Stand-up comedians from United Kingdom
614 comedians
What a comedian sounds like is half the act here. The style labels attached to British performers read like a map of the country: Geordie, Glaswegian, East End, northern English, Welsh, Scottish, working-class humour. An accent places a comic for the room before the first punchline arrives, and Peter Kay built a career on nostalgia and working-class material that an audience recognises as its own.
The circuit under all of it was rebuilt in one stroke. When Don Ward opened The Comedy Store in Soho in 1979, acts with racist and sexist jokes were gonged off the stage, and what replaced them became the alternative comedy the clubs still run on. Jack Whitehall calls that basement one of his favourite clubs anywhere.
Every August the whole trade moves to Edinburgh. The Festival Fringe has no selection committee: anyone with a desire to perform and a venue willing to host them is in, and comedy has grown into the largest part of the programme. What that festival rewards is not the tight club set but the hour, written to be toured afterwards, and its competitions still move people up a rung. Peter Kay won So You Think You're Funny in 1997, the year he started.
The other half of the job went to television, and the British form of it is the panel show: a table of comics doing topical material against each other. Russell Howard sat there as a regular on Mock the Week, and Michael McIntyre, Jack Whitehall and Sarah Millican all worked it early. It pays, it tests jokes, and it puts a club act in front of the country without asking the act to change.
English carries most of this, though not all. Performers listed here also work in Welsh, Persian, Spanish, French, German and Danish. Beside the mainstream names sit the darker and more argumentative ones: Daniel Sloss, who started as a teenager, builds dark comedy and long storytelling, and Konstantin Kisin works political satire.
Max Fosh
Russell Brand
Jimmy Carr
George Harris
🇬🇧Russell Howard
observational · topical
🇬🇧Konstantin Vadimovich Kisin
Observational · Political satire
🇬🇧Jack Whitehall
self-deprecating · observational
🇬🇧Peter Firman
Pete Firman
Comedy magic · Stand-up
🇬🇧Michael McIntyre
observational · high-energy
🇬🇧Peter Kay
observational · nostalgia
🇬🇧Daniel Sloss
Observational comedy · Dark comedy
🇬🇧Sarah Millican
self-deprecating · observational
🇬🇧Tom Walker
Jonathan Pie
Political satire · Character comedy
🇬🇧Nina Margarita Conti
Ventriloquism · Stand-up
🇬🇧Humza Arshad
🇬🇧Al Murray
The Pub Landlord
character comedy · satire
Jim Daly
🇬🇧Micky Flanagan
observational · working class
🇬🇧Munyaradzi Oliver Chawawa
Munya Chawawa
Satire · Character comedy
Pat Condell
Ricky Gervais
🇬🇧Michael Barrymore
🇬🇧Mo Gilligan
observational · character comedy
🇬🇧Paul Chowdhry
observational · character
🇬🇧Mark Dolan
🇬🇧Kevin Bridges
observational · working-class
🇬🇧William Connolly
Billy Connolly
observational · autobiographical
🇬🇧Joe Lycett
observational · activist
James Veitch
🇬🇧Gary Delaney
one-liners · puns
Milo Edwards
Leo Kearse
Jon Harvey
🇬🇧Bill Bailey
musical comedy · surreal
🇬🇧Robert Brydon Jones
Rob Brydon
Impressions · Character comedy
🇬🇧Lee Mack
slapstick · absurdist
🇬🇧Daniel Foxx
Sketch comedy · Character comedy
Janey Godley
Richard Herring
🇬🇧Aisling Bea
observational · storytelling
Doc Brown
Bruce Fummey
🇬🇧Aurie Styla
Observational comedy · Storytelling
Emmanuel Sonubi
🇬🇧Catherine Bohart
personal · observational
🇬🇧Larry Dean
Observational · Storytelling
Demi Adejuyigbe
Jimeoin
🇬🇧Suzy Eddie Izzard
surreal · historical
🇬🇧James William Acaster
James Acaster
alternative comedy · absurdist
🇬🇧Maisie Adam
observational · relatable
Nicholas De Santo
Tommy Tiernan (IRL)
🇬🇧Jennifer Helen Brister
Jen Brister
Observational comedy · Stand-up
🇬🇧Russell Kane
high-energy · physical
🇬🇧John Joseph Bishop
John Bishop
observational · storytelling
Diane Spencer
🇬🇧Alex Horne
Dave Gorman
🇬🇧Janine Harouni
Observational · Storytelling