "you might be a redneck" one-liners, Foxworthy has released six major-label comedy albums. His first two albums were each certified 3×multi-Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Foxworthy has also written several books based on his redneck jokes, as well as an autobiography entitled No Shirt, No Shoes... No Problem!.
  Foxworthy has also made several ventures into television, first in the mid-1990s as the star of a sitcom called, The Jeff Foxworthy Show. He has also appeared alongside Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy in several Blue Collar television specials, most notably Blue Collar TV. Since 2007, he has been the host of the quiz show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? on Fox (2007–2009) and syndication (2009–2011). Foxworthy hosted a nationally syndicated radio show called The Foxworthy Countdown from April 1999 to December 2009.
  
  wn.com/Jeff_Foxworthy
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  Jennifer Saunders
  Jennifer Jane Saunders (born 6 July 1958) is an English comedienne, screenwriter, singer and actress. She has won two BAFTAs, an International Emmy Award, a British Comedy Award, a Rose d'Or Light Entertainment Festival Award, two Writers' Guild of Great Britain Awards, and a People's Choice Award.
  She first came into widespread attention in the 1980s and early 1990s when she became a member of the Comic Strip after graduating from the Central School of Speech and Drama. With her comedy partner Dawn French, she writes and stars in their eponymous sketch show, French & Saunders, for which she and French received a BAFTA fellowship in 2009, and she has received international acclaim for writing and playing the lead role of Edina Monsoon in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
  She has guest starred in the American sitcoms Roseanne and Friends, and won the American People's Choice Award for voicing the wicked Fairy Godmother in DreamWorks' animated Shrek 2.
  Saunders was born in Sleaford, Lincolnshire on 6 July 1958. Her mother was a biology teacher, and her father served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force (RAF), reached the rank of Air Marshal and later worked for British Aerospace. Because her father was in the armed forces, Saunders moved to different schools many times. She was educated from the age of five to 18 in boarding schools and then at St Paul's Girls' School, an independent school in west London. After school, she worked for a year in Italy as an au pair.
  
  wn.com/Jennifer_Saunders
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  Jeremy Hardy
  Jeremy James Hardy (born 17 July 1961) is a British comedian who is also known for his socialist politics.
  Hardy was born in Farnborough, Hampshire. He attended Farnham College and studied Modern History and Politics at the University of Southampton. He started his stand-up career in the early 1980s, and won the Perrier Comedy Award in 1988 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He is best known for his radio work, particularly on The News Quiz, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and his long-running series of monologues Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation. His experiences in Palestine during the Israeli army incursions of 2002 became the subject of a feature documentary Jeremy Hardy vs. the Israeli Army (2003), directed by Leila Sansour.
  He made his television debut in the late 1980s in various comedy shows including Blackadder Goes Forth (1989), and has presented a television documentary about the political background to the English Civil War as well as an edition of Top of the Pops in 1996.
  His off-key singing is a long-running joke on the radio panel show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
  
  wn.com/Jeremy_Hardy
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  Jerry Lewis
  Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926) is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis.
  In addition to the duo's popular nightclub work, they starred in a successful series of comedy films for Paramount Pictures. Lewis is also known for his charity fund-raising telethons and position as national chairman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).
  Lewis has won several awards for lifetime achievements from The American Comedy Awards, The Golden Camera, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and The Venice Film Festival, and he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
  In 2005, he received the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors, which is the highest Emmy Award presented. On February 22, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
  
  wn.com/Jerry_Lewis
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  Jerry Sadowitz
  Jerry Sadowitz (born 4 November 1961) is an American-born Scottish stand-up comic and card magician, known for his frequently controversial "sick humour". He is also an accomplished practitioner of sleight of hand, he has written several books on magic and invented many conjuring innovations. In 2007 he was voted the 15th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and again in the updated 2010 list as the 33rd greatest stand-up comic.His controversial style has also influenced a whole generation of comedians and he is widely acclaimed as one of the best close-up magicians in the world.
  An early influence were the Derek & Clive sketches by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, which much of his comedy emulates in its provocativeness and sheer offensiveness (he once described the Derek & Clive dialogues as "comic poetry").
  He often comments in a seemingly callous way on contemporary disasters and tragedies which have struck groups or individuals. He performs his act by mocking bigotry and stereotypes of ethnic groups by having his onstage persona endorse them in an ironic fashion. He uses obscene language liberally and to cutting comedic effect. His comedy style combines the visual traditions of the magician, often using gaudy conjuring props, with political social and cultural observations which deliberately challenge the norms, taboos and transient sensitivities of contemporary culture. To this end, he is knowingly and deliberately offensive and sits firmly in the tradition of the "sick comic" established by Lenny Bruce.^{[citation needed]}. He has been often been considered as one of the world's most offensive comedians. His controversial style of humour has also influenced a generation of comedians, or "imitators" as he refers to them. Comedians who now use his style of humour include, Frankie Boyle, Jim Jeffries, Jimmy Carr, Roy Chubby Brown and Ricky Gervais
  
  wn.com/Jerry_Sadowitz
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  Jerry Seinfeld
  Jerome Allen "Jerry" Seinfeld (born April 29, 1954) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and television and film producer, best known for playing a semi-fictional version of himself in the sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), which he co-created and co-wrote with Larry David, and, in the show's final two seasons, co-executive-produced.
  In his first major foray back into the media since the finale of Seinfeld, he co-wrote and co-produced the film Bee Movie, also taking on the lead role of Barry B. Benson. In February 2010, Seinfeld premiered a reality TV series called The Marriage Ref on NBC. Seinfeld directed Colin Quinn in the Broadway show Long Story Short at the Helen Hayes Theater in New York which ran until January 8, 2011.
  Seinfeld is known for specializing in observational humor, often focusing on personal relationships and uncomfortable social obligations. Comedy Central ranked Jerry Seinfeld as one of the twelve greatest stand-up comedians of all time in its four-part special The 100 Greatest Standups Of All Time.
  
  wn.com/Jerry_Seinfeld
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  Jim Carrey
  James Eugene "Jim" Carrey (born January 17, 1962) is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer. Carrey has received four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning two. Known for his highly energetic, slapstick performances, he has been described as one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood.
  Carrey first gained recognition in 1990 after landing a recurring role in the sketch comedy In Living Color. His first leading roles in major productions came with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), Dumb and Dumber (1994), The Mask (1994), and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995). In 1997, he gave a critically acclaimed performance in Liar Liar, which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor. He then starred in the critically acclaimed hits The Truman Show (1998) and Man on the Moon (1999), both garnering him two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor.
  In 2000, he gained further recognition for his portrayal of the The Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Three years later, Carrey starred in the major blockbuster film Bruce Almighty (2003). The following year he starred in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for which he received another Golden Globe nomination in addition to a BAFTA Award nomination. He then starred in popular productions Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), Fun with Dick and Jane (2005), Yes Man (2008), A Christmas Carol (2009), and Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011).
  
  wn.com/Jim_Carrey
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  Jim Gaffigan
  James Christopher "Jim" Gaffigan (born July 7, 1966) is an American stand-up comedian and actor.
  Gaffigan was born in Chesterton, Indiana and attended La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana. He is the youngest of six children and often jokes about growing up in a large family. He attended one year at Purdue University, where he was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity. He graduated from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business in 1988. Jim Gaffigan wrestled in High School and stated, while on Joe Rogan's podcast, that he played College Football (division 3).
  Gaffigan's comedy routines often include humorous, high-pitched "asides" representing commentary on his performance from a hypothetical naive and easily offended audience member. These were inspired by his sister.^{[citation needed]}
  Gaffigan is also known for routines or skits relating to being lazy and eating food, especially popular routines regarding Hot Pockets, cake, and bacon. In 2004 Gaffigan's stand up material was featured in Comedy Central's animated series Shorties Watchin' Shorties. His 2006 album, Beyond the Pale, consisted primarily of material regarding food and American eating habits. The album was accompanied by an hour-long special on Comedy Central of the same name, which was released on his DVD. His 2009 album, King Baby, was also a television special filmed in Austin, Texas at the end of his "The Sexy Tour". Comedy Central released King Baby on DVD. In a March 2009 interview on Anytime with Bob Kushell, Gaffigan defended his naming of the tour, stating that he thought it would be funny that parents would be unsure about whether to bring their teenage children to the show.
  
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  Jimmy Carr
  James Anthony Patrick "Jimmy" Carr (born 15 September 1972) is an Irish-born British comedian and humourist. He is known for his deadpan delivery, dark humour and his use of edgy one-liners. He is also a writer, actor and presenter of radio and television.
  Carr moved to a career in comedy in 2000. After becoming established as a stand-up comedian, Carr began to appear in a number of Channel 4 television shows, most notably as the host of the panel show 8 out of 10 Cats. In Ireland he is known for appearances on The Panel and The Late Late Show.
  Carr was born in Limerick, Ireland to parents Patrick James (born March 1945), a Roman Catholic and self-made millionaire who became treasurer for computer company Unisys, and Nora Mary (née Lawlor, 19 September 1943 – 7 September 2001), who died of pancreatitis in St Thomas' Hospital, London, aged 57. His parents married in 1970, separated in 1994, but never divorced. His father married Natasha in 2003. Carr has an older brother, Colin, and a younger brother, Patrick. Carr was educated at Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe. he also attended St Bernards's Catholic Grammar School also in Slough. Carr's father was not happy with the school so moved him to Burnham Grammar School
  
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  Jo Brand
  Josephine Grace "Jo" Brand (born 23 July 1957) is a BAFTA winning British comedienne, writer, and actress. Commencing her entertainment career with a move from psychiatric nursing to the alternative comedy stand up scene and early performances on Saturday Live, she went on to appearances on The Brain Drain, Channel 4's Jo Brand Through the Cakehole, Getting On and various television appearances including as a regular guest on QI. In 2003, she was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
  Jo Brand was born 23 July 1957 in Wandsworth, London. Her mother was a social worker. Brand is the middle of three children, with two brothers. When she was about four, the family moved to the village of St Mary's Platt near Sevenoaks in Kent, and a year later to Benenden. Brand was educated at Helenswood School, Hastings, Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School and Bexhill College. She worked as a psychiatric nurse for ten years, at the South London Bethlem, Cefn Coed Hospital in Swansea and Maudsley Hospital in South London.
  
  wn.com/Jo_Brand
• John Gordon Sinclair
  John Gordon Sinclair (born February 1962 in Glasgow) is a Scottish actor most famous for playing Gregory in Gregory's Girl. He was born as Gordon John but took the stage name 'John Gordon Sinclair' because Equity already had a Gordon John registered.
  He joined Glasgow's Youth Theatre after he visited one night and met fellow fan of Canadian progressive rock group Rush, Robert Buchanan. As a result he starred in a number of films by director Bill Forsyth, perhaps the most famous of which was 1981's Gregory's Girl, shot when he was 19 years old. He reprised the role nearly two decades later in Gregory's Two Girls, and also appeared in Forsyth's Local Hero.
  He has continued to act on stage and screen. Other roles include parts in Goodbye Mr Steadman, Mad About Alice Gasping and Roman Road. He was also in the first series of LWT's Hot Metal and both the radio and television sitcom An Actor's Life For Me. He played Dan Weir in Espedair Street, the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of the Iain Banks novel, as well as playing the lead part of Dr. Finlay in the Radio 4 series entitled Adventures of a Black Bag.
  
  wn.com/John_Gordon_Sinclair
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  John Ritter
  Jonathan Southworth "John" Ritter (September 17, 1948 – September 11, 2003) was an American actor, voice over artist and comedian perhaps best known for having played Jack Tripper and Paul Hennessy in the ABC sitcoms Three's Company and 8 Simple Rules, respectively. He is also known for being the voice of the title character Clifford in the PBS television series Clifford the Big Red Dog. Don Knotts called him the "Greatest physical comedian on the planet".
  Ritter's final films—the screwball dark comedy Bad Santa and the two children's animated films Clifford's Really Big Movie and Stanley's Dinosaur Round-Up—were all dedicated in his memory.
  John Ritter was born in Burbank, California, the son of Dorothy Fay (née Southworth), an actress, and singing cowboy/matinee-star Tex Ritter. He attended Hollywood High School, where he was student body president. He went on to the University of Southern California, where he was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta (FIJI) fraternity, and majored in psychology and minored in architecture. In 1966 at the age of 18, Ritter was a contestant on The Dating Game.
  
