Who's funny? Who's not?

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Actually put in my head hearing a Nick Hancock advert voice-over for some worthless product and/or service. But ignore that: NH too pitifully negligeable a a cic proposition (not to mention parochial for non-Brits) even to merit thought either way — but SOMEONE must find Robin Williams a crack-up, else why does he keep being hired?

So what is that floors your buddies and/or lovers, yet leaves you stonefaced, bored and cross? Or vice versa, obviously: the unsung heroes of hilarity...

― mark s, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

A-and (pretending this is something I forgot, instead of a way of getting it into New answers quickly), what's funny round your way which you absolutely KNOW would never travel and why. (But don't just say, Too Brit, too Brooklyn, too Bogotar — say what it IS that's too whatever...)

― mark s, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I find myself really hilarious, but everyone else disagrees. Does that count?

Stephanie thinks Chris Farley is truly hilarious. It's just the sort of thing that almost made me kick her out, really. He's just so blatantly not at all funny that it makes me want to puke.

― Ally, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Vids. MUST-HAVE-SEVENTH-SERIES...

― DG, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I dunno if he is particularly obscure, but DYLAN MORAN is one of the few people around today who makes me laugh just by the way he moves, his facial expressions, his muttering. A double whammy of 'How Do You Want Me?' and 'Black Books' would render me incapable of speech in a wriggling heap on the telly. Also, strangely for a comedian, he is WELL SEXXEEE. Even a hetero boy like me fancies him.

― Stevie T, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

= in a wriggling heap on the SOFA.

― stevie t, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I find Bill Hicks and Chris Rock very funny. I used to find Robin Williams pretty funny until he stopped doing drugs. There's a show of his from 1982 in NY thats hilarious.

As for hunour that doesn't travel well, theres a comedy duo in Ireland called D'Unbelievables who do skits about rural Irish life (barmy hurling coaches, drunks and so forth) which is pretty big round these parts. I showed a video of one of their shows to my cousin from Coventry, thinking if she likes Father Ted she'd probably like this. She just looked confused as I sat there laughing my ass off however.

― Michael, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'll see your Dylan Moran (and I also agree with you about the 'he's sexy & I'm hetero' thing), and I would like to raise you one Steve Wright - genius (no, not the excerable ex-Radio 1 DJ in the afternoon, the fuzzy headed American guy)

― Bill E, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

hunour=humour ar ar

― Michael, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dylan Moran + Marmalade Atkins = RWWWORAHH! And sexuality IS appropriate for both personages. Even if mental state is confused due to poor judgement of alcohol consumption.

If anyone finds RW a crack-up then they are wronger than those people that defend Baxendale. And that's pretty damn wrong.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Has anyone here ever seen a New Zealand stand-up comedian?

― duane, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tony Hancock and Richard Pryor always do it for me, but no comedian has ever made me laugh as hard as my friends, who of course have access to a group shared history, in-jokes, memories, greater knowledge of intended audience etc. Think that all those 'spontaneous' quiz shows (Have I Got News etc.) are, in part, an attempt to capture some of that 'hanging out w/funny friends' feeling - running gags, riffing on yr companions' speech, reactive laughs. See also: humour that doesn't travel - unfunny 'national institutions' eg. The Carry On Films, where the total lack of gags becomes part of the gag, a public/private world designed to exclude anybody who "doesn't get it".

― Andrew L, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Robin Williams was really good as Popeye, and a few other things, none of them particularly recent.

― Ed Lynch-Bell, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dan Aykroyd = least funny human being alive.

― tarden, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tarden, old chap, you don't get phil jupituss on your side of the atlantic, do you. If you did, then you'd realise that dan aykroyd = 2nd least funny human being alive.

x0x0

― Norman Fay, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Paul cackles over Wallace & Grommit and Father Ted, and all sorts of other things which are mystifying to me.

I cackle over Kids In The Hall and "I'm crushing your head! I'm crushing your head!!!" which gets a blank stare from Paul.

So I'm not sure what this says about great cultural humour divides, except for the fact that I've spent most of my life flying back and forth between NY and London seems to have made me culturally... Canadian.

I'm scared. And possibly scarred for life. SCARRED FOR LIFE!!!

― masonic boom, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'Have I got News for You' used to make me laugh, now it seems too smug (bit like Private Eye really). Rory Bremner was excellent 5 years ago, but don't get C4 in holland. Few sit-coms work for me. Last person to really make me chuckle was Chris Morris. Actually scrap that, Peter Mandelson's acceptance speach was rip-roaringly funny. Comic whose appeal completely mystifies me, Victoria Wood.

