A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to
entertain an
audience by making them
laugh
Laughter is a pleasant physical reaction and emotion consisting usually of rhythmical, often audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli. Laughter ...
. This might be through
joke
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laughter, laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with ...
s or
amusing
Amusement is the state of experiencing humorous and entertaining events or situations while the person or animal actively maintains the experience, and is associated with enjoyment, happiness, laughter and pleasure. It is an emotion with po ...
situations, or acting foolish (as in
slapstick), or employing
prop comedy
Prop comedy is a comedy genre in which performers use humorous objects, or conventional objects in humorous ways. The stages and films term "prop", an abbreviation of "property", refers to any object an actor handles in the course of a performance ...
. A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called a
stand-up comedian.
A popular saying often attributed to
Ed Wynn
Isaiah Edwin Leopold (November 9, 1886 – June 19, 1966), better known as Ed Wynn, was an American actor and comedian. He was noted for his ''Perfect Fool'' comedy character, his pioneering radio show of the 1930s, and his later career as a d ...
attempts to differentiate the two terms:
"A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny."
This draws a distinction between how much of the
comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...
can be attributed to verbal content and how much to acting and persona.
Since the 1980s, a new wave of comedy, called
alternative comedy, has grown in popularity with its more offbeat and experimental style. This normally involves more experiential, or observational reporting (e.g.,
Alexei Sayle
Alexei David Sayle (born 7 August 1952) is an English actor, author, stand-up comedian, television presenter and former recording artist. He was a leading figure in the British alternative comedy movement in the 1980s. He was voted the 18th gre ...
,
Daniel Tosh
Daniel Dwight Tosh (born May 29, 1975) is an American comedian, writer, and producer. After graduating from the University of Central Florida with a degree in Marketing, Tosh moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in comedy. His career acceler ...
,
Malcolm Hardee
Malcolm Hardee (5 January 1950 – 31 January 2005) was an English comedian and comedy club proprietor.
His high reputation among his peers rests on his outrageous publicity stunts and on the help and advice he gave to successful British Altern ...
). As far as content is concerned, comedians such as
Tommy Tiernan,
Des Bishop
Desmond Bishop (born 12 November 1975) is an American-Irish comedian. He was brought up in New York and moved to Ireland at the age of 14. He primarily resides there.
Approach to comedy
Bishop's comedy has covered social issues, such as poverty ...
,
Kevin Hart
Kevin Darnell Hart (born July 6, 1979) is an American comedian and actor. Originally known as a stand-up comedian, he has since starred in Hollywood films and on TV. He has also released several well-received comedy albums.
After winning se ...
, and
Dawn French draw on their background to poke fun at themselves, while others such as
Jon Stewart and
Ben Elton
Benjamin Charles Elton (born 3 May 1959) is an English comedian, actor, author, playwright, lyricist and director. He was a part of London's alternative comedy movement of the 1980s and became a writer on the sitcoms '' The Young Ones'' and ''Bla ...
have very strong political and cultural undertones.
Many comics achieve a
cult following while touring famous comedy hubs such as the
Just for Laughs festival in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...
, the
Edinburgh Fringe
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...
, and
Melbourne Comedy Festival in
Australia. Often a comic's career advances significantly when they win a notable comedy award, such as the
Edinburgh Comedy Award
The Dave's Edinburgh Comedy Awards (formerly the Perrier Comedy Awards, and also briefly known by other names for sponsorship reasons) are presented to the comedy shows deemed to have been the best at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. ...
(formerly the Perrier comedy award). Comics sometimes foray into other areas of entertainment, such as film and television, where they become more widely known (e.g.,
Eddie Izzard
Edward John Izzard (; born 7 February 1962) 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.
Izzard's stand- ...
,
Lee Evans). A comic's stand-up success does not always correlate to a film's critical or box-office success.
History
Ancient Greeks
Comedians can be dated back to 425 BC, when
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his for ...
, a comic author, and playwright, wrote ancient comedic plays. He wrote 40 comedies, 11 of which survive and are still being performed. Aristophanes' comedy style took the form of
satyr plays
The satyr play is a form of Attic theatre performance related to both comedy and tragedy. It preserves theatrical elements of dialogue, actors speaking verse, a chorus that dances and sings, masks and costumes. Its relationship to tragedy is stro ...