  wn.com/John_Ritter
• John Sessions
  John Gibb Marshall (born 11 January 1953), better known by the stage name John Sessions, is a Scottish actor and comedian. He is known for comedy improvisation in television shows such as Whose Line Is It Anyway?; as a panellist on QI; and as a character actor in numerous films, both in the UK and in Hollywood.
  Sessions was born in Largs, and spent some of his earliest years in Kempston, Bedfordshire and St Albans, Hertfordshire. He has an elder brother and a twin sister. Sessions is openly gay. His name change occurred when he became a performer, owing to the presence of a John Marshall on the Equity register already. He graduated with an M.A. in English literature from Bangor University, where he had begun to appear to audiences with his comedy in shows such as "Look back in Bangor" and "Marshall Arts". He later studied for a PhD from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, although he did not complete the doctorate.
  This period in his life was unhappy. In a 'Worst of Times' column for The Independent from around 1990, he talked of how the freezing Canadian weather had depressed him, he was smoking 'far too many cigarettes', 'had a couple of disastrous flings' and described his PhD dissertation as '200 pages of rubbish'.
  
  wn.com/John_Sessions
• Jon Holmes
  Jon Holmes (born 24 April 1975) is a seven time Sony Award-winning and double BAFTA-winning British writer, comedian and broadcaster.
  Born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Holmes was raised in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. He attended Canterbury Christ Church College, where he graduated with a joint degree in English with Radio, Film and Television. While at the university he became involved with its radio station C4 Radio, and also wrote, directed and performed in various student revue shows; and was a presenter on Canterbury's local radio station KMFM Canterbury (then CTFM).
  After graduation, Holmes's first foray into BBC radio comedy was for BBC Radio 4 with his debut comedy series Grievous Bodily Radio in 1997. He also had a show on Power FM on Sunday nights. The Jon & Andy show (with Andy Hurst), which Holmes presented from 1998–2000, won him a gold Sony Radio Academy Award for entertainment. It was here where Holmes began to acquire his reputation for controversy with on air interactive listener games such as 'I'm Standing On...' (a time trial in which listeners were encouraged to stand on their neighbour's car, wheelie bin etc. and shout "I'm Standing on....' whatever it was until their angry neighbour came out and shouted abuse).
  
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  Jon Stewart
  Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz; November 28, 1962) is an American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian. He is widely known as host of The Daily Show, a satirical news program that airs on Comedy Central.
  Stewart started as a stand-up comedian, but branched into television as host of Short Attention Span Theater for Comedy Central. He went on to host his own show on MTV, called The Jon Stewart Show, and then hosted another show on MTV called You Wrote It, You Watch It. He has also had several film roles as an actor. Stewart became the host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central in early 1999. He is also a writer and co-executive-producer of the show. After Stewart joined, The Daily Show steadily gained popularity and critical acclaim, resulting in his sixteen Emmy Awards.
  Stewart has gained acclaim as an acerbic, satirical critic of personality-driven media shows, in particular those of the US media networks such as CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. Critics say Stewart benefits from a double standard: he critiques other news shows from the safe, removed position of his "fake news" desk. Stewart agrees, saying that neither his show nor his channel purports to be anything other than satire and comedy. In spite of its self-professed entertainment mandate, The Daily Show has been nominated for news and journalism awards. Stewart hosted the 78th and 80th Academy Awards. He is the co-author of America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, which was one of the best-selling books in the U.S. in 2004 and Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race released in 2010.
  
  wn.com/Jon_Stewart
• Jonathan Mangum
  Jonathan Mangum (born January 16, 1971) is an American actor and comedian. He was a cast member of the variety show, The Wayne Brady Show and is an announcer for the game show Let's Make a Deal.
  Mangum was born in Charleston, South Carolina and grew up in Alabama. After high school, he moved to Orlando and graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in psychology. While in Orlando, Mangum started his comedy career at the SAK Comedy Lab alongside Wayne Brady, whom he would later collaborate with in Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza, The Wayne Brady Show and Let's Make a Deal. He moved to Los Angeles in 1995 to pursue a career in comedy.
  Mangum guest-starred in several episodes as the owner of a web-based start-up company on The Drew Carey Show. He has toured with Drew Carey's Improv All-Stars, establishing himself as an improv comedian and was also a regular cast member on Drew Carey's Green Screen Show. At the beginning of 2011, he and Brady made guest appearances in the British comedy series Fast and Loose, an improv show similar to Whose Line Is It Anyway?. He was a regular performer in Drew Carey's Improv-a-ganza and occasionally joined co-stars Jeff Davis and Chip Esten in improvisational singing games.
  
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  Jonathan Winters
  Jonathan Harshman Winters III (born November 11, 1925) is an American comedian, actor, and artist.
  Winters was born in Bellbrook, Ohio, the son of Alice Kilgore (née Rodgers), a radio personality, and Jonathan Harshman Winters II, an investment broker. He is a descendant of Valentine Winters, founder of the Winters National Bank in Dayton, Ohio (now part of JPMorgan Chase). Of English and Scotch-Irish ancestry, Winters has described his father as an alcoholic who had trouble holding a job.^{[citation needed]} When he was seven, his parents separated, and Winters' mother took him to Springfield, Ohio to live with his maternal grandmother.^{[citation needed]}
  At age 17, Winters quit high school and joined the United States Marine Corps and served two and a half years in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Upon his return he attended Kenyon College. He later studied cartooning at Dayton Art Institute, where he met Eileen Schauder, whom he married in 1948.
  Winters is a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Lambda chapter).
  
  wn.com/Jonathan_Winters
• Josie Lawrence
  Josie Lawrence (born Wendy Lawrence; 6 June 1959) is a British comedienne and actress best known for her work with the Comedy Store Players improvisational troupe, the television series Whose Line Is It Anyway? and more recently her role as Manda Best in EastEnders.
  Josie Lawrence was born Wendy Lawrence in Old Hill, Rowley Regis (later Warley and now Sandwell). She has a brother, John, and sister, Janet, 10 years older who are twins. They were brought up in nearby Cradley Heath, where her father worked for British Leyland and her mother as a dinner lady. She says everyone in her family has a wicked, dry sense of humour. She knew she wanted to be an actress at the early age of 5 and by the time she was 16 she joined the Barlow Players in Oldbury.
  She studied at Dartington College of Arts from 1978 to 1981, receiving a bachelor of arts honours degree.
  Her first acting role was as a young boy in a production of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists at the Half Moon Theatre. During the 1980s, she was also involved in a play called Passionaria at the Newcastle Playhouse, starring Denise Black and Kate McKenzie, and they later formed the jazz group Denise Black and the Kray Sisters.
  
  wn.com/Josie_Lawrence
• Kathy Greenwood
  Kathryn "Kathy" Greenwood (born March 21, 1962) is a Canadian actress and comedienne. She appeared on the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? numerous times, and played Grace Bailey on the Canadian television drama series Wind at My Back.
  Kathy Greenwood was born in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, and it was clear from an early age she wanted to be a performer; by the time she was in high school at Agincourt Collegiate Institute, she was usually the star of the school plays and concerts. When it came time to graduate in 1980, she feared that she would never get to act again, until a concerned friend gave her a brochure for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where Greenwood spent the next two years studying acting.
  In 1987, when she returned to Canada in Toronto, she managed to find work for a small night club act called A Wedge of Night, which led to her five year stint with the Toronto branch of the famous Second City comedy troupe; where she served as both a writer and a performer - two of her shows won Dora Mavor Moore awards in 1988, and 1992. Shortly afterwards, she and her friends Jonathan Wilson, and Ed Sahely developed what she called their "Second City" spin-off, Not to Be Repeated, in which the three would improvise an entire situation comedy in front of a live audience, based solely on ideas and suggestions that are thrown at them from the audience. Other notable appearances in Canada include the popular sketch shows This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Royal Canadian Air Farce.
  
  wn.com/Kathy_Greenwood
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  Kathy Griffin
  Kathleen Mary "Kathy" Griffin (born November 4, 1960) is an American actress, comedian, model, writer and producer. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, she moved to Los Angeles in 1978, where she studied drama at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and became a member of improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings. In the 1990s, Griffin began performing as a stand-up and also appeared as a guest star on several television shows. She achieved recognition in a supporting role on the NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan (1996–2000).
  Her breakthrough came on the Bravo reality show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List (2005–2010), which became a ratings hit for the network and earned her two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Reality Program. Griffin has released four comedy albums, with all of them receiving Grammy Award nominations. Her first album, For Your Consideration (2008), made her the first female comedian to debut atop of the Billboard Top Comedy Albums chart. In 2009, she released her autobiography Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin, which topped The New York Times Best Seller list. Griffin has also taped stand-up specials with HBO and Bravo.
  
  wn.com/Kathy_Griffin
• Kevin Bridges
  Kevin Bridges (born 13 November 1986) is a Scottish stand-up comedian.
  Bridges began performing on the small stage when he left school shortly after his 17th birthday, doing stand-up comedy gigs at The Stand Comedy Club in Glasgow and then throughout the UK.Bridges said he was inspired to try stand up after reading Frank Skinner's autobiography. At 18 he reached the final of Channel 5's So You Think You're Funny competition at the Edinburgh Fringe. He performed at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Bridges appeared on Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow on the BBC, where he performed at the Edinburgh Playhouse.
  In 2010, he took part in Channel 4's Comedy Gala, a benefit show held in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, filmed live at the O2 Arena in London.
  His debut DVD, titled Kevin Bridges: The Story So Far... Live in Glasgow, was released on 22 November 2010.
  
  wn.com/Kevin_Bridges
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  Kristen Schaal
  Kristen Schaal (born January 24, 1978) is an American actress, writer and comedian, best known for her roles as Mel in the HBO series Flight of the Conchords, as Louise in Bob's Burgers, as Hazel Whassername in 30 Rock, and as a contributor on The Daily Show.
  Schaal was born in Longmont, Colorado, to a Lutheran family of Dutch descent. She was raised on her family's cattle farm, in a rural area near Boulder. Her father is a construction worker and her mother is a secretary. Schaal also has a brother David who is three years older. She graduated from Northwestern University, then moved to New York to pursue a comedy career. Five years later in 2005, she had her first break when she was included in New York magazine's article "The Ten Funniest New Yorkers You've Never Heard Of."
  In 2006, Schaal was invited to perform at the 2006 HBO US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen where she won the award for "Best Alternative Comedian." She was also the winner of the second annual Andy Kaufman Award (hosted by the New York Comedy Festival), Best Female Stand-up at the 2006 Nightlife Awards in New York, and "Best Female Stand Up Comedian" at the 2007 ECNY Awards. At the 2008 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, she won the Barry Award for her show Kristen Schaal As You Have Probably Never Seen Her Before, tying with Nina Conti. Also in 2006, Schaal appeared on the first season of the Comedy Central show, Live at Gotham.
  
  wn.com/Kristen_Schaal
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  Larry David
  Lawrence Gene "Larry" David (born July 2, 1947) is an American actor, writer, comedian, and producer. He is best known as the co-creator (with Jerry Seinfeld), head writer, and executive producer of the television series Seinfeld from 1989 to 1996, and for creating the 1999 HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, a partially improvised sitcom in which he stars as a semi-fictionalized version of himself.
  David's work won him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1993. Formerly a standup comedian, David went into television comedy, writing and starring in ABC's Fridays, as well as writing briefly for Saturday Night Live. He has won two Primetime Emmy Awards as well as being voted by fellow comedians and comedy insiders as number 23 of the greatest comedy stars ever in a British poll to select The Comedian's Comedian.
  Lawrence Gene David was born to a Jewish family in the neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Sheepshead Bay High School and then the University of Maryland, with a bachelor's degree in history (1969), and then in business (1970). After college, David enlisted in the Air National Guard.
  