― Stevo, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I love SCTV, which has got 1:30am reruns here in NYC which I stay up for sometimes and my roommate is utterly mystified. Probably because the fashions are so unlike anything she reads in her bazillion magazine subscriptions that she can't relate.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Does anyone actually find Goodness Gracious Me at all amusing? It's literally a one joke show. Do they actually do any jokes that aren't about the supposed uneasy relationship between Asians and the English? That's a mostly imagined premise that the Asian target audience must find really insulting. Who actually watches it, because someone must? And aren't lame attempts at political correctness so terribly early 90's. It's like the whole world is too scared of being called racist to point out to them that it's shite (and/or not watch it).

― Graham, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Stephen Wright is quite cool.

― bnw, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Has anyone here ever seen a New Zealand stand-up comedian?

If you're implying that they don't exist, that's as good a reason to move to New Zealand as anything. There's nothing more fucking dud than stand-up comedy.

― Kris, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

for some reason i think jim carrey is funny as fuck. i've never understood this, because that is so out of character for me...

― gareth, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Kim - no I was saying they *do* exist & that they all suck beyond belief.

― duane, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Kim = Kris , sorry i reda yr name wrong 1st time.

― duane, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

reda = read ....christ...

― duane, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

TRULY least funny human being alive = Richard Blackwood

― tarden, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Weird early morning epiphany occurred to me the other day at 2am, watching American 'Whose Line?' - in another time, in another place Ryan Stiles would have been a new Danny Kaye and heralded by Kenneth Tynan. In our time and place he wound up in the worst KFC adverts ever (and there is STIFF competition) and a bit part in 'The Norm Show'. No justice.

― stevie t, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Martin Short is not fucking funny, Jiminy Glick neither. Chris Rock's.

― Otis Wheeler, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Funny stand-ups: Eddie Murphy in the 80s, Kinison (delivery's funny even when jokes aren't), most Dice (crass idjit schtick, brilliant on abstract level: The Day the Laughter Died is 2CDs of [purposely?] unfunny jokes and audience abuse, people walking out = mindfuck), Bill Hicks (Kinison/Clay crassness with "serious issues" weight). Funny TV: Mayall and Edmondson ca. Bottom, Married With Children, I'm Alan Partridge, Back of the Y Masterpiece Theatre (best NZ TV ever), Mr Hankey's Christmas Poo. Pretty much anyone whose schtick is crass idjit and is clever and unrepetant with it. And less abrasive stuff, before they became annoying and smug (post-85?) and hard to believe NOW, Woody Allen and Clive James were actually funny.

― AP, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Don't get Stevie on Moran. Might as well be talking about Kevin Moran.

― the pinefox, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Also funny: Peter Sellers' audio recording "Party Political Broadcast" satirising political rhetoric; done in 60s, EXACT copy of two 90s NZ PMs and doubtless countless other politicians. And quite liked Sellers' H'wood-schmoozing movie, think it was called The Party.

And distant memories, The Goodies once my favourite show, tho' can't recall a single line. Plus Kenny Everett, maybe more outrageous than funny? And liked that Not the Nine O'Clock news sketch about Fiats. And Aristophanes, his gag where the dead body sits upright on the stretcher and tells the pall-bearers to stop bumping him around, that was funny 2700 years ago. Aristophanes reads like proto-Farrelly Brothers and/or bawdy like Benny Hill or Blackadder, showing how far we've come.

There's a story - apocryphal or no? - that the first cave paintings were fart jokes. I totally want to believe that.

― AP, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

eleven months pass...

Dylan Moran? well i'm a girl and ...yes, he is sex on legs. Oh, and incredibly funny :)

― Rachel, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Everyone adores Dylan Moran, surely? I don't know whether Richard Blackwood is the least funny man alive - for me it's his all-round total lack of talent that's so striking. For me, funniest man ever was Tommy Cooper (I expect he's utterly unknown in America), and my current favourite is probably Bill Bailey when he does his musical things like the influence of cockney music on the classical canon, or his anti-racist song in the style of Bryan Adams, 'Hats Off To The Zebras'. And he was good on Black Books too, with Dylan Moran.

And I know exactly what Andrew L means, too, but I don't know how I'd compare the laughs I get from him and our other friends with those from Stan Laurel or Peter Cook or Groucho Marx. They feel like almost completely different things.

― Martin Skidmore, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Cutting insults are the food of life for the French. Also people falling over are hilarious. best-case scenario in France-land: insulting someone who's just fallen over. However I can't explain it.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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