.
Shakespearean comedy
The English poet and playwright
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
wrote many comedies. A Shakespearean comedy is one that has a happy ending, usually involving marriages between the unmarried characters, and a tone and style that is more light-hearted than Shakespeare's other plays.
Modern era
American performance comedy has its roots in the 1840s from the
three-act,
variety show
Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical performances, sketch comedy, magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is normally introduced by a comp ...
format of
minstrel show
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of racist theatrical entertainment developed in the early 19th century.
Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people spec ...
s (via
blackface performances of the
Jim Crow character);
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became ...
criticized these shows for profiting from and perpetuating
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonis ...
.
Minstrelsy
monologists performed second-act,
stump-speech monologues from within minstrel shows until 1896. American standup also emerged in
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
theatre from the 1880s to the 1930s, with such comics as
W. C. Fields,
Buster Keaton and the
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act that was successful in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in motion pictures from 1905 to 1949. Five of the Marx Brothers' thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute (AFI) ...
.
British performance comedy has its roots in 1850
music hall theatres, where
Charlie Chaplin,
Stan Laurel, and
Dan Leno
George Wild Galvin (20 December 1860 – 31 October 1904), better known by the stage name Dan Leno, was a leading English music hall comedian and musical theatre actor during the late Victorian era. He was best known, aside from his music hall a ...
first performed,
mentored by comedian and theatre impresario
Fred Karno, who developed a form of sketch comedy without dialogue in the 1890s and also pioneered
slapstick comedy
Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such a ...
.
[McCabe, John. "Comedy World of Stan Laurel". p. 143. London: Robson Books, 2005, First edition 1975]
Media
In the modern era, as technology produced forms of
mass communications media, these were adapted to entertainment and comedians adapted to the new media, sometimes switching to new forms as they were introduced.
Stand-up
![Bob Hope, 1978](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Bob_Hope%2C_1978.jpg)
Stand-up comedy is a comic
monologue performed standing on a stage.
Bob Hope
Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer and dancer. With a career that spanned nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in Bob Hope filmography, more than 70 short and ...
became the most popular stand-up comedian of the 20th century in a nearly 80-year career that included numerous
comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...
roles over a five-decade span in radio, television, and entertaining armed-service troops through the
USO
The United Service Organizations Inc. (USO) is an American nonprofit-charitable corporation that provides live entertainment, such as comedians, actors and musicians, social facilities, and other programs to members of the United States Armed F ...
. Other noted stand-up comedians include
Billy Connolly
Sir William Connolly (born 24 November 1942) is a Scottish actor, retired comedian, artist, writer, musician, and presenter. He is sometimes known, especially in his homeland, by the Scots nickname the Big Yin ("the Big One"). Known for his ...
,
George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American comedian, actor, author, and social critic. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed "the dean of countercu ...
,
Richard Pryor
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style, and is widely regarded as on ...
,
Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood (19 May 1953 – 20 April 2016) was an English comedian, actress, lyricist, singer, composer, pianist, screenwriter, producer and director.
Wood wrote and starred in dozens of sketches, plays, musicals, films and sitcoms over se ...
,
Joan Rivers
Joan Alexandra Molinsky (June 8, 1933 – September 4, 2014), known professionally as Joan Rivers, was an American comedian, actress, producer, writer and television host. She was noted for her blunt, often controversial comedic persona—heavi ...
,
Whoopi Goldberg
Caryn Elaine Johnson (born November 13, 1955), known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg (), is an American actor, comedian, author, and television personality.Kuchwara, Michael (AP Drama Writer)"Whoopi Goldberg: A One-Woman Character Parade". ' ...
,
Patton Oswalt
Patton Peter Oswalt (born January 27, 1969) is an American stand-up comedian, actor and writer. He is known as Spence Olchin in the sitcom ''The King of Queens'' (1998–2007) and for narrating the sitcom '' The Goldbergs'' (2013–present) as ...
and
Jo Brand
Josephine Grace Brand (born 23 July 1957) is an English comedian, writer, presenter and actress. Starting her entertainment career with a move from psychiatric nursing to the alternative comedy stand-up scene and early performances on '' Satu ...
.