  wn.com/Larry_David
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  Larry the Cable Guy
  Daniel Lawrence Whitney (born February 17, 1963), best known by his stage name and character Larry the Cable Guy, is an American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist, and former radio personality.
  He is one of the members of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, a comedy troupe which also includes Bill Engvall, Ron White, and Jeff Foxworthy (with whom he has starred on Blue Collar TV).
  Whitney has released seven comedy albums, of which three have been certified gold by the RIAA for shipments of 500,000 copies. In addition, he has starred in three Blue Collar Comedy Tour-related movies, as well as in the films Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, Delta Farce, and Witless Protection. He is widely known for voicing Mater in the Cars franchise. Whitney's catchphrase "Git-R-Done!" is also the title of his book.
  On January 26, 2010, the TV channel History announced that it was ordering a series starring Whitney called Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy, in which he would explore the country and immerse himself in different lifestyles, jobs, and hobbies. The first episode of the series aired on February 8, 2011.
  
  wn.com/Larry_the_Cable_Guy
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  Lenny Henry
  Lenworth George "Lenny" Henry, CBE (born 29 August 1958) is a British actor, writer, comedian and occasional television presenter.
  Henry, the son of Jamaican immigrants, was born at Burton Road Hospital in Dudley in 1958. He was a pupil at St John's Primary School and later The Blue Coat School outside Dudley, before completing his school education at W.R. Tuson College (now Preston College).
  His first manager was Robert Luff, who signed him in 1975 and gave him the opportunity to perform as part of the Luff-produced touring stage version of The Black and White Minstrel Show. In July 2009, Lenny Henry stated he was contractually obliged to perform and regretted his part in the show.
  Shortly before this, on 17 December 1974, the then 16-year-old Henry had been voted Britain's top non-smoker for his declaration aimed at teenagers that smoking was not fashionable.
  His earliest television appearance was on the New Faces talent show, which he won in 1975 with an impersonation of Stevie Wonder. The following year he appeared with Norman Beaton in LWT's sitcom The Fosters, Britain's first comedy series with predominantly black performers. His formative years were spent in working men's clubs, where his act was as a young black man impersonating white characters such as the Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em character Frank Spencer (whom he impersonated on New Faces). He also made guest appearances on television programmes including Celebrity Squares, Seaside Special and The Ronnie Corbett Show.
  
  wn.com/Lenny_Henry
• Les Dawson
  Leslie "Les" Dawson (2 February 1931 – 10 June 1993) was a popular English comedian remembered for his deadpan style, curmudgeonly persona and jokes about his mother-in-law and wife.
  Raised in the Collyhurst district of Manchester, his first job was in the parcels department of the Manchester Co-op. He worked briefly as a journalist on the Bury Times.
  Dawson claimed that he began his entertainment career as a pianist in a Parisian brothel – in his entertaining but factually unreliable autobiography. In any case, his efforts at making a living as a pianist ("I finally heard some applause from a bald man and said 'thank you for clapping me' and he said 'I'm not clapping - I'm slapping me head to keep awake'"), evolved into comedy as he found he got laughs by playing wrong notes and complaining to the audience. He made his television debut on the talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1967 and became a prominent comic on British television for the rest of his life.
  
  wn.com/Les_Dawson
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  Lewis Black
  Lewis Niles Black (born August 30, 1948) is an American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor. He is known for his comedy style, which often includes simulating a mental breakdown, or an increasingly angry rant, ridiculing history, politics, religion, trends and cultural phenomena. He hosted the Comedy Central series Lewis Black's Root of All Evil, and makes regular appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart delivering his “Back in Black” commentary segment. When not on the road performing, he resides in Manhattan. He also maintains a residence in Chapel Hill, N.C. He is currently the spokesman for Aruba Tourism, appearing in television ads that aired in late 2009 and 2010. He was voted 51st of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time by Comedy Central in 2004; and was voted 5th in Comedy Central's Stand`Up Showdown in 2008 and 11th in 2010.
  Black is the son of Jeannette, a teacher, and Sam Black, an artist and mechanical engineer. He was born and raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Silver Spring, Maryland, graduating from Springbrook High School in 1966, summa cum laude.
  
  wn.com/Lewis_Black
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  Lisa Lampanelli
  Lisa Lampanelli (born Lisa Lampugnale; July 19, 1961) is an American stand-up comedian and insult comic. She is noted for her racy and controversial style of comedy, which frequently includes subjects such as race and homosexuality.
  Lampanelli, one of three siblings, was born in Trumbull, Connecticut, to a middle class family. Three of her grandparents were of Italian descent, and the fourth of Polish ancestry. Her mother, Gloria, worked for the local police department where "she typed in all the arrests made", and her father, Leonard, worked for Sikorsky Aircraft and later became a painter. Lampanelli attended Roman Catholic schools, studied journalism at Boston College and Syracuse University, and went through a graduate program at Harvard. She worked as a copy editor at Popular Mechanics and an assistant at Rolling Stone. She was also a fact checker and the first chief of research for Spy magazine; a book about Spy describes her then as "your average decked-out-heavy-metal-head-next-door." Speaking later to Maxim Magazine Online, Lampanelli remarked, "I was a real journalist for Rolling Stone, Spy, Hit Parader. I interviewed those fuckin' hair bands: Cinderella, Slaughter."
  
  wn.com/Lisa_Lampanelli
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  Lucille Ball
  Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 - April 26, 1989) was an American comedienne, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy. One of the most popular and influential stars in the United States during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu, which produced many successful and popular television series.
  Ball was nominated for an Emmy Award thirteen times, and won four times. In 1977 Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
  
  wn.com/Lucille_Ball
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  Malcolm Hardee
  Malcolm Hardee (5 January 1950 – 31 January 2005) was an English comedian, author, comedy club proprietor, compère, agent, manager and "amateur sensationalist".
  His high reputation among his peers rests on his outrageous publicity stunts and on the help and advice he gave to successful British alternative comedians early in their careers, acting as "godfather to a generation of comic talent in the 1980s". Fellow comic Rob Newman called him "a hilarious, anarchic, living legend; a millennial Falstaff", while Stewart Lee wrote that "Malcolm Hardee is a natural clown who in any decent country would be a national institution" and Arthur Smith described him as "a South London Rabelais" and claimed that "everything about Malcolm, apart from his stand-up act, was original".
  Though an accomplished comic, Hardee was arguably more highly regarded as a "character", a compère and talent-spotting booker at his own clubs, particularly The Tunnel Club in Greenwich, South East London, which gave vital and early exposure to up-and-coming comedians during the early years of British alternative comedy. In its obituary, The Times opined that "throughout his life he maintained a fearlessness and an indifference to consequences" and one journalist claimed: "To say that he has no shame is to drastically exaggerate the amount of shame that he has". In a publicity quote printed in Hardee's autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury's Birthday Cake, Arthur Smith wrote that Hardee had "led his life as though for the perfect autobiography and now he has paid himself the compliment of writing it."
  
  wn.com/Malcolm_Hardee
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  Marcel Marceau
  Marcel Marceau (22 March 1923 – 22 September 2007) was an internationally acclaimed French actor and mime most famous for his persona as Bip the Clown.
  He was born Marcel Mangel in Strasbourg, France to a Jewish family. His parents were Ann Werzberg and Charles Mangel, a kosher butcher. When Marcel was four years old, the family moved to Lille, but they later returned to Strasbourg. When France entered World War II, Marcel, 16, fled with his family to Limoges. In 1944 Marcel's father was captured and deported to the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was killed. Marcel's mother survived.
  Marcel and his older brother, Alain, adopted the last name "Marceau" during the German occupation of France; the name was chosen as a reference to François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers, a general of the French Revolution. The two brothers joined the French Resistance in Limoges, where they saved numerous children from the race laws and concentration camps, and, after the liberation of Paris, joined the French army. Owing to Marcel's excellent command of the English language, he worked as a liaison officer with General George Patton's army. Marcel started miming as a way of keeping children quiet as they were escaping to neutral Switzerland.
  
  wn.com/Marcel_Marceau
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  Margaret Cho
  Margaret Cho (born December 5, 1968) is an American comedian, fashion designer, actress, author, and singer-songwriter. Cho, of Korean descent, is best known for her stand-up routines, through which she critiques social and political problems, especially those pertaining to race and sexuality. She has also directed and appeared in music videos and has her own clothing line. She has frequently supported LGBT rights and has won awards for her humanitarian efforts on behalf of women, Asians, and the LGBT community.
  As an actress she has played more serious parts, such as Charlene Lee in It's My Party and that of John Travolta's FBI colleague in the action movie Face/Off. She is part of the TV series Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime Television, playing the role of Teri Lee, a paralegal assistant.
  Cho was born into a Korean family in San Francisco, California. She grew up in a racially diverse neighborhood in the 1970s and 1980s, which she described as a community of "old hippies, ex-druggies, burn-outs from the '60s, drag queens, Chinese people, and Koreans. To say it was a melting pot — that's the least of it. It was a really confusing, enlightening, wonderful time."
  
  wn.com/Margaret_Cho
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  Mark Steel
  Mark Steel (born 4 July 1960) is an English socialist columnist, author and comedian. A stand-up comedian known for his left-wing beliefs (he was a long-standing member of the Socialist Workers Party before he resigned in 2007), he has made many appearances on radio and television shows as a guest panellist, and has written regular columns in printed media. He is perhaps best known for presenting The Mark Steel Lectures, The Mark Steel Revolution, The Mark Steel Solution, and Mark Steel's in Town.
  Steel was adopted a few days after he was born. He grew up in Swanley, Kent. He was expelled from Swanley Comprehensive School for attending a cricket course at the age of 15,^{[clarification needed]} and went on to work in a garage. From there he went on to make his first public performance as a poet.
  In the late 1970s his father suffered a mental breakdown and was placed into care at Stonehouse Hospital. The shabby conditions of the home reinforced Steel's political beliefs.
  Steel has given varying accounts of his early life: he became bored with constantly being asked how he had started in comedy and took to telling the questioner the first thing that came into his head. He is often described as having worked as a television repair man but confesses that he has no technical ability whatsoever. He worked the comedy circuit for several years, and then in 1992 presented a satirical radio show The Mark Steel Solution on BBC Radio 5, consisting of half-hour monologues which offered solutions to social problems. It ran to four series. It's Not a Runner Bean, a comic autobiography, was published in 1996, and this led to a column in The Guardian.
  
  wn.com/Mark_Steel
• Martin Lawrence
  Martin Fitzgerald Lawrence (born April 16, 1965) is an actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and stand up comedian. He came to fame during the 1990s, establishing a Hollywood career as a leading actor, most notably the films Bad Boys, Blue Streak, and Big Momma's House. Lawrence has acted in numerous film roles and starred in his own television series, Martin, which ran from 1992 to 1997.
  Lawrence was born in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse in Germany on April 16, 1965, to American parents. He was given his first name after civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and his middle name after US President John F. Kennedy. His father, John Lawrence, served in the US Military. After his parents divorced when he was eight, Lawrence rarely saw his father, who worked as a police officer at the time. His mother, Chlora (née Bailey), began working several jobs to support her family. During his teen years, Lawrence excelled at boxing. He lived in Maryland, and attended Thomas G. Pullen School of Creative and Performing Arts (Landover, Maryland), Fairmont Heights High School (Fairmount Heights, Maryland), Eleanor Roosevelt High School, and also Friendly High School in Fort Washington, Maryland, becoming a Mid-Atlantic Golden Gloves boxing contender.
  
