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Seeing that Rob Becket on tv lots and all I can think is his agent deserves a knighthood for getting a guy with so little talent so much work. Funny, no, entertaining, nae.
and I add to my list Mickey Flanagan, the polar opposite of funny.
Must be sometime in the noughties the need to be funny to be a well paid comedian ceased.
Who are your criminally bad comedians?
Billy connoly just not funny over the past two decades. I guess illness and age have taken their toll mind you it's hard to have working class Glasgow rage when you live the life of a multi millionaire in la.
Yeah but back in the day he was comedy gold IMO. I shall forgive anyone who’s comedy skills have faded over time. It’s the never funny in the 1st place crew who get my goat.
Lenny Henry. Brilliant on TISWAS. Kind of went downhill after that.
That guy that's always on the panel shows with genuinely funny people like david mitchell etc. So unfunny I can't even think of his name. Think he was in a shit sitcom as well. Seems like a nice guy, but not funny.
Also, Jack Whitehall. Why is he here?
Edit: Used to be funny. Misread the brief. These two were probably never funny. I nominate Bill Hicks. Gone right off the boil since the early nineties...
Do you mean Josh Widdicome, Jambourgie?
Totally agree if so.
Rather than being Mr negative I’d like to think of a new comedian last 10 years I rate, but really struggling.
James Corden
Miranda
Michael McIntyre
Mrs Brown’s Boys
I could go on.
Drac.
Oh good god, McIntyre hadn’t even thought of him. Top of my not funny list.
Haha, Beat me to it clevortrevor. Has to be Josh.
<span style="color: #444444; background-color: #eeeeee;">James Corden</span>
NEVER FUNNY!!!
@jimjam - we are of a like mind! I’ve laughed more after belting my elbow hard on a sharp corner than I have at any MacIntyre ‘joke’, and I use that word advisedly.
Time Vine, on the other hand, is very funny, but he sticks to smart-ass one-liners.
Oh, and Drac, I could have posted that list as well.
Ricky Gervais was really funny back in the days of The 11 O'clock show and to a lesser extent The Office, then I went through a phase of hating his "oh I'm so funny I laugh at my own jokes" thing. I still don't find him funny but I do now like him as a human being.
<div class="bbp-reply-author">CountZero
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@jimjam – we are of a like mind! I’ve laughed more after belting my elbow hard on a sharp corner than I have at any MacIntyre ‘joke’,
I definitely laughed at him once, but then I used to drink. Heavily. A lot. And I still do, but good gawd he's about as funny as North Korea.
Used to be funny is much more interesting than just not funny.
Can I be the first to nominate woody Allen?
Mickey Flanagan was amazing when I first saw him in a comedy club, he was supporting Sean Lock but stole the show.
His French bikey thing was a bit crap but the series he did on Sky last year was terrific.
McIntyre definitely top of my not funny list. Makes my ears bleed.
Roisin Conaty - so unfunny I had to google to see if she was actually supposed to be a comedian. I assumed she might supposed to be one, being a regular on 8 out of 10 cats does countdown.
Pretending to be a thick dunce seems to be a more important qualification to be a comedian now than actually being funny.
"comedy" well it's going through a bit of a change in focus isn't it.
Where once it was Jokes, then Mother In Law jokes, then just funny sketches, then sit com, then stand up rants, now it's just middle of the road moaning..
Plenty of "comics' I'm not interested in, I think the latest are better on TV as "very annoying entertainment chat show prattle" rather than Comedians.
Jimmy Carr.
I used to think I was funny.
This place soon disavowed me of that notion.
Connaty indeed.
SOS there must be some decent new comedians surely?
Eddie Izzard
A couple more who get there money for zero talent :..Russell Howard & Dave Gorman ..
Katherine Ryan ..who cares if she is funny or not ..there is just something about her ...mmm hmm
This thread is less a list of unfunny people and more a roundup of forum posters that have no sense of humour.
Look a Miranda fan.
Mr Poddy ..I have a wicked sense of humour ..Im even laughing at your post now ..
PP you’re wrong, cos my profile on sadnlonely.com says GSOH 😜
Roy Chubby Brown 😂
“<span style="color: #444444; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Rather than being Mr negative I’d like to think of a new comedian last 10 years I rate, but really struggling.”</span>
You need to get yourself out to some live comedy gigs on a regular basis. There’s some astonishingly good comedians around these days. We used to go to Hecklers at the West End Centre in Aldershot regularly and it was rare my face wasn’t hurting from laughing on the way home.
Of the bigger names mentioned above we’ve seen Sean Lock, Jimmy Carr and Dave Gorman live and I’d love to see Mickey Flannigan. I can also recommend Rich Hall, Nina Conti and Rob Rouse as a few highlights we’ve seen.
