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If you ever get a chance, check out stand up comedian Daniel Tosh, particularly True Stories I Made Up.INFORMATION
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Who makes you laugh? Favourite comedians and sitcoms.
Interesting.
I've never heard of most of what folks are listing, what with being a Yank and all.
Aaron Sorkin's writing is really funny. If you can, get your hands on a 2-season series he wrote called Sports Night, do it.
There's a lot of laughs in West Wing, too.
Not a single Joss Whedon fan here? Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly, anyone?
Although both writers I mentioned write mixed things, in the sense of drama, and in Whedon's case actiony and horror (neither of which I usually like at ALL), they've also written among the funniest stuff I've ever come across.
Joss Whedon is especially relevant here, as, despite the supernatural stuff in Buffy and Angel, he's a confirmed non-believer in, as he says, the Sky Bully (a phrase he picked up from a co-writer, I believe).
My brother and I grew up listening to some Bill Cosby albums, and used to do bits from them with each other.
We also watched, and I now own, one of the best shows (except Buffy) ever, the Dick Van Dyke Show.
Yes, George Carlin is brilliant.
And, of course, those wonderful nut-cases Monty Python. The benefits John Cleese did for Amnesty International were made into movies which have some really
stuff in them, too. That bit on the park bench with Peter Cook kills me. I thought we were going to lose my father over "They Are Naked and They DO Dance".
The movie My Cousin Vinny is a major favorite of mine, as well.
Although not rolling on the floor funny, I own As Time Goes By, which my sister (and roomy) and I just love to death.
Public TV over here runs them weekend evenings still. Followed by the unwatchable Keeping Up Appearances, unfortunately.
I've never heard of most of what folks are listing, what with being a Yank and all.
Aaron Sorkin's writing is really funny. If you can, get your hands on a 2-season series he wrote called Sports Night, do it.
There's a lot of laughs in West Wing, too.
Not a single Joss Whedon fan here? Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly, anyone?
Although both writers I mentioned write mixed things, in the sense of drama, and in Whedon's case actiony and horror (neither of which I usually like at ALL), they've also written among the funniest stuff I've ever come across.
Joss Whedon is especially relevant here, as, despite the supernatural stuff in Buffy and Angel, he's a confirmed non-believer in, as he says, the Sky Bully (a phrase he picked up from a co-writer, I believe).
My brother and I grew up listening to some Bill Cosby albums, and used to do bits from them with each other.
We also watched, and I now own, one of the best shows (except Buffy) ever, the Dick Van Dyke Show.
Yes, George Carlin is brilliant.
And, of course, those wonderful nut-cases Monty Python. The benefits John Cleese did for Amnesty International were made into movies which have some really
stuff in them, too. That bit on the park bench with Peter Cook kills me. I thought we were going to lose my father over "They Are Naked and They DO Dance".The movie My Cousin Vinny is a major favorite of mine, as well.
Although not rolling on the floor funny, I own As Time Goes By, which my sister (and roomy) and I just love to death.
Public TV over here runs them weekend evenings still. Followed by the unwatchable Keeping Up Appearances, unfortunately.
We are rewatching Alan Plater's wonderful The Beiderbecke Affairwith James Bolam as Trevor Chaplin and Barbara Flynn as Jill Swinburne, and Frank Ricotti's band providing the traditional jazz incidental music. The serial was made in 1984 or thereabouts and reproduction from our VHS tapes is a bit grainy but we love the gentle humour of Plater's work. There's no rolling on the floor, more a gentle warm smile about the story. It's well worth looking out for! 
Carpe diem. Savour every moment.
political humor in the U.S.
Thanks for the tip! I will keep an eye out.
Back to who makes me laugh, how CAN I have left out Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?
You may not know about them, but Comedy Central cable channel has a news show that's just about the best thing, well, ever. The Daily Show.
Often tasteless and silly, but when it's really pointed is when I love it best.
Stephen Colbert was a reporter on it, and now has his own show, The Colbert Report (the final t's are silent for both words, BTW).
Now Colbert has announced he's running for prez, but only in his home state of S. Carolina. His persona is a completely over-the-top right wing, llunatic fringe on meth. He's continually asking left-wing guests "George W. Bush: a great president, or the greatest president?"
He plays a religious, anti-science, anti-fact nut-job, and is absolutely hilarious. He takes pro-Bush, religious, and other positions, and rationalizes them -- but what he needs to do to make them sound rational is, of course, completely absurd.
The political blog Crooks & Liars has a lot of clips from both their shows, if you have any inclination to check them out.
What's ironic is that, in the U.S., the sanest analysis of political news is to be found on a fake news show.
YouTube has stuff of theirs, too. Jon Stewart going on Cross-Fire and pleading with the hosts to have real and helpful debate is nothing less than heart-breaking.
Sorry for the U.S.-centrism. Now back to your regularly scheduled programing....
Back to who makes me laugh, how CAN I have left out Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?
You may not know about them, but Comedy Central cable channel has a news show that's just about the best thing, well, ever. The Daily Show.