  wn.com/Martin_Lawrence
• Max Wall
  Max Wall (12 March 1908 – 21 May 1990), was an English comedian and actor, whose performing career covered music hall, theatre, films and television.
  Wall was born Maxwell George Lorimer, son of the successful music-hall entertainer Jack (Jock) Lorimer, a Scottish comedy actor from Forfar, known for his songs and dancing, and his wife Stella (born Maud Clara Mitchison). He was born near the Oval, at 37 Glenshaw Mansions, Brixton Road, Brixton, London SW9. In 1916, during a World War I air raid, Max and his elder brother Alex were saved from death by a cast iron bed frame, but his younger brother Bunty and their Aunt Betty, who was looking after them, were killed by a bomb dropped from a German Zeppelin which also destroyed their house.
  Max and Alex went to live with their father and his family, whilst their mother went to live with Harry Wallace, whom she had met on tour. When their father died of tuberculosis in 1920, aged 37, their mother married Harry Wallace, and they all moved to a pub in Essex.
  
  wn.com/Max_Wall
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  Michael Mcintyre
  Michael Hazen James McIntyre (born 21 February 1976) is a British stand-up comedian. As well as his stand-up, he has performed on programmes such as Live at the Apollo and has his own programme, Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow.
  McIntyre has released two stand-up DVDs; Live and Laughing in 2008 featured material from his first nationwide tour, while Michael McIntyre: Hello Wembley was released in November 2009 following a set at Wembley Arena. The former was the fastest selling debut stand-up DVD ever, and Hello Wembley is the fastest selling stand-up DVD in UK chart history, selling over a million copies. In 2009 McIntyre performed live to half a million people and won Best Live Stand-up at the British Comedy Awards.
  In 2010, McIntyre released his autobiography, Life and Laughing: My Story, and also became the youngest-ever host of the Royal Variety Performance. He started as a judge on the fifth series of Britain's Got Talent in April 2011. He is to embark on his second nationwide tour in 2012.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Mcintyre
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  Mike Birbiglia
  Mike Birbiglia (born June 20, 1978) is an American comedian, writer, actor, and director.
  Birbiglia has starred in three Comedy Central specials and has released three albums with Comedy Central Records: Two Drink Mike (2006), My Secret Public Journal Live (2007), and Sleepwalk With Me Live (2011). My Secret Public Journal Live was named one of the best comedy albums of the decade by the Onion AV Cluband Sleepwalk With Me Live debuted at #1 on the Billboard Magazine Comedy Charts.
  From 2006 to 2009, Birbiglia was a commercial spokesman for Suddenlink Communications, the seventh largest cable/broadband provider in the United States. He appeared in a number of humorous commercials promoting cable, internet and telephone service for Suddenlink.
  In 2008, Birbiglia opened Sleepwalk WIth Me, a one-man show that straddled standup comedy and theater, off-Broadway at the Bleecker Street Theatre. The show was presented by Nathan Lane and the New York Times called the show "simply perfect."Time Out New York named it their "Show of the Year" in 2009.
  
  wn.com/Mike_Birbiglia
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  Mitch Benn
  Mitchell John Benn (born 20 January 1970) is a British musician, stand-up comedian and author known for his "humorous" songs performed on BBC radio. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's satirical programme The Now Show, and has hosted other radio shows.
  Benn has performed at several music festivals, and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He has also released seven studio albums. His first science fiction novel, tentatively titled Terra, will be published in 2013.
  Mitch Benn was born in Liverpool, England. He was educated at the Dovedale Primary School, the then all boys grammar school Liverpool Blue Coat School, followed by the University of Edinburgh, where he was a prominent member of the Edinburgh University Theatre Company at the Bedlam Theatre and performed in the Improverts improvised comedy troupe. He began his comedy career in Edinburgh in 1994, moved to London in 1996 and quickly established himself as a comedy club "headliner" as well as a favourite on the university circuit. He is married to Clara and has two daughters, Greta and Astrid (born in November 2005 and May 2008 respectively). Benn has on several occasions stated the pride he has over his viking ancestry, although question remain if it is true or just said for comical effect in regard to him having several songs about vikings.
  
  wn.com/Mitch_Benn
• Mitch Hedberg
  Mitchell Lee "Mitch" Hedberg (February 24, 1968 – March 29, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian known for his surreal humor and unconventional comedic delivery. His comedy typically featured short, sometimes one-line jokes, mixed with absurd elements and non sequiturs.
  Hedberg's comedy and on-stage persona gained him a cult following, with audience members sometimes shouting out the punchlines to his jokes before he could finish them.
  Mitch Hedberg was born February 24, 1968, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of Arne and Mary Hedberg. He graduated from Harding High School in Saint Paul.
  Hedberg began his stand-up career in Florida, and after a period of honing his skills moved to Seattle and began to tour. He soon appeared on MTV's Comikaze, followed by a 1996 appearance on Late Show with David Letterman which brought him his big break. He won the 1997 grand prize at the Seattle Comedy Competition. The following year he appeared in one episode of Fox's series That 70's Show.
  In 1999 he completed his own independent feature film Los Enchiladas!, in which he wrote, directed, produced, and starred. He recorded three comedy CDs entitled Strategic Grill Locations, Mitch All Together, and Do You Believe in Gosh?, which was released posthumously. He also appeared at the Montreal Just For Laughs comedy festival in 1998 and 2001. According to Hedberg there had been talk of creating a TV series around him, but plans never came to be.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Mitch_Hedberg
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  Mitchell and Webb
  Mitchell and Webb are a British comedy double act, composed of David Mitchell (born 14 July 1974) and Robert Webb (born 29 September 1972). They are best known for starring in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show and their award-winning sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look. The duo first met at the Footlights in 1993 and collaborated for the 1995 Revue whilst studying at Cambridge University.
  After graduating from university, the duo did two-man shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and some sketch writing, including a series of Big Train and also for Armstrong and Miller's eponymous show. Their big break came in 2000 when they joined the writing team for the BBC Two sketch show Bruiser. The following year, the short-lived Play UK channel invited them to write their own sketch show, The Mitchell and Webb Situation. Despite the low ratings of the channel, the show was reasonably well-received by viewers. After the success, they wrote and starred in the Radio 4 sketch show, That Mitchell and Webb Sound – which was later adapted for television on BBC Two as That Mitchell and Webb Look. The first series of That Mitchell and Webb Look won the BAFTA for "Best Comedy Programme" in 2007.
  
  wn.com/Mitchell_and_Webb
• Monty Python
  Monty Python (sometimes known as The Pythons) was a British surreal comedy group who created Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series. The Python phenomenon developed from the television series into something larger in scope and impact, spawning touring stage shows, films, numerous albums, several books and a stage musical as well as launching the members to individual stardom. The group's influence on comedy has been compared to The Beatles' influence on music.
  The television series, broadcast by the BBC from 1969 to 1974, was conceived, written and performed by members Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. Loosely structured as a sketch show, but with an innovative stream-of-consciousness approach (aided by Gilliam's animation), it pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in style and content. A self-contained comedy team responsible for both writing and performing their work, the Pythons' creative control allowed them to experiment with form and content, discarding rules of television comedy. Their influence on British comedy has been apparent for years, while in North America it has coloured the work of cult performers from the early editions of Saturday Night Live through to more recent absurdist trends in television comedy. "Pythonesque" has entered the English lexicon as a result.
  
  wn.com/Monty_Python
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  Myq Kaplan
  Myq Kaplan (born 1978) is an American stand-up comedian. Born Michael Kaplan in Livingston, New Jersey, he is based in Boston and New York City.
  Kaplan received his bachelor's degree from Brandeis University in 2000 and a master's degree in linguistics from Boston University. While a student at Boston University in 2005, he won its "funniest student" contest.
  Kaplan tours North America regularly, having performed over 1,000 shows at comedy clubs.
  He was a semifinalist in the 2006 Boston Comedy Festival and in the 2006 Seattle Comedy Competition. He was a participant in Comedy Central's 2007 competition Open Mic Fight as one of the nine finalists. In 2008, a reader poll by Boston's The Phoenix named him Local Comedian of the Year. Kaplan was part of Montreal's Just for Laughs comedy festival in 2009.
  Myq Kaplan has appeared on Comedy Central's show Live at Gotham and in promotional work for the television station. He has been featured on ABC News Now.
  On December 16, 2009, he performed for the first time on The Tonight Show. Kaplan also appeared as a contestant on the competition TV series Last Comic Standing during the summer 2010. He placed fifth in the competition.
  
  wn.com/Myq_Kaplan
• Neil Mullarkey
  
  Neil R. Mullarkey (born 1961) is an English actor, writer and comedian.
  Mullarkey studied at Robinson College, Cambridge where he was a member of the Footlights and was Junior Treasurer during Tony Slattery's term as president. He became president in 1982 with Nick Hancock, Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis as his contemporaries. Mullarkey formed Hancock & Mullarkey with Hancock, performing their act (which consisted of spoofing television shows' title sequences to that show's accompanying theme music) several times on television. This included Doctor Who, Kojak, and Dad's Army.
  He has also been in a double act with Tony Hawks called the Timid Twins.[1]
  In the early 1980s, he teamed up with Mike Myers as 'Mullarkey and Myers'. They would perform sketches based on their shared love of cartoons, B-movies and bad TV. They played around the burgeoning London pub circuit, particularly at the George IV in Chiswick, where they often shared the bill with the young Hugh Grant, then plying his trade in the Jockeys Of Norfolk revue. As their fame increased, Mullarkey and Myers toured the UK, ending in a sold-out season at the Edinburgh Festival. The two also appeared as 'The Sound Asleep Club' on TV-am's 'Wide Awake Club', a children's TV show hosted at the time by Tommy Boyd. Mike eventually returned to Toronto, but Mullarkey would briefly join him to revive 'Mullarkey and Myers' in Canada. Later still, he appeared in Myers' début in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, as the Customs Officer who freaks Austin out with his penis enlarger. (He also appeared again in Goldmember and helped Mike Myers do uncredited rewrites of So I Married An Axe Murderer).
  
  wn.com/Neil_Mullarkey
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  Norman Wisdom
  Sir Norman Joseph Wisdom,OBE (4 February 1915 – 4 October 2010) was an English actor, comedian and singer-songwriter best known for a series of comedy films produced between 1953 and 1966 featuring his hapless onscreen character Norman Pitkin. These films initially made more money than the James Bond film series. Wisdom gained a celebrity status in lands as far apart as South America, Iran and many Eastern Bloc countries, particularly in Albania, where his films were the only ones by Western actors permitted by Enver Hoxha to be shown.Charlie Chaplin once referred to Wisdom as his "favourite clown".
  Wisdom later forged a career on Broadway in New York and as a television actor, winning critical acclaim for his dramatic role of a dying cancer patient in the television play Going Gently in 1981. It was broadcast on 5 June that year. He toured Australia and South Africa. After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, a hospice was named in his honour. In 1995 he was given the Freedom of the City of London and of Tirana. The same year he received an OBE. Wisdom was knighted in 2000 and spent much of his later life on the Isle of Man. Some of his later appearances included roles in Last of the Summer Wine and Coronation Street, and he retired from acting at the age of 90 after his health deteriorated.
  
  wn.com/Norman_Wisdom
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  Oscar Wilde
  Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.
  Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States of America and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde had become one of the most well-known personalities of his day.
  
  wn.com/Oscar_Wilde
• Paul Eddington
  Paul Eddington, CBE (18 June 1927 - 4 November 1995) was an English actor best known for his appearances in popular television sitcoms of the 1970s and 80s: The Good Life, Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.
  Eddington was born to Albert Clark Eddington and Frances Mary (née Roberts). A Quaker, he attended Sibford School, Sibford Ferris, Oxfordshire.
  He began his acting career with Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) during the Second World War, but was asked to leave when it became known that he was a pacifist and a conscientious objector. Eddington worked for a repertory theatre company in Sheffield, and made his first TV appearance in 1956 as a regular cast member of The Adventures of Robin Hood. Initially he played minor characters, but in the fourth season during 1959-60 he played Will Scarlet. He also had roles in episodes of The Avengers (1963), The Prisoner (1967) and the final episode of The Champions (1969). He also had a supporting role in Hammer Films' The Devil Rides Out (1968) and appeared as a "straight man" (substituting for regular stooge Henry McGee) in a 1976 episode of The Benny Hill Show.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Eddington
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  Paul Merton
  Paul Merton (born Paul James Martin; 9 July 1957) is a British comedian, writer, actor and television presenter. Known for his improvisation skill, his humour is rooted in deadpan, surreal and sometimes dark comedy. Considered by a number of critics, fellow comedians and members of the public to be among Britain's greatest comedians, he is well known for his regular appearances as a team captain on the BBC panel game Have I Got News for You, and as the former host of Room 101. He has also appeared as a regular panellist on Radio 4's Just a Minute and as one of Comedy Store's Comedy Store Players.
  Merton was born on 9 July 1957 in Parsons Green, London to an English father (a train guard on the London Underground) and an Irish Roman Catholic mother. When his mother returned to work as a nurse, Merton and his younger sister were looked after by their grandfather, who lived with them in their council flat in Mitcham, South London.^{[citation needed]}
  He failed his eleven plus and went on to Wimbledon College, a Jesuit-run secondary school that had just become a comprehensive, where he received A-levels in English and History. His experience of victimisation there as a working-class boy became a frequent subject of his comedy.^{[citation needed]} After leaving school, Merton worked at the Tooting employment office for seven years.
  