Big Cook Little Cook
The Krankies
As a rough guess I’ve probably seen 200-odd comedians over the years. I can only think of one that was crap. He misjudged his audience and died an embarrassing death on stage. There’s been a few that weren’t my cup of tea but that’s not their fault. I dont like anything that goes political, for instance, so I don’t go and see comedians that do that specifically but sometimes there’s four or five on the bill and you get what you get.
I think I laughed at something Gervais did once, but he is such a colossal shit as a human being, I have a hard time seeing past the person to the comedy.
Mind you, I suppose it was always Stephen Merchant writing his stuff for him anyway, so I guess there has never been any Gervais comedy to see through to.
In terms of people who are certainly not so funny now, and may never have actually been funny themselves at all, then... Ricky Gervais.
Really? So are you a religious nutter or do you hate animals?
Really? So are you a religious nutter or do you hate animals?
A religious nutter. Actually a complete religious psycho. Also someone who despises smugness. And if there's anything Gervais is [I]par excellence[/I], it is smug.
Bill Cosby.
Louis C.K
Donald Trump. Once an idiot to laugh at now part of
any sane persons nightmares
Re the R Gervais thing; it's weird. I think SR has put his finger on it; he's just fundamentally annoying. I'm about as far from a religious nutter as its possible to get, in fact my views very closely align with Gervais's, but I can't bring myself to like him very much.
Mind you, I don't suppose he'll lose much sleep over it...
SaxonRider
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Really? So are you a religious nutter or do you hate animals?
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A religious nutter. Actually a complete religious psycho. Also someone who despises smugness. And if there’s anything Gervais is <em class="bbcode-em">par excellence, it is smug.
<span class="bbp-reply-post-date">Posted 15 minutes ago</span>
+1. Gervais is an insufferably smug prick. Every time I eat bacon I imagine the pig had a face like his,
High five to myself for excellent formatting of the above post. Good thing this forum is funded by Premier subscribers and millions of pop up ads otherwise it would go to the dogs like free porn sites in the early 200s.
davidtaylforth
Jay Mohr, topically funny to me, want to see something recent from him.
Tom Segura, best mainstream stand up out there currently I reckon.
Theres not a ton of timeless stand up comedians though are there?
They all loose relevance at some point
Was Miranda ever funny? I never ‘got it’ if she was.
Same goes for Mrs Browns Boys..
Awful, just awful.. both of them.
No they never were.
The forum title confused me at first, he means comedians just aren’t funny anymore.
Graham Norton.
Marcus Brigstocke.
Punt & Dennis.
Sarah Millican and Susan Calman were initially good but killed by overexposure.
Genuine question is Graham Norton a comedian? Mind him from father ted but other than talk show and R2 haven’t seen him in any other comedy stuff.
Near predictive text mega fail. My phone wanted to call him Graham Abortion. Glad I spotted that and sorted it!
Lenny Henry. Brilliant
I applaud your full stop because Lenny Henry and brilliant should never be in the same sentence.
Has anyone ever seen Josh Widdicombe's stand up? It's sooo unfunny. How he ever got so much work in TV is beyond me!
Micky Flanagan's standup is brilliant.
But again, it's comedy. People have like, you know different taste, I believe.
Saw Graham Norton doing stand-up in the early 90s. He was good, actually.
I remember Miranda Hart doing standup and it was pretty good but she moved in a direction that didn't appeal to me so I stopped watching her, no need to slag her off for not continuing to appeal directly to my singular sense of humour. I'd imagine that's fair enough from either mine or her perspective.
I've also seen Gervais do one of his standup shows and it was good, not the absolute funniest thing I've ever seen but well crafted, well delivered and made for a fun night out.
"But again, it’s comedy. People have like, you know different taste, I believe."
Seems to me once they move mainstream they become so less funny. Most mentioned above had something once.
Getting old innit. Only so many jokes, only so long before you've heard them all!
Sadly, I'd have to agree with Eddie Izzard. HUGE fan of his stuff but then he seemed to stop writing new shows and got into his charity stuff, politics and performing existing material in loads of different languages.
Still love that old stuff and totally respect him as a person, would just love him to write some fresh material.
.
is Stewart Lee the STW comedian of choice?
Boris Johnson & Donald Trump spring to mind.
All “we’ve” done here is post about comedians that we once liked, when they were edgy or just plain funny, and now just TV chat show fodder.
I posted earlier about some of the phases comedy has gone through, so what’s the next phase?