Often tasteless and silly, but when it's really pointed is when I love it best.
Stephen Colbert was a reporter on it, and now has his own show, The Colbert Report (the final t's are silent for both words, BTW).
Now Colbert has announced he's running for prez, but only in his home state of S. Carolina. His persona is a completely over-the-top right wing, llunatic fringe on meth. He's continually asking left-wing guests "George W. Bush: a great president, or the greatest president?"
He plays a religious, anti-science, anti-fact nut-job, and is absolutely hilarious. He takes pro-Bush, religious, and other positions, and rationalizes them -- but what he needs to do to make them sound rational is, of course, completely absurd.
The political blog Crooks & Liars has a lot of clips from both their shows, if you have any inclination to check them out.
What's ironic is that, in the U.S., the sanest analysis of political news is to be found on a fake news show.
YouTube has stuff of theirs, too. Jon Stewart going on Cross-Fire and pleading with the hosts to have real and helpful debate is nothing less than heart-breaking.
Sorry for the U.S.-centrism. Now back to your regularly scheduled programing....
Agreed Lewis! The series was brilliant! I've got a CD of the fabulous jazz too. One of my favourites. Can anyone answer a question for me? Their baby was known as first-born, because they couldn't agree on a name. She wanted Karl, after Karl Marx, he wanted a name after a jazz musician, but I can remember what it was. Charlie, after Charlie Parker, or am I dreaming?
Re: Who makes you laugh? Favourite comedians and sitcoms.
Well I hate all the above with a passion, espcecially Connolly.Firebrand wrote:I think for me the first choice is Billy Connolly. I have a fondness for Victoria Wood and French and Saunders.
I've been dredging my memory for sitcoms. Apart from Absolutely Fabulous, I remember really enjoying Roseanne many years ago and of course Friends is a legend.
Anyone else?
Fav. sit-coms have to be Porride, Steptoe & Son, Whatever happened to the Likely lads, The Office and Dad's Army.
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Ted Harvey
- Posts: 172
- Joined: September 10th, 2007, 4:41 pm
Firebrand I agree with you on Absolutely Fabulous and Roseanne. I can still remember first watching that early AF episode where blind drunk she falls out of the car and then down the stairs outside her home. I laughed and laughed whilst thinking 'but they cannot show that kind of thing as humour'.
At the height of popularity of Roseane I was contending with kids, family and all that. I found the series bang on the button (although it should have ended a run earlier). I do not think that viewers in the UK had any idea of how much the series was hated by the USA Fundamentalist Right.
They hated it's lack of deference to God and 'Christian Family Values'. I just found that it was extremely funny and very humanity based at it's heart - a real story of how a family from the USA blue collar working class just have to get on with surviving in a nakedly materialist and increasingly conformist society.
Sorry, but I cannot agree with you on Friends though. I just detested it's whole hetro-white, middle class, self-obsessed, valueless and sexual promiscuity ethos. Superb one-liners, though produced by a huge team of gag writers of course.
Stephen Colbert is one of those acts you feel you ought to be grown-up and sophisticated enough to dislike... but he is just so very funny and very, very telling!
My absolute number one just now in the UK is the Peter Serafinowicz show on BBC2. It takes a bit of effort (as so many good things do) but once you 'get it' it is a deeply funny spit on the whole consumer society thing in a satirical quite unsettling way... you know you sort begin to wonder to yourself 'why do I find the weird stuff so funny'
Finally, by sheer coincidence I was working this week on a reconsideration of Tony Hancock's "The Bedsitter". What he and Galt & Simpson achieved in that episode for me is possibly one of the greatest items of UK TV reality comedy and exceeds the more famous 'The Blood Donor'. But to be fair, in doing that work I discovered that Hancock was recovering from a car accident and heavily made up for his stint in The Blood Donor - consequently Galt & Simpson felt it was not as good as it could have been.
I just think that is a tribute to the fact that so much of their work in those days was live broadcasting.
Lot's more I could mention - Lennie the Lion was I was a kid, was just a scream; I mean a sissy lion?
At the height of popularity of Roseane I was contending with kids, family and all that. I found the series bang on the button (although it should have ended a run earlier). I do not think that viewers in the UK had any idea of how much the series was hated by the USA Fundamentalist Right.
They hated it's lack of deference to God and 'Christian Family Values'. I just found that it was extremely funny and very humanity based at it's heart - a real story of how a family from the USA blue collar working class just have to get on with surviving in a nakedly materialist and increasingly conformist society.
Sorry, but I cannot agree with you on Friends though. I just detested it's whole hetro-white, middle class, self-obsessed, valueless and sexual promiscuity ethos. Superb one-liners, though produced by a huge team of gag writers of course.
Stephen Colbert is one of those acts you feel you ought to be grown-up and sophisticated enough to dislike... but he is just so very funny and very, very telling!