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  Paula Poundstone
  Paula Poundstone (born December 29, 1959) is an American stand-up comedian.
  Poundstone was born in Huntsville, Alabama, and her family moved to Sudbury, Massachusetts. Poundstone attended Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, but dropped out to pursue a show business career. Her jobs have included busing tables and working as a bicycle messenger.
  Paula Poundstone started doing stand-up comedy at open-mic nights in Boston in 1979. She characteristically performs dressed in a suit and tie. In 1984, Poundstone was cast in the movie Hyperspace but she did not further pursue an acting career. Instead, she continued as a comedian and began appearing on several talk shows. In 1989, she won the American Comedy Award for "Best Female Stand-Up Comic." In 1990, she wrote and starred in an HBO special called Cats, Cops and Stuff, for which she won a CableACE Award. She worked as a political correspondent for the Tonight Show during the 1992 US Presidential campaign and did the same for The Rosie O'Donnell Show in 1996. In 1993, Poundstone won a second CableACE Award, and began writing the column, "Hey, Paula!" for Mother Jones (1993–1998). Paula featured in her own variety show, The Paula Poundstone Show, on ABC (which lasted only two episodes). She was also a regular panelist for the game shows Hollywood Squares and To Tell the Truth, and NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
  
  wn.com/Paula_Poundstone
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  Peter Cook
  Peter Edward Cook (17 November 1937 – 9 January 1995) was an English satirist, writer and comedian. An extremely influential figure in modern British comedy, he is regarded as the leading light of the British satire boom of the 1960s. Cook has been described by Stephen Fry as "the funniest man who ever drew breath", although his work was also controversial. Cook was closely associated with anti-establishment comedy which emerged in Britain and the United States in the late 1950s.
  Cook was born at his parents' house "Shearbridge", in Middle Warberry Road, Torquay, Devon. He was the only son and eldest of the three children of Alexander Edward (Alec) Cook (1906–1984), a colonial civil servant, and his wife Ethel Catherine Margaret, née Mayo (1908–1994). He was educated at Radley College and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied French and German. As a student, Cook initially intended to become a career diplomat like his father, but Britain "had run out of colonies", as he put it. Although politically largely apathetic, particularly in later life when he displayed a deep distrust of politicians of all hues, he did join the Cambridge University Liberal Club.
  
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  Peter Helliar
  Peter Jason Matthew Helliar (born 16 June 1975 in Melbourne) is an Australian comedian, actor and writer. Most famous for his work on television as Rove McManus' sidekick on The Loft Live from 1997 to 1998 and on Rove from 1999 and 2009. He also appeared in Before the Game as alter ego Bryan Strauchan. Helliar initially worked the Melbourne stand-up comedy circuit in the mid nineties, performing in various venues and the annual Melbourne International Comedy Festival. He performed in numerous television commercials, most notably for Fernwood. Helliar now lives in Eltham, Victoria.
  In 1998 he became a regular on Melbourne community television Channel 31's weekly variety show The Loft Live, hosted by Rove McManus and including other well known Melbourne comedians such as Dave Hughes, Kim Hope, and Dave Callan. He appeared as a live on-screen guest as well as scripting and recording skits for live playback.
  He rose to national attention in 1999, wheb he became a regular (aka side-kick) to Rove McManus on Rove, which aired on the Nine Network. In 2000, the show moved networks to Channel Ten, where Helliar and the show remained until its ending in late 2009.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Helliar
• Peter Kay
  Peter John Kay (born 2 July 1973) is an English comedian, writer, actor, director and producer from Lancashire. His work includes That Peter Kay Thing (2000), Phoenix Nights (2001), Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere (2004), Britain's Got the Pop Factor... (2008) and other independent productions which have included two sell out tours. Kay has sold over 10 million DVDs, a UK record for a comedian.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Kay
• Peter Serafinowicz
  Peter Szymon Serafinowicz ( /sɛrəˈfɪnəwɪtʃ/; born 10 July 1972) is an English actor, comedian, writer, composer, voice artist and occasional director.
  Serafinowicz was born in Liverpool, England. He attended Our Lady of the Assumption Roman Catholic Primary School and St Francis Xavier Secondary School. He lived in the Gateacre area of Liverpool until his early third decade, before moving to London.^{[citation needed]}
  Serafinowicz made his broadcasting debut in 1993 on Radio 1 show The Knowledge, a spoof documentary about the music industry. From there he went on to perform in Radio 4 shows Week Ending, Harry Hill's Fruit Corner, Grievous Bodily Radio, The Two Dannys and A Whole New Ball Game.
  On May 1, 1997, he appeared in The Election Night Armistice as Moz Bingham, the fictional press secretary to the then shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who verbally abuses and bullies the BBC's Nick Robinson in a spoof phone call over the politician's news coverage. In 1998 he appeared on TV in Comedy Nation and You are Here. He also had a role in the Simon Nye-penned sitcom How Do You Want Me?.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Serafinowicz
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  Punt and Dennis
  Punt and Dennis are a comedy double act consisting of Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. The duo first met at the Footlights while studying at Cambridge University in the early 1980's. Initially they started off as a comic duo performing at various venues in London on the weekends due to Dennis' weekday job commitments and have since branched out into acting and screen writing.
  Punt and Dennis' first appeared on television in Jasper Carrott's shows during the late 1980's. They came to public attention as one half of The Mary Whitehouse Experience, a comedy show on BBC Radio 1 which then transferred to television. While the other two stars of the series, Rob Newman and David Baddiel became major celebrities - playing to sell out audiences at Wembley Arena - Punt and Dennis never attained the same level of prominence as a double act. Their own TV series, The Imaginatively Titled Punt and Dennis Show, did not meet the same success as The Mary Whitehouse Experience had though it won larger audiences and was given a higher profile than the other pairing's spin-off project Newman and Baddiel in Pieces.
  
  wn.com/Punt_and_Dennis
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  Ray Romano
  Raymond Albert Romano (born December 21, 1957) is an American actor, writer and stand-up comedian, best known for his roles on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond and in the Ice Age film series. He recently starred in the TNT comedy-drama Men of a Certain Age.
  Romano was born in Queens, New York, to Italian American parents: Lucie, a piano teacher, and Albert Romano (1925–March 2010), a real estate agent and an engineer. He grew up in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens. He has a brother named Richard A. Romano. Romano attended elementary and middle school at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs in Forest Hills. After transferring from Archbishop Molloy High School, Romano graduated from Hillcrest High School in 1975. He was in the same high school class as Fran Drescher and later appeared on Drescher's sitcom, The Nanny, as an old classmate. Before getting into show business, Romano briefly attended Queens College, in Flushing, New York, where he studied accounting. Romano quit after gaining only 15 credits in three years, but he would later return, however, making it to the Dean's List for three years.
  
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  Redd Foxx
  John Elroy Sanford (December 9, 1922 – October 11, 1991), better known by his stage name Redd Foxx, was an American comedian and actor, best known for his starring role on the sitcom Sanford and Son.
  Foxx was born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised there and on Chicago's South Side. His mother was half Seminole.^{[citation needed]} His father, an electrician, left his family when Foxx was four years old. Foxx was raised by his mother, his minister, and his grandmother. He briefly attended DuSable High School with future Chicago mayor Harold Washington.
  In the 1940s, he was an associate of Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X. In Malcolm's autobiography, Foxx is referred to as "Chicago Red, the funniest dishwasher on this earth." Foxx earned the nickname due to his reddish hair and complexion. His stage surname was taken from baseball star Jimmie Foxx. During World War II, Foxx dodged the draft by eating half a bar of soap before his physical, a trick that resulted in heart palpitations.
  Foxx gained notoriety with his nightclub act (considered by the standards of the time to be raunchy). His big break came after singer Dinah Washington insisted that Foxx come to Los Angeles, where Dootsie Williams of Dootone records caught his act at the Brass Rail nightclub. He was signed to a long term contract and released a series of comedy albums that quickly became cult favorites.
  
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  Rich Hall
  Richard "Rich" Hall (born 10 June 1954) is an American comedian, writer and musician.
  Hall was born in Alexandria, Virginia and grew up in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He is part Cherokee Indian and his mother's Christian name is Doris. Early in his career, he performed as a street comedian with a suitcase and stand, traveling the college circuit, and performing impromptu skits for gathering crowds.
  Hall's first professional work was as a writer and performer on the American sketch comedy TV series Fridays from 1980 until 1982. After the end of Fridays, Hall co-wrote and starred in the satirical comedy series Not Necessarily the News from 1983 until 1990 where he coined the term "sniglet" and collected and published several volumes of books of them. Matt Groening has described him as the inspiration for Moe Szyslak from The Simpsons. He was also a regular on Saturday Night Live. In 1986, he had his own Showtime channel special, Vanishing America, which was turned into a book with the same title. He hosted a talk show during The Comedy Channel's 1990-91 season, titled Rich Hall's Onion World.
  
  wn.com/Rich_Hall
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  Rich Vos
  Richard Ira "Rich" Vos (born June 30, 1957) is an American comedian. Originally from Plainfield, New Jersey, Vos has been a working stand-up for decades. Friend and fellow comic Colin Quinn jokingly described Vos in his early days as a "Jersey Hack".
  On the 2001 English Channel 5 show The People of New York vs Jerry Sadowitz, Vos was the bouncer, often performing his own skits. In 2004, Vos released his first DVD. Entitled Vos, the self-produced stand-up comedy special consisted of an unedited 55 minute performance from a single camera angle, recorded off the monitor at the Stress Factory in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with a plain black cover with the word "Vos" printed in sans-serif font on it. He also released a CD entitled "I'm Killing Here". He has the distinction of being the first white comedian to perform on Def Comedy Jam. Vos placed 3rd on the first season of NBC's Last Comic Standing and starred in the show's first and third seasons.
  In September 2005, Vos married comedian Bonnie McFarlane, who was seen on season 2 of Last Comic Standing. Together they have a daughter, Rayna Lynn Vos, born on July 31, 2007. He is also a frequent guest on the Opie and Anthony radio program on XM Satellite Radio, often substituting for Jim Norton. He has also hosted Saturday night broadcasts with McFarlane.
  
