With the annual bunfest that is the Magners Paramount Comedy Festival rolling into town again, there’s no better time to suggest the six best stand-ups who’ve ever stood on a stage, told jokes and invented an infinite number of ways to tell hecklers to fuck off.
Bill Hicks
More an angry preacher than a stand up, Bill Hicks would be a legend now even if he hadn’t died in the early 90s of pancreatic cancer, tragically just 32 years old. In full flow he could be genuinely frightening, as willing to turn on the audience as he was on George Bush (so many parallels!), trailer trash or marketing execs. But ultimately his ranting was based around a message of love and open-mindedness. Oh yeah – he was really fucking funny too.
Jimmy Carr
People often deride Jimmy for his sometimes less than discerning television ubiquity, but while we could happily do with never seeing another ’50 best…’ clip show, as an old-school stand-up he’s simply matchless. The vast majority of his act is gags – tasteless, sexist and everything else-ist one-liners delivered at breakneck speed, all in the unapologetic brogue of a rather educated man with a brilliantly patronising superiority complex.
Harry Hill
This odd looking ex-doctor might be best known commenting on TV – and home videos of people falling over – but not so long ago he was one of the best stand-ups on the circuit. Charmingly offbeat and fabulously random, his best trick was wandering between subjects before returning to a past topic that created a double joke that also worked with the current theme. Like all good comedy, you had to be there.
Eddie Murphy
Nowadays best known for terrible movies and knocking up Spice Girls, there was a time when Eddie Murphy was the sole carrier of the Richard Pryor comedy baton, since passed on to Chris Rock. With 230 fucks and 171 shits, his 1983 Delirious stand-up movie debut was peppered with lamentable Aids ignorance and gay-baiting, but remains an outstanding comedy gem, as does 1987’s Raw in which Murphy out-fucks even himself, with the most utterances in any film of the decade.
Bob Monkhouse
When Bob died the nation finally remembered that it loved this scholar of gags. The distress caused by the theft of one of his joke books showed how much work he put into his encyclopaedic gags. The result was economic stand-up delivered with a wry smile. Jimmy Carr owes him plenty. “When I told people I wanted to be a comedian they laughed,” he deadpanned. “Well no one’s laughing now.”
Jerry Sadowitz
Sadowitz is probably the most visceral, angry and offensive comedian we’ve ever come across. Since releasing a live video about 20 years ago his appearances have been rare in the extreme, but his bile hasn’t depleted in the slightest. His vehemently bitter attitude to everyone and everything has undoubtedly hampered his booking potential, but while shows in the last few years have concentrated more on his close-up conjuring, he’s been on great form, displaying his characteristically unfettered unpleasantness from start to finish.
WORDS BY NICK COQUET, JAMES KENDALL
More Six Of The Best: Click Here6best