Audio recording
Some of the earliest commercial sound recordings were made by standup comedians such as
Cal Stewart
Cal Stewart (b. 1856 Charlotte County, Virginia, d. December 7, 1919) was an American comedian and humorist who pioneered in vaudeville and early sound recordings. He is best remembered for his comic monologues in which he played "Uncle Josh ...
, who recorded collections of his humorous monologues on
Edison Records
Edison Records was one of the early record labels that pioneered sound recording and reproduction, and was an important player in the early recording industry.
The first phonograph cylinders were manufactured in 1888, followed by Edison's found ...
as early as 1898, and other labels until his death in 1919.
Bandleader
Spike Jones
Lindley Armstrong "Spike" Jones (December 14, 1911 – May 1, 1965) was an American musician and bandleader specializing in spoof arrangements of popular songs and classical music. Ballads receiving the Jones treatment were punctuated with gun ...
recorded 15 musical comedy
album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records co ...
s satirizing popular and
classical music from 1950 to his death in 1965.
Tom Lehrer
Thomas Andrew Lehrer (; born April 9, 1928) is an American former musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician, having lectured on mathematics and musical theater. He is best known for the pithy and humorous songs that he recorded in ...
wrote and recorded five albums of songs
satirizing political and social issues from 1953 to 1965. Musician
Peter Schickele
"Professor" Peter Schickele (; born July 17, 1935) is an American composer, musical educator, and parodist, best known for comedy albums featuring his music, but which he presents as being composed by the fictional P. D. Q. Bach. He also hosted ...
, inspired by Jones, parodied
classical music with 17 albums of his music which he presented as written by "
P.D.Q. Bach
P. D. Q. Bach is a fictional composer invented by the American musical satirist Peter Schickele, who developed a five-decade-long career performing the "discovered" works of the "only forgotten son" of the Bach family. Schickele's music combines ...
" (fictional son of
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wo ...
) from 1965 through 2007.
In 1968, radio
surreal comedy group
The Firesign Theatre
The Firesign Theatre (also known as the Firesigns) was an American surreal comedy troupe who first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on the Los Angeles radio program ''Radio Free Oz'' on station KPFK FM. They continued ap ...
revolutionized the concept of the spoken comedy album by writing and recording elaborate radio plays employing
sound effects and
multitrack recording, which comedian
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian. Known for his improvisational skills and the wide variety of characters he created on the spur of the moment and portrayed on film, in dramas and come ...
called "the audio equivalent of a
Hieronymous Bosch
Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/ Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oa ...
painting." Comedy duo
Cheech and Chong
Cheech & Chong are a comedy duo consisting of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong. The duo found commercial and cultural success in the 1970s and 1980s with their stand-up routines, studio recordings, and feature films, which were based on the hippie a ...
recorded comedy albums in a similar format from 1971 through 1985.
Film
![Chaplin The Champion](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Chaplin_The_Champion.jpg)
Karno took Chaplin and Laurel on two trips to the United States to tour the vaudeville circuit. On the second one, they were recruited by the fledgling
silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) ...
industry. Chaplin became the most popular screen comedian of the first half of the 20th century. Chaplin and
Stan Laurel were protégés of
Fred Karno, the English theatre impresario of British
music hall, and in his biography Laurel stated, "Fred Karno didn't teach Charlie
haplinand me all we know about comedy. He just taught us most of it". Chaplin wrote films such as ''
Modern Times'' and ''
The Kid The Kid or The Kids may refer to:
Fictional characters
* The kid (''Blood Meridian''), a character in Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel ''Blood Meridian''
* The Kid (''The Matrix''), a character in the ''Matrix'' film series
* The Kid (''The Stand'' ...
''. His films still have a major impact on comedy in films today.
Laurel met
Oliver Hardy in the US and teamed up as
Laurel and Hardy. Keaton also started making silent comedies.
Fields appeared in Broadway
musical comedies
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movemen ...
, three silent films in 1915 and 1925, and in
sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
s starting in 1926. The Marx brothers also made the transition to film in 1929, by way of two Broadway musicals.
Many other comedians made sound films, such as Bob Hope (both alone, and in a series of "
Road to ..." comedies with partner
Bing Crosby),
ventriloquist
Ventriloquism, or ventriloquy, is a performance act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) creates the illusion that their voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered prop known as a "dummy". The act of ventriloquism is ve ...