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  Richard Herring
  Richard Keith Herring (born 12 July 1967) is a British comedian and writer, whose early work includes his involvement in the double-act, Lee and Herring. He is described by the British Theatre Guide as "one of the leading hidden masters of modern British comedy". He has written and performed in a body of live one-man comedy shows including the acclaimed Talking Cock and the resulting book of the same name. He has collaborated with the broadcaster Andrew Collins, initially on the radio series Banter, then on Collins' BBC 6 Music show and Collings and Herrin Podcast.
  During the 2000s, Herring has toured with a new stand-up show almost every year. His 2009 show Hitler Moustache was the subject of much controversy, but also received critical approval and sold out for the entire Edinburgh Festival. His 2010 show Christ on a Bike: The Second Coming received several 4 and 5 star reviews and was taken on a 94 date tour of the UK in the Spring of 2011. It was the subject of protests from Christians in Glasgow. and Lowestoft
  
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  Richard Pryor
  Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer, and MC. Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities, and profanity, as well as racial epithets. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of his era: Jerry Seinfeld called Pryor "The Picasso of our profession";Bob Newhart has called Pryor "the seminal comedian of the last 50 years.". This legacy can be attributed, in part, to the unusual degree of intimacy Pryor brought to bear on his comedy. As Bill Cosby reportedly once said, "Richard Pryor drew the line between comedy and tragedy as thin as one could possibly paint it."
  His body of work includes the concert movies and recordings Richard Pryor: Live & Smokin' (1971), That Nigger's Crazy (1974), ...Is It Something I Said? (1975), Bicentennial Nigger (1976), Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979), Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982), and Richard Pryor: Here and Now (1983). He also starred in numerous films as an actor, such as Superman III (1983) but was usually in comedies such as Silver Streak (1976), and occasionally in dramatic roles, such as Paul Schrader's film Blue Collar (1978). He collaborated on many projects with actor Gene Wilder. Another frequent collaborator was actor/comedian/writer Paul Mooney.
  
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  Ricky Gervais
  Ricky Dene Gervais (/dʒərˈveɪz/; born 25 June 1961) is an English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter.
  Gervais achieved mainstream fame with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with frequent collaborator Stephen Merchant. In addition to writing and directing the shows, Gervais played the lead roles of David Brent in The Office and Andy Millman in Extras. Gervais has also starred in a number of Hollywood films, assuming leading roles in Ghost Town and The Invention of Lying. He has performed on four sell-out stand-up comedy tours, written the best-selling Flanimals book series and starred with Merchant and Karl Pilkington in the most downloaded podcast in the world as of March 2009,The Ricky Gervais Show.
  He has won multiple awards and honours, including seven BAFTA Awards, five British Comedy Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and the 2006 Rose d'Or, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. In 2007 he was voted the 11th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and again in the updated 2010 list as the 3rd greatest stand-up comic. In 2010 he was named on the TIME 100 list of the world's most influential people.
  
  wn.com/Ricky_Gervais
• Rik Mayall
  Richard Michael "Rik" Mayall (born 7 March 1958) is an English comedian, writer and actor. He is known for his comedy partnership with Ade Edmondson, his over-the-top, energetic portrayal of characters, and as a pioneer of alternative comedy in the early 1980s. Such notability has led him to appear in sitcoms such as The Young Ones, Blackadder, The New Statesman, and Bottom and even onto the big screen in comedy films such as Drop Dead Fred and Guest House Paradiso.
  Mayall, the second of four children, was born in Harlow, Essex to John and Gillian Mayall. He has an older brother, Anthony, and two younger sisters, Libby and Kate. When he was three years old, Mayall and his parents — who taught drama — moved to Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire, where he spent the rest of his childhood and performed in his parents' plays. After attending the King's School, Worcester, Mayall went to the Victoria University of Manchester in 1976 to study drama, where he befriended his future comedy partner Ade Edmondson. He also met Ben Elton and Lise Mayer, with whom he later co-wrote The Young Ones.
  
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  Rob Brydon
  Rob Brydon (born Robert Brydon Jones; 3 May 1965) is a BAFTA-nominated Welsh actor, comedian, radio and television presenter, singer and impressionist. He played Uncle Bryn in the comedy drama Gavin and Stacey, is the host of panel quiz show Would I Lie to You?, plays a parody of himself in Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive and played Keith Barret in the BBC comedy Marion and Geoff and its spin-off The Keith Barret Show. He also hosts The Rob Brydon Show, a chat show for the BBC. Brydon has worked with a number of comedians and actors, notably Steve Coogan and Julia Davis.
  Robert Brydon Jones was born on 3 May 1965 in Swansea. His mother, Joy Jones (née Brydon), was a school teacher, and his father, Howard Jones, was a car dealer. He grew up near Swansea in Baglan in the town of Port Talbot.
  Brydon was educated at two independent schools: St. John's School in Porthcawl, which Eddie Izzard also attended as did Ruth Jones whom he later worked with in Gavin and Stacey, and Dumbarton House School in Swansea until the age of 14; this was followed by Porthcawl Comprehensive School, where he became a member of the school's youth theatre group. While at Dumbarton he once stole fellow pupil Catherine Zeta-Jones's dinner money (which he admitted while participating in a series-four episode of Would I Lie To You?).
  
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  Robin Williams
  Robin McLaurin Williams (born July 21, 1951) is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork & Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Grammy Awards.
  Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurin (née Smith, 1922–2001), was a former model from New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10, 1906 – October 18, 1987), was a senior executive at Ford Motor Company in charge of the Midwest region. His maternal great-great-grandfather was senator and Mississippi governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams is of English, Welsh, Irish, and French ancestry. He was raised in the Episcopal Church (his mother practiced Christian Science). He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and later moved to Woodacre, Marin County, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School. Williams studied at Claremont McKenna College (then called Claremont Men's College) for four years. He has two half-brothers: Todd (who died August 14, 2007) and McLaurin.
  
  wn.com/Robin_Williams
• Rodney Marks
  Rodney Marks (born 1956), is an Australian comedian. Marks satirises bureaucracy by impersonating experts of either sex and varied ethnicity and occupation. He has professionally performed for hundreds of corporations, government departments, universities and other organisations in Australasia and the USA. In his hoaxes, Marks allows tension to rise as he usurps power by making authoritative, vexatious statements. Then he reveals his identity, to the relief of the audience. Marks combines formidable knowledge of management jargon with a relaxed improvisational style and a warm, persuasive personality. He studied theatre at the University of New England in 1977-79 and worked as an actor, director, academic, management consultant and arts administrator before he became a full-time comedian in 1991. Meanwhile he had gained master's degrees in business administration and public administration, the former from the AGSM, the latter from Harvard University. Marks returned to Harvard as artist-in-residence in 1995 and hoaxed academics, students and experienced managers.
  
  wn.com/Rodney_Marks
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  Ron White
  Ronald "Ron" White (born December 19, 1956) is an American stand up comedian and satirist who has had two Grammy Award-nominations, and is RIAA certified 10x Platinum for CD and DVD sales of over 10 million units. He is a charter member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour and authored the book I Had the Right to Remain Silent But I Didn't Have the Ability (Dutton 2006, ISBN 978-0-525-94961-9), which appeared on the New York Times best seller list.
  
  wn.com/Ron_White
• Rory Bremner
  Roderick "Rory" Keith Ogilvy Bremner,FKC (born 6 April 1961) is a Scottish impressionist, playwright and comedian, noted for his work in political satire and impressions of prominent British politicians. He is also known for his work on Mock the Week as a panellist (for Series 1 and 2), award-winning show Rory Bremner...Who Else? and sketch comedy series Bremner, Bird and Fortune, which features veteran comedians John Bird and John Fortune.
  Born in Edinburgh, Rory Bremner was born to Major Donald Stuart Ogilvy Bremner (December 1907–1979) (who was 53 years old at Rory's birth) and his second wife Ann Simpson (1922–2001). He has an older brother and an older half-sister (from his father's first marriage). Bremner was educated at Clifton Hall School and Wellington College and then studied Modern Languages at King's College London, graduating with a degree in French and German in 1984.
  While at university, Bremner worked in the cabaret circuit in the evenings and was involved in the drama club. He first came into the limelight in 1985, when his single, N-N-Nineteen Not Out (released under the name, "The Commentators") was a big hit in the British charts. It was a parody of Paul Hardcastle's number one hit, 19, with Bremner impersonating cricket commentators, including Richie Benaud and Brian Johnston, and replacing references to the Vietnam War with references to the England cricket team's disastrous 1984 home series against the West Indies in which the England captain David Gower had averaged 19.
  
  wn.com/Rory_Bremner
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  Ross Noble
  Ross Markham Noble (born 5 June 1976 in Newcastle upon Tyne) is an English stand-up comedian from Cramlington, Northumberland.
  Noble rose to mainstream popularity through making appearances on British television, particularly interviews and on celebrity quiz shows such as Have I Got News for You. He has also released DVDs of several of his tours.
  In 2007 he was voted the 10th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and again in the updated 2010 list as the 11th greatest stand-up comic.
  Noble's stand-up routine is a largely improvised and surreal performance with a stream of consciousness delivery. Often, a large percentage of his set becomes based around heckles and conversations with members of the audience. Although he does often have a few set topics which he performs throughout a tour, he describes the planning for the entire show as "about four words on a piece of scrap paper".
  Noble often mimes actions on-stage to help the audience visualise his surreal ideas, for example, telling the audience to never put a blanket over an owl, and exactly what an owl neck detection device is ("just a stick with a pointy bit on it") or showing the audience how to serve double header ice creams properly after considering his own made-up plot of 24 in which Jack Bauer escapes a cell using a greasy goose.
  
  wn.com/Ross_Noble
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  Rowan Atkinson
  Rowan Sebastian Atkinson (born 6 January 1955) is a British actor, comedian, and screenwriter. He is most famous for his work on the satirical sketch comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News, and the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Thin Blue Line. He has been listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest actors in British comedy, and amongst the top 50 comedians ever in a 2005 poll of fellow comedians. He has also had cinematic success with his performances in the Mr. Bean movie adaptations Bean and Mr. Bean's Holiday and in Johnny English and its sequel Johnny English Reborn. He also starred in the film Never Say Never Again (a spy film based on the James Bond novel Thunderball) in 1983.
  Atkinson, the youngest of four brothers, was born in Consett, County Durham, England. His parents were Eric Atkinson, a farmer and company director, and Ella May (née Bainbridge), who married on 29 June 1945. His three older brothers were Paul, who died as an infant, Rodney, a Eurosceptic economist who narrowly lost the United Kingdom Independence Party leadership election in 2000, and Rupert. Atkinson was brought up Anglican, and was educated at Durham Choristers School, St. Bees School, and Newcastle University. In 1975, he continued for the degree of MSc in Electrical Engineering at The Queen's College, Oxford, the same college his father matriculated at in 1935, which made Atkinson an Honorary Fellow in 2006. First achieving notice at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1976, while at Oxford, he also acted and performed early sketches for the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), the Oxford Revue and the Experimental Theatre Club (ETC), meeting writer Richard Curtis and composer Howard Goodall, with whom he would continue to collaborate during his career.
  
  wn.com/Rowan_Atkinson
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  Russell Peters
  Russell Dominic Peters (born September 29, 1970) is a Canadian comedian, actor and disc jockey. He began performing in Toronto in 1989 and has been nominated for four Gemini Awards.
  Russell Peters was born in Brampton, Ontario, Canada to Eric and Maureen Peters. His family is of Anglo-Indian ancestry and is Catholic. His father was born in Bombay, Maharashtra, India, and worked as a federal meat inspector; he is regularly mentioned and featured in his comedy work. His mother was born in Calcutta, West Bengal, India. He has an older brother named Clayton who was born in Calcutta. Russell attended Chinguacousy Secondary School for grades 9–10, and North Peel Secondary School for grades 11–12 in Brampton.
  Peters began performing in Toronto in 1989. Peters' popularity extends to several countries. He has since also performed in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Afghanistan, Sweden, South Africa, India, the Caribbean, Philippines, Vietnam, mainland China, Canada, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, France, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Norway, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Trinidad among other places.
  