What do your kids like watching/listening to comedy wise....?.
im going to show my mate this thread as I always have the mick taken out of me when I say there is something about Katherine Ryan.
At least someone else feels the same
( how the funk does the quote thing work now and where are the smilies ? )
I have pretty much stopped going to comedy shows these days as I invariably come out of them in a really bad mood . I just get really angry when people in the audience piss themselves laughing at stuff that is just not funny or clever . The comedian must go away thinking that he's been a success so doesn't really have to try any harder than he did and the crowd go home thinking that they had a good time because they laughed a lot . I just go home angry because the comedian virtually got his laughs for free and didn't have to work at it . This rantette could say more about me than the state of British comedy . 🙂
[i]Only so many jokes, only so long before you’ve heard them all![/i]
Nonsense!
Jimmy Carr does some superb jokes on his stand up- never heard the like before. See also Frankie Boyle - his speeches at the end of New World Order.. never heard the like!
For those writing off Russel Howard, his recent Netflix stand up special (recalibrate) is brilliant, almost had me properly lose it on a Swiss train.
Much as I love the twisted dark stuff, (Hicks, Stanhope, Boyle etc) it doesn't hurt to try something different once in a while and Howard's impish glee and sense of the absurd works for me.
That said, even I can't stand Michael Macintyre, simpering twerp.
Yeah there’s something about Katherine Ryan alright....
i still really enjoy Frankie Boyle his promethiad podcasts were great, Jimmy Carr live is very good when he can say why he wants rather than what TV allows!!
Ben Elton has disappeared he was great in the 90’s.
I find Katherine Ryan's jokes a bit obvious personally, though my wife seems to like her. Not seen her do stand-up though, just panel shows.
<div class="bbp-reply-author">BearBack
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Jay Mohr, topically funny to me, want to see something recent from him.
Tom Segura, best mainstream stand up out there currently I reckon.Theres not a ton of timeless stand up comedians though are there?
They all loose relevance at some point
I don't think they all lose relevance,or rather it's not just the passage of time, a good stand up comedian will obviously have to work hard, hone their craft and continually revise their act and their material to build a following. Once they've established a following they'll have to continue to develop their material in order to stay fresh and relevant. But if they are really good, and become well known they'll either be tempted to dillute their act for tv or simply become a tv personality.
It probably becomes a difficult line to straddle when you start to get money, fame and recognition as well as other avenues and opportunities - write a book/sitcom/animated series etc. Do you keep honing your standup material and stay on the road as a standup or take the money and appear on 8 out of 10 cats once a month?
What is increasingly obvious is how influential Peter Cook was - he popularised modern satirical comedy in the 60s and then created alternative comedy in the 70s with derek and clive.
But even Cookie ran out of ideas in the end.
Most first-rate comedians have five years of standup material, then move onto different things. I still think Frank Skinner can be very funny but he wisely takes long breaks between his standup shows.
A lot of the instances people are referring to is Comedians making screen appearances on tv not as Stand Up comedians: As hosts, panel show contestants, talk show guests and so on.
For a lot of comedians TV just kills their act - if you do your material on telly then you've blown the punchlines for you stage show and you've nothing to tour with. The growing number of panel shows etc (Sit Down Comedy) exist as a way for comedians to be featured on TV without having to use their stand-up material. They create a situation and a bunch of set-ups where its possible for funny people to be funny without having to use up their live material.
Some comedians can do their act on TV. It doesn't matter for Michael MacIntyre's audience whether they've seen the joke before or not - you can see his punchlines (if he even bothers with them) a mile off because his act just reminding people that theve already noticed that revolving doors are funny and then agreeing with them.
V Good live
lee mack
Jimoen
Bill Bailey
Jimmy Carr 10 years ago. I went with my parents (their idea) it was hilarious, provided you're down with the incest jokes. My mum laughed her (amazing, perky, beautiful) tits off!
I think he's a little more friendly now.
Most first-rate comedians have five years of standup material, then move onto different things. I still think Frank Skinner can be very funny but he wisely takes long breaks between his standup shows.
I used to hate him in his heyday, but he's much more agreeable hosting Room 101 now.
Seems to have relaxed and comes up with more creative, less sardonic stuff.
I think we need another thread for comics who have gone the other way.
Is Stewart Lee sending himself up there or is he just a bit of a ****?
Is Stewart Lee sending himself up there or is he just a bit of a ****?
I don't like his old man hair.
"
<div class="bbp-reply-author">docgeoffyjones
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is Stewart Lee the STW comedian of choice?"
Yes, in the same way that the STW mountainbike of choice is a Specialized Allez.
Stewart Lee has remained funny and has changed his act over the years.
On immigration and UKIP here: