Stand-up comedy is a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, comic, or stand-up. It is usually a rhetorical performance but many comics employ crowd interaction as part of their set or routine.
Eddie Izzard, also known as Suzy Izzard, is a British stand-up comedian, actor, and activist. Her comedic style takes the form of what appears to the audience as rambling whimsical monologues and self-referential pantomime.
The Secret Policeman's Ball is a series of benefit shows staged initially in the United Kingdom to raise funds for the human rights organisation Amnesty International. The shows started in 1976 featuring popular British comedians but later included leading musicians and actors. The Secret Policeman's Ball shows are credited by many prominent entertainers with having galvanised them to become involved with Amnesty and other social and political causes in succeeding years.
Dara Ó Briain is an Irish comedian and television presenter based in the United Kingdom. He is noted for performing stand-up comedy shows all over the world and for hosting topical panel shows such as Mock the Week, The Panel, and The Apprentice: You're Fired!. In 2012, he was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for Best Entertainment Performance for his work on Mock the Week.
Marcus Alexander Brigstocke is a British comedian, actor and satirist. He has worked in stand-up comedy, television, radio and musical theatre. He has appeared on many BBC television and radio shows.
Robin Ince is an English comedian, actor and writer, known for presenting the BBC radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage with physicist Brian Cox, and his stand-up comedy career.
Timothy David Minchin AM is a British-born Australian comedian, actor, writer, musician, poet, composer, and songwriter.
Alan Graham Carr is an English comedian, broadcaster and writer. His breakthrough was in 2001, winning the City Life Best Newcomer of the Year and the BBC New Comedy Awards. In the ensuing years, Carr's career burgeoned on the Manchester comedy circuit before he became known for co-hosting The Friday Night Project (2006–2009) with Justin Lee Collins. This led to the release of a short-lived entertainment show Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong (2008), and he went on to star in the comedy chat show Alan Carr: Chatty Man (2009–2016) which aired on Channel 4. Since 2017, Carr often stands in as a team captain on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. In 2019, he became a judge on RuPaul's Drag Race UK. In 2021, he began hosting BBC One’s Interior Design Masters.
Lee John Martin Evans is a British retired film and television actor, musician, singer, writer and stand-up comedian. He co-founded the production company Little Mo Films with Addison Cresswell, who was also his agent prior to Cresswell's death in December 2013.
Jim Piddock is an English actor, producer and writer who began his career on the stage in the United Kingdom before emigrating to the United States in 1981.
The Raymond Revuebar (1958–2004) was a theatre and strip club at 11 Walker's Court, in the centre of London's Soho district. For many years, it was the only venue in London that offered full-frontal, on-stage nudity of the sort commonly seen in other cities in Europe and North America. Its huge brightly lit sign declaring it to be the "World Centre of Erotic Entertainment" made the Revuebar a local landmark.
Dominic Anthony Holland is an English comedian, author, actor and broadcaster. He won the 1993 Perrier Best Newcomer Award in Edinburgh. His BBC Radio 4 series, The Small World of Dominic Holland, won a Comic Heritage Award.
Geoff James Nugent, known professionally as Jim Jefferies, is an Australian comedian, actor, and writer who holds dual Australian and American citizenship. He created and starred in the American FX sitcom Legit (2013–2014) and the Comedy Central late-night show The Jim Jefferies Show (2017–2019).
Fun is an American pop rock band based in New York City. The band consists of Jack Antonoff, Andrew Dost, and Nate Ruess.
Francis Martin Patrick Boyle is a Scottish comedian and writer. He is known for his cynical, surreal, graphic and dark sense of humour.
The Voluntary Butler Scheme is the stage name for one-man band Rob Jones, based in Stourbridge near Birmingham. Jones records and produces the majority of his material by himself in the home studio in his bedroom. The VBS uses the technique of live looping at gigs, playing in parts on various instruments such as guitar, guitar synthesizer, drums, kazoo and ukulele.
Sarah Townsend, known professionally as Sarah McGuinness, is an Irish singer, composer, producer, director, and screenwriter.
Adrian Charles Edmondson is an English actor, comedian, musician, writer and television presenter. He was part of the alternative comedy boom in the early 1980s and had roles in the television series The Young Ones (1982–1984) and Bottom (1991–1995), which he wrote together with his collaborator Rik Mayall. Edmondson also appeared in The Comic Strip Presents... series of films throughout the 1980s and 1990s. For two episodes of this he created the spoof heavy metal band Bad News, and for another he played his nihilistic alter-ego Eddie Monsoon, an offensive South African television star.
Angela Barnes is an English stand-up comedian, mostly known for her appearances on Mock the Week.
Force Majeure is the title of a stand-up comedy tour by Eddie Izzard that began in Austria in March 2013. It continued through the UK, Ireland, Russia, South Africa, Canada, Spain, and the United States through the summer of 2014.