  wn.com/Russell_Peters
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  Ryan Stiles
  Ryan Lee Stiles (born April 22, 1959) is an American actor, comedian, director, and voice actor whose work is often associated with improvisational comedy. He is best known for his improv and co-production work on the American and British versions of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and the role of Lewis Kiniski on The Drew Carey Show. He plays Herb Melnick on the CBS comedy Two and a Half Men and was a performer on the show Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza.
  Stiles was born in Seattle, Washington, the youngest of five children. His father Sonny was a fishing plant supervisor. Stiles lived in Vancouver, British Columbia as a teenager. At the age of seventeen, he dropped out of his high school, Richmond Secondary, to pursue a career in comedy. He briefly worked in his father's fish-processing plant to earn a living. He then began performing improv with Vancouver Theatresports League. In 1986, Stiles successfully auditioned for a berth at Toronto's renowned Second City comedy ensemble.
  By 1989, Stiles had gained the attention of the producers of the British improvisational comedy show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Stiles was a regular on the show until 1998, and the show's short production season allowed him to make numerous television and motion picture appearances in the United States.
  
  wn.com/Ryan_Stiles
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  Sacha Baron Cohen
  Sacha Noam Baron Cohen (born 13 October 1971) is an English stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and voice actor. A graduate of Cambridge University, Baron Cohen is most widely known for writing and playing four unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat, Brüno, and Admiral General Aladeen. In his routines, Baron Cohen's characters interact with unsuspecting people who do not realise they are being set up for comic situations and self-revealing ridicule.
  Baron Cohen was named Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Comedy Awards for The 11 O'Clock Show, and since then, his work has been further recognised with two BAFTA Awards for Da Ali G Show, several Emmy nominations, a nomination for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay, and a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his work in the feature film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. After the release of Borat, Baron Cohen stated that because the public had become too familiar with the characters, he would retire Borat and Ali G. Similarly, after the release of Brüno, Baron Cohen has stated he would also retire the title character.
  
  wn.com/Sacha_Baron_Cohen
• Sam Kinison
  Samuel Burl "Sam" Kinison (December 8, 1953 – April 10, 1992) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. Kinison was known for his intense, harsh and politically incorrect genre humor. A former Pentecostal preacher, he performed stand-up routines that were most often characterized by an intense style, similar to enthusiastic preachers, punctuated by his trademark scream.
  Born in Yakima, Washington Kinison was the son of Marie and Samuel Kinison, Pentecostal preachers. The family moved to East Peoria, Illinois when Kinison was three months old. His father pastored several churches around the country, receiving little income. Sam later attended East Peoria Community High School in East Peoria, Illinois.^{[citation needed]} He also lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a while with his parents. He followed in his father's footsteps as a Pentecostal preacher before becoming a comedian. Recordings of his sermons reveal that he used a "fire and brimstone" style, punctuated with shouts similar to the ones he would later use in his stand-up routines. He attended Pinecrest Bible Training Center in Salisbury Center, New York. After he and his first wife were divorced, he abandoned preaching and took up comedy as a profession.
  
  wn.com/Sam_Kinison
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  Sarah Silverman
  Sarah Kate Silverman (born December 1, 1970) is an American comedienne, writer, actress, singer and musician. Her satirical comedy addresses social taboos and controversial topics such as racism, sexism, and religion.
  Silverman first gained notice as a writer and occasional performer on Saturday Night Live. She starred in and produced The Sarah Silverman Program, which ran from 2007 to 2010, on Comedy Central. She often performs her act mocking bigotry and stereotypes of ethnic groups and religious denominations by having her comic character endorse them in an ironic fashion.
  Sarah Silverman, the youngest of four daughters, was born in Manchester, New Hampshire. Her mother, Beth Ann Halpin, was George McGovern's personal campaign photographer and founded the theater company New Thalian Players. Her father, Donald Silverman, was a social worker by training who ran the discount clothing store Crazy Sophie's Outlet. She was raised without religion, though she is ethnically Jewish.
  She appeared in community theater at age 12, most notably with Community Players of Concord, New Hampshire in Annie and also appeared on a local television show in the Boston area called Community Auditions at age 15. At seventeen, she performed stand-up comedy in a restaurant, singing a song she called "Mammaries."
  
  wn.com/Sarah_Silverman
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  Shaun Micallef
  Shaun Patrick Micallef (born 18 July 1962) is an Australian actor, comedian and writer. After ten years of working in insurance law as a solicitor in Adelaide, Micallef moved to Melbourne to pursue a full-time comedy career in 1993. He first gained recognition as a cast member of the sketch comedy show Full Frontal, which in turn led to a number of television roles including his own sketch show, The Micallef P(r)ogram(me), the sitcom Welcher & Welcher and the variety show Micallef Tonight. He also fronted the satirical news comedy series Newstopia on SBS and currently hosts the game show Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation on Network Ten.
  In addition to his television work Micallef has appeared on stage, most notably in the Australian production of Boeing Boeing, and radio as the co-host of Melbourne station Vega 91.5 FM's morning program. He is also a published author; his book Smithereens was released in 2004, and re-released in January 2011. His other book, a novella by the name of Preincarnate, was released in 2010.
  
  wn.com/Shaun_Micallef
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  Shel Silverstein
  Sheldon Allan "Shel" Silverstein (September 25, 1930 – May 8/9, 1999), was an American poet, singer-songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books. He styled himself as Uncle Shelby in his children's books. Translated into more than 30 languages, his books have sold over 20 million copies.
  Born in Chicago, Silverstein began drawing at age 12 by tracing the works of Al Capp. He told Jean Mercier of Publishers Weekly: "When I was a kid—12 to 14, around there—I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls, but I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write. I was also lucky that I didn't have anybody to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style; I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work till I was around 30. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me. Not that I wouldn't rather make love, but the work has become a habit."
  
  wn.com/Shel_Silverstein
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  Spike Milligan
  Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan KBE (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was a British comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the British government declared him stateless. He was the co-creator, main writer and a principal cast member of The Goon Show, performing a range of roles including the popular Eccles.
  Milligan wrote and edited many books, including Puckoon and his seven-volume autobiographical account of his time serving during the Second World War, beginning with Adolf Hitler: My part in his downfall. He is also noted as a popular writer of comical verse; much of his poetry was written for children, including Silly Verse for Kids (1959). After success with the ground-breaking British radio programme, The Goon Show, Milligan translated this success to television with Q5, a surreal sketch show which is credited as a major influence on the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
  
  wn.com/Spike_Milligan
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  Stephen Colbert
  Stephen Tyrone Colbert ( /koʊlˈbɛər/ or /ˈkoʊlbərt/; born May 13, 1964) is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.
  Colbert originally studied to be an actor, but became interested in improvisational theatre when he met famed Second City director Del Close while attending Northwestern University. He first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago; among his troupe mates were comedians Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, with whom he developed the critically acclaimed sketch comedy series Exit 57.
  Colbert also wrote and performed on the short-lived Dana Carvey Show before collaborating with Sedaris and Dinello again on the cult television series Strangers with Candy. He gained considerable attention for his role on the latter as closeted gay history teacher Chuck Noblet. It was his work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series The Daily Show, however, that first introduced him to a wide audience.
  
  wn.com/Stephen_Colbert
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  Stephen Fry
  Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.
  After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.
  He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.
  As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.
  
  wn.com/Stephen_Fry
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  Steve Coogan
  Stephen John "Steve" Coogan (born 14 October 1965) is a BAFTA-winning English actor, comedian, writer, impressionist and producer. Born in Middleton, Lancashire, he began his career as a stand-up comedian and impressionist, working as a voice artist throughout the 1980s on satirical puppet show Spitting Image. In the early 1990s, Coogan began creating original comic characters which he presented in stage shows, this led to him winning the 1992 Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, for his show with long-time collaborator John Thomson. The most prominent characters he developed at this time were Paul Calf, a stereotypical lower class Mancunian and his sister the promiscuous Pauline (played by Coogan in drag).
  Working with Chris Morris, Patrick Marber and Armando Iannucci for On the Hour and The Day Today, Coogan developed his most popular and most developed character; Alan Partridge, a socially awkward and politically incorrect regional media personality, who developed to feature in his own eponymous television series, Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge and I'm Alan Partridge, which were well received and were nominated for five BAFTAs in total. Outside the UK, Coogan is better known for his roles in films including 24 Hour Party People, The Wind in the Willows, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Night at the Museum, Tropic Thunder, Hamlet 2, A Cock and Bull Story, The Trip and The Other Guys.
  
  wn.com/Steve_Coogan
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  Steve Guttenberg
  Steve Guttenberg (born August 24, 1958) is an American actor and comedian. He became well known during the 1980s after a series of starring roles in major Hollywood films, including Cocoon, Three Men and a Baby, Police Academy, and Short Circuit.
  Steven Robert Guttenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Ann Iris (née Newman), and Jerome Stanley Guttenberg, an electrical engineer. He has two sisters. He had a Jewish upbringing in North Massapequa, New York, where he graduated from Plainedge High School in 1976 (according to some sources, he transferred to New York City's High School of Performing Arts two years before graduating). During high school, he attended a summer program at the Juilliard School where he studied under John Houseman, and he won a role in an off-Broadway production of The Lion in Winter. After his high school graduation, he moved to California to pursue an acting career.
  Guttenberg has starred in three film franchises: Police Academy (1984), Cocoon (1985), and Three Men and a Baby (1987). He has also appeared in such renowned films as Diner (1982), The Bedroom Window (1987), The Boys from Brazil (1978), and Short Circuit (1986).
  
  wn.com/Steve_Guttenberg
• Steve Steen
  Steve Steen (born December 26, 1954) is a British actor and comedian best known for his improvisation partnership with Jim Sweeney.
  The pair met at school in London and joined a theatre club in 1972. The two then wrote and starred in a show which parodied much of the other shows being held in London that year. They then formed their own theatre company and wrote and toured productions around the UK for the rest of the 1970s.
  The two have worked together as writers, guest comics, support acts and improvisers ever since, although Steen has done his share of straight acting, including a part in the movie version of BBC sitcom Porridge in 1979. Although he had lines to say as young convict Wellings, the final cut showed him frequently onscreen yet without saying a word. He was, however, credited.
  Steen and Sweeney appeared on television together for the first time in 1981 with the ITV children's show CBTV, followed by one of Channel 4's first comedies, Little Armadillos and a role for Steen in Ben Elton's idyllic comedy Happy Families. Rory Bremner then recruited them as resident support performers on his first sketch show for the BBC, and shortly afterwards they starred as poets Byron (Steen) and Coleridge (Sweeney) in an episode of Blackadder the Third.
  
  wn.com/Steve_Steen
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  Steven Wright
  Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955) is an American comedian, actor and writer. He is known for his distinctly lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical and sometimes nonsensical jokes, paraprosdokians, and one-liners with contrived situations.
  Wright was born in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts, one of four children of Lucille “Dolly” (née Lomano) and Alexander K. Wright. He was raised Catholic. His mother was Italian American and his father was of Scottish descent. Wright's father, an electronics technician who "tested a lot of stuff for the Apollo space program," became a truck driver after that program ended.
  Wright spent two years obtaining an associate's degree from Middlesex Community College in Bedford, Massachusetts, before enrolling at Emerson College. He graduated from the latter in 1978 and began performing stand-up comedy in 1979 at the Boston comedy club the Comedy Connection. He cites George Carlin and Woody Allen among his influences.
  
  wn.com/Steven_Wright
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  Stewart Lee
  Stewart Lee (born 5 April 1968) is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director. He made his name in the mid 1990s as one half of the radio duo Lee and Herring, a popular success followed through with extensive touring to built up a loyal live following. He gave up comedy in the early 2000s when he became disillusioned by the business and believed he was doomed to be a cult act with limited appeal who had reached the extent of any potential audience. Lee returned to stand up after co-writing and co-directing the surprise mock Broadway hit Jerry Springer - The Opera. Since then he has returned to the live circuit and though BBC and C4 specials and series, has rebuilt a niche audience and a reputation as an anti populist, anti "after the pub" comedian.
  He remains a significant voice in UK stand up despite his refusal to appear on the panel shows that have seen many of his contemporaries eclipse him in ticket sales, if not critical acclaim. Although Lee's audience figures are comparatively low, he usually tours to 400-600 capacity venues and standing outside the comedy mainstream, he is well regarded by critics and has been a regular pundit on BBC political programming. In December 2011 he won the award for best male television comic for his series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle which also won best comedy entertainment programme at the 2011 British Comedy Awards. A 2009 article in The Times referred to him as "the comedian's comedian, and for good reason" and named him "face of the decade". His stand-up features frequent use of "repetition, call-backs, nonchalant delivery and deconstruction", a device he jokingly ascribes to his tedious, exacting middle-class persona.
  