My absolute number one just now in the UK is the Peter Serafinowicz show on BBC2. It takes a bit of effort (as so many good things do) but once you 'get it' it is a deeply funny spit on the whole consumer society thing in a satirical quite unsettling way... you know you sort begin to wonder to yourself 'why do I find the weird stuff so funny'
Finally, by sheer coincidence I was working this week on a reconsideration of Tony Hancock's "The Bedsitter". What he and Galt & Simpson achieved in that episode for me is possibly one of the greatest items of UK TV reality comedy and exceeds the more famous 'The Blood Donor'. But to be fair, in doing that work I discovered that Hancock was recovering from a car accident and heavily made up for his stint in The Blood Donor - consequently Galt & Simpson felt it was not as good as it could have been.
I just think that is a tribute to the fact that so much of their work in those days was live broadcasting.
Lot's more I could mention - Lennie the Lion was I was a kid, was just a scream; I mean a sissy lion?
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para handy
- Posts: 587
- Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:39 pm
I'm getting to be a fan of Peter Kay for his questions like the ones below:
1) Why does your gynaecologist leave the room when you get undressed?
2) If a person owns a piece of land do they own it all the way down to the core of the earth?
3) Why can't women put on mascara with their mouth closed?
4) Is it possible to brush your teeth without wiggling your bottom?
5) Why is it called Alcoholics Anonymous when the first thing you do is stand up and say, 'My name is Peter and I am an alcoholic'?
6) Why are they called stairs inside but steps outside?
7) Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?
8) Why does mineral water that 'has trickled through mountains for centuries' have a 'use by' date?
9) Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp no one would eat?
10) Is French kissing in France just called kissing?
11) Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, 'I think I'll squeeze these dangly things here and drink whatever comes out'?
12) What do people in China call their good quality plates?
13) Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but don't point to their crotch when they ask where the bathroom is?
14) What do you call male ballerinas?
15) Why is a person that handles your money called a 'Broker'?
16) If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?
17) If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, then what is baby oil made from?
18) Why is it that when someone tells you that there are over a billion stars in the universe, you believe them, but if they tell you there is wet paint somewhere, you have to touch it to make sure.
1) Why does your gynaecologist leave the room when you get undressed?
2) If a person owns a piece of land do they own it all the way down to the core of the earth?
3) Why can't women put on mascara with their mouth closed?
4) Is it possible to brush your teeth without wiggling your bottom?
5) Why is it called Alcoholics Anonymous when the first thing you do is stand up and say, 'My name is Peter and I am an alcoholic'?
6) Why are they called stairs inside but steps outside?
7) Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?
8) Why does mineral water that 'has trickled through mountains for centuries' have a 'use by' date?
9) Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp no one would eat?
10) Is French kissing in France just called kissing?
11) Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, 'I think I'll squeeze these dangly things here and drink whatever comes out'?
12) What do people in China call their good quality plates?
13) Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but don't point to their crotch when they ask where the bathroom is?
14) What do you call male ballerinas?
15) Why is a person that handles your money called a 'Broker'?
16) If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?
17) If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, then what is baby oil made from?
18) Why is it that when someone tells you that there are over a billion stars in the universe, you believe them, but if they tell you there is wet paint somewhere, you have to touch it to make sure.
I loved Green Wing,
I enjoyed Love Soup, did anyone else see that?
I like Have I Got New For You and QI
I also detest Billy Connelly since I saw a clip of him telling an extremely offensive joke about gay men (can't remember it, but basically the implication was that they'd want to have sex with whales -??) and then "justify" it by saying if gay people want to be out they should put up with having jokes made about them (no appreciation of the difference between jokes that are funny and jokes that are offensive)
I enjoyed Love Soup, did anyone else see that?
I like Have I Got New For You and QI
I also detest Billy Connelly since I saw a clip of him telling an extremely offensive joke about gay men (can't remember it, but basically the implication was that they'd want to have sex with whales -??) and then "justify" it by saying if gay people want to be out they should put up with having jokes made about them (no appreciation of the difference between jokes that are funny and jokes that are offensive)
I'd never seen that before Squiffy.jaywhat wrote:Went to see Jeremy Hardy last night - very entertaining. In Stockton tonight apparently. A nice man as well.
I hadn't heard of him either so I googled him. Interesting.
His politics do not always go down well with the sometimes conservative Radio 4 audience - in an appearance on Just A Minute in 2000 he earned boos from the audience and a reprimand from fellow panellist, the former Liberal MP, Clement Freud, when he responded to the subject "Parasites" by talking about the royal family. He has not appeared on the show since then.
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ashtonfarell
- Posts: 4
- Joined: February 15th, 2010, 6:09 am
Re: Who makes you laugh? Favourite comedians and sitcoms.
My favourite comedians are:
1) jim gaffigan
2)dane cook
3)wanda sykes
4)ralphie may
5)george lopez
1) jim gaffigan
2)dane cook
3)wanda sykes
4)ralphie may
5)george lopez
Re: Who makes you laugh? Favourite comedians and sitcoms.
I laugh at David Mitchell