  wn.com/Stewart_Lee
• The Chaser
  The Chaser are an Australian satirical comedian group, known for their television programmes on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation channel. The group take their name from their production of satirical newspaper, a publication known to challenge conventions of taste. The group's motto is "Striving for Mediocrity in a World of Excellence".
  The Chaser's earliest foundations were Charles Firth, Dominic Knight, and Chas Licciardello who went to Sydney Grammar School together and produced a small satirical school magazine entitled The Tiger. Later on, Firth and Knight met Craig Reucassel and Julian Morrow at the University of Sydney. Firth, Knight, Reucassel, Morrow, Licciardello, and later Chaser members Chris Taylor and Andrew Hansen all went to the University of Sydney. Firth, Knight, Reucassel and Morrow began writing for the University of Sydney student newspaper entitled Honi Soit. In 1999 the four members began The Chaser and their first newspaper project entitled The Chaser. The Chaser members are:
  
  wn.com/The_Chaser
• The Mighty Boosh
  The Mighty Boosh is a British comedy troupe featuring comedians Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. Developed from 3 stage shows and a 6-episode radio series, it has since spawned a total of 20 television episodes for BBC Three and 2 live tours of the UK, as well as 2 live shows in the United States.
  Fielding first met Barratt after seeing him perform his solo stand-up routine at the Hellfire Comedy Club in the Wycombe Swan Theatre. The pair soon found that they shared comic interests, formed a double act, and "decided to be the new Goodies". After their first performance together at a bar in London in April 1998, Barratt and Fielding developed their zookeeper characters--Howard Moon and Vince Noir, respectively--in a series of sketches for Paramount Comedy’s Unnatural Acts. Here they also met American Rich Fulcher, who became Bob Fossil. Fielding’s friend Dave Brown and Fielding's brother Michael also became regular collaborators. Richard Ayoade was another original cast member, playing adventurer Dixon Bainbridge, but Matt Berry replaced him in the first television series, since Ayoade was under contract with Channel 4. Ayoade returned in the second and third series as a belligerent shaman named Saboo.
  
  wn.com/The_Mighty_Boosh
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  Tim Allen
  Tim Allen (born Timothy Alan Dick; June 13, 1953) is an American comedian, actor, voice-over artist, and entertainer, known for his role in the sitcom Home Improvement. He is also known for his starring roles in several popular films, including the Toy Story film series, The Santa Clause film series, and Galaxy Quest. Allen currently stars in the ABC sitcom Last Man Standing.
  Born in Denver, Colorado, Allen is the son of Martha Katherine (née Fox), a community-service worker, and Gerald M. Dick, a real estate agent. He is the third oldest of five brothers. His father died in a car accident, colliding with a drunk driver, when Allen was 11. Two years later, his mother married her high school sweetheart, a successful business executive, and moved with her six children to Birmingham, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, to be with her new husband and his three children. Allen attended Ernest W. Seaholm High School in Birmingham, where he was in theater and music classes (resulting in his love of classical piano). He then attended Central Michigan University and transferred to Western Michigan University in 1974. At Western Michigan, Allen worked at the student radio station WIDR and received a bachelor of science degree in communications specializing in radio and television production in 1976 with a split minor in philosophy and design. In 1998, Western Michigan awarded Allen an honorary fine arts degree and the Distinguished Alumni Award.
  
  wn.com/Tim_Allen
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  Tim Minchin
  Timothy David "Tim" Minchin (born 7 October 1975 in Northampton, England) is an Australian-British comedian, actor, and musician.
  Tim Minchin is best known for his musical comedy, which has featured in six CDs, three DVDs and a number of live comedy shows which he has performed internationally. He has also appeared on television in Australia, Britain and the United States. After growing up in Perth, Western Australia, he attended the University of Western Australia and WAAPA before moving to Melbourne in 2002. His breakout show, "Dark Side", launched him into the public eye, achieving critical success at the 2005 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
  Minchin has a background in theatre and has appeared in various stage productions, in addition to some small acting roles on Australian TV. A documentary film about Minchin, Rock N Roll Nerd (directed by Rhian Skirving), was released theatrically in 2008 and broadcast by ABC1 in 2009. He is the co-writer of the Olivier Award winning hit musical Matilda the Musical, based on the Roald Dahl book Matilda.
  
  wn.com/Tim_Minchin
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  Tim Vine
  Timothy "Tim" Mark Vine (born 4 March 1967 in Cheam, London)^{[citation needed]} is an English actor, writer and comedian.
  He has released a number of DVDs of his stand-up comedy, as well as starring in the series Not Going Out with Lee Mack on the BBC. He won the award for best joke at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2010, and for the second best in August 2011.
  He attended the public school Epsom College with his brother Jeremy Vine.
  His stand-up act consists primarily of a series of quick-fire one-liners and puns. Vine has appeared regularly at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with shows such as The Tim Vine Shambles and The Tim Vine Fiasco which won him the Perrier newcomer award in 1995. In 2006, he had a large advertising hoarding erected featuring his name and image, with a small sub-heading "...is not appearing at this year's Edinburgh Festival" Vine appeared at the Pleasance Courtyard for the first two weeks of the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe performing a show entitled Punslinger.
  
  wn.com/Tim_Vine
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  Timmy Mallett
  Timmy Mallett (born on 18 October 1955, Marple, UK) is a TV presenter and broadcaster in the UK. He achieved cult status on BBC Radio Oxford and Manchester's Piccadilly Radio and later on TV-am. Mallett is most notable for his striking visual style, involving loud shirts, colourful glasses and the giant pink foam mallet, labelled Mallett's Mallet as well as his 'utterly brilliant!' and 'blaaah!' catchphrases.
  Mallett attended Rosehill Primary School (Marple), Earnseat Prep School (Arnside) and then Hyde Grammar School (now Hyde Clarendon College).
  His media career started while he was a student at the University of Warwick where he worked on the student radio station, Radio Warwick. After graduating with a degree in History, he started work straight after his graduation day at BBC Radio Oxford. He later moved to, Centre Radio (now Leicester Sound) as the station's launch presenter, Radio Luxembourg and Manchester's Piccadilly Radio where his energetic style won him many fans and Sony Awards. The programme he hosted at Piccadilly was Timmy on the Tranny, a popular weekday evening show that ran from 8pm-11pm and took its name from Mallett's show on Radio Oxford. Among Timmy's team of helpers were Chris Evans known as 'Nobby Nolevel', Andy Bird who played the pirate radio character 'Radio Diggle', Karen Walsh was the original 'Aunty Boney kneecaps', Brian Cox made jingles, friends Sally Mais and Anna Laurie were the cleaners, and many others were regulars on the programme. This led to Mallett presenting the Manchester-based BBC2 youth music show Oxford Road Show for a year in 1984. In March 1985 he also stood in for David Jensen on the Network Chart, at the time broadcast to most if not all British commercial radio stations.
  
  wn.com/Timmy_Mallett
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  Tom Lehrer
  Thomas Andrew Lehrer (born April 9, 1928) is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater. Lehrer is best known for the pithy, humorous songs he recorded in the 1950s and 1960s.
  His work often parodies popular song forms, though Lehrer usually creates original melodies when doing so. A notable exception is his song "The Elements", where he sets the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the "Major-General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. Lehrer's earlier work typically dealt with non-topical subject matter and was noted for its black humor, seen in songs such as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". In the 1960s, he produced a number of songs dealing with social and political issues of the day, particularly when he wrote for the U.S. version of the television show That Was The Week That Was.
  In the early 1970s, he retired from public performances to devote his time to teaching mathematics and music theatre at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He did two additional performances in 1998 at a London gala show celebrating the career of impresario Cameron Mackintosh.
  
  wn.com/Tom_Lehrer
• Tommy Tiernan
  Tommy Tiernan (born 16 June 1969) is an Irish comedian, actor and writer. He and Hector Ó hEochagáin presented The Tommy and Hector Show on i102-104FM. Tiernan also featured in Father Ted as a depressed priest.
  Tiernan was born in Carndonagh, County Donegal. His father is a native of County Kerry while his mother is from County Limerick. He moved, with his family, from County Cork as a child. After spells living in Zambia and London, he attended the same school as Irish television presenter Hector Ó hEochagáin and Dylan Moran, in St. Patrick's Classical School, Navan, Co Meath, a former Roman Catholic junior seminary. He later attended a boarding school, Garbally College, in Ballinasloe, County Galway.^{[citation needed]}
  Tiernan has appeared several times on The Late Late Show. In the United States he has appeared several times on the Late Show with David Letterman. Recently^[when?] he appeared on the Michael McIntyre Comedy Roadshow, Lee Mack Show, DAVE's One NIght Stand and joined comedic legends Eddie Izzard and Ross Noble at Laughs in the Park.
  
  wn.com/Tommy_Tiernan
• Tony Slattery
  Anthony Declan James "Tony" Slattery (born 9 November 1959), is an English actor and comedian. He has appeared on British television regularly since the mid 1980s, most notably as a regular on the Channel 4 improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway? His serious and comedic film work has included roles in The Crying Game, Peter's Friends, and How to Get Ahead in Advertising.
  Slattery was born in Stonebridge, London into a working class background, the fifth and last child of Irish immigrants, Michael and Margaret Slattery. Much younger than his sister Marlene and his triplet brothers, Christopher, Michael and Stephen, he tended to be a "loner." In his youth, he represented England in under-15 judo achieving a black belt before he was 16. Educated at Gunnersbury Boys' Grammar School in West London, he won a scholarship to study Modern and Medieval Languages at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, specializing in French literature and Spanish poetry. At Cambridge he discovered a love of the theatre, taking delight in making people laugh. He met Stephen Fry, who invited him to join the Cambridge Footlights, and his fellow students included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Jan Ravens (first female president of the Footlights), Sandi Toksvig, Morwenna Banks and Richard Vranch. In 1981, he and Fry, Laurie, Thompson, Toksvig and director Ravens won the inaugural Perrier Award for their revue The Cellar Tapes. The following year he was made president of the Footlights. During his tenure, the touring annual revue was Premises Premises.
  
  wn.com/Tony_Slattery
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  Wayne Brady
  Wayne Alphonso Brady (born June 2, 1972) is an American actor, singer, comedian and television personality, known for his work as a regular on the American version of the improvisational comedy television series Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and as the host of the daytime talk show The Wayne Brady Show. He was the original host of Fox's Don't Forget the Lyrics!, and currently hosts the 2009 revival of Let's Make a Deal.
  Brady was born in Columbus, Georgia to West Indian parents, and moved to Orlando, Florida as a young child to live with his grandmother and aunt. When Brady talks about his "Mom," he is referring to his grandmother, Valerie Petersen, who raised him. At 16, he started performing in community theater and at the Orlando improv troupe SAK Comedy Lab where he first started developing his improv skills. He attended Dr. Phillips High School, in Orlando, Florida, where he graduated in 1989. In 1990, he enrolled at the University of Miami. In 1996, he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he continued developing his acting skills.
  
  wn.com/Wayne_Brady
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  William Shakespeare
  William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
  Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
  
  wn.com/William_Shakespeare
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  Woody Allen
  Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an award-winning American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, and playwright, whose career spans over half a century.
  He began as a comedy writer in the 1950s, penning jokes and scripts for television and also publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen started performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he insists is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.
  By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into more dramatic material influenced by European art films during the 1970s. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late '70s. Allen often stars in his own films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. The best-known of his over 40 films include the Academy Award-winners Annie Hall (1977), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Midnight in Paris (2011); and the Golden Globe-winning The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Critic Roger Ebert has described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema."
  
  wn.com/Woody_Allen

Writers on Genre: Comedy and Romantic Comedy (2009)

Genres

• Documentary

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