Edgar Bergen, and
Jerry Lewis (both with and without partner
Dean Martin).
Some comedians who entered film expanded their acting skills to become dramatic actors, or started as actors specializing in comic roles, such as
Dick Van Dyke,
Paul Lynde
Paul Edward Lynde (; June 13, 1926January 10, 1982) was an American comedian, actor and game show panelist. A character actor with a distinctively campy and snarky persona that often poked fun at his barely closeted homosexuality, Lynde was we ...
,
Michael Keaton
Michael John Douglas (born September 5, 1951), known professionally as Michael Keaton, is an American actor. He is known for his various comedic and dramatic film roles, including Jack Butler in ''Mr. Mom'' (1983), Betelgeuse in '' Beetlejuice'' ...
,
Bill Murray
William James Murray (born September 21, 1950) is an American actor and comedian. He is known for his deadpan delivery. He rose to fame on ''The National Lampoon Radio Hour'' (1973–1974) before becoming a national presence on '' Saturday Nig ...
and
Denis Leary
Denis Colin Leary (born August 18, 1957) is an American actor and comedian. A native of Massachusetts, Leary first came to prominence as a stand-up comedian, especially through appearances on MTV (including the comedic song "Asshole") and throu ...
.
Radio
Radio comedy began in the United States when
Raymond Knight launched ''
The Cuckoo Hour'' on
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
in 1930,
[Hickerson, Jay. ''The Ultimate History of Network Radio Programming and Guide to All Circulating Shows''. Hamden, Connecticut: Jay Hickerson, Box 4321, Hamden, CT 06514, second edition December 1992, page 92.] along with the 1931 network debut of
Stoopnagle and Budd on
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
. Most of the Hollywood comedians who did not become dramatic actors (e.g. Bergen, Fields,
Groucho and
Chico Marx,
Red Skelton
Richard Red Skelton (July 18, 1913September 17, 1997) was an American entertainer best known for his national radio and television shows between 1937 and 1971, especially as host of the television program '' The Red Skelton Show''. He has stars ...
,
Jack Benny
Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American entertainer who evolved from a modest success playing violin on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century wit ...
,
Fred Allen
John Florence Sullivan (May 31, 1894 – March 17, 1956), known professionally as Fred Allen, was an American comedian. His absurdist, topically pointed radio program ''The Fred Allen Show'' (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and for ...
,
Judy Canova
Judy Canova (November 20, 1913 – August 5, 1983),Although one source gives her birth date as November 20, 1916, (DeLong, Thomas A. (1996). ''Radio Stars: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary of 953 Performers, 1920 through 1960''. McFarland ...
, Hope,
Martin and Lewis
Martin and Lewis were an American comedy duo, comprising singer Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis. They met in 1945 and debuted at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 25, 1946; the team lasted ten years to the day. Before they teamed up, Martin ...
), transitioned to United States radio in the 1930s and 1940s.
Without a Hollywood supply of comedians to draw from, radio comedy did not begin in the United Kingdom until a generation later, with such popular 1950s shows as ''
The Goon Show
''The Goon Show'' is a British radio comedy programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960, with occasional repeats on the BBC Light Programme. The first series, broadcast from 28 May to 20 September 19 ...
'' and ''
Hancock's Half Hour
''Hancock's Half Hour'' was a BBC radio comedy, and later television comedy series, broadcast from 1954 to 1961 and written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock, with Sidney James; the radio version also co-starred, ...
''. Later, radio became a proving-ground for many later United Kingdom comedians.
Chris Morris began his career in 1986 at
Radio Cambridgeshire, and
Ricky Gervais began his comedy career in 1997 at
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
radio station
XFM. ''
The League of Gentlemen
''The League of Gentlemen'' is a surreal British comedy horror sitcom that premiered on BBC Two in 1999. The programme is set in Royston Vasey, a fictional town in northern England, originally based on Alston, Cumbria, and follows the live ...
'',
Mitchell and Webb and
The Mighty Boosh
The Mighty Boosh is a British comedy troupe featuring comedians Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. Developed from three stage shows and a six-episode radio series, it has since spanned a total of 20 television episodes for BBC Three which aired ...
all transferred to television after broadcasting on
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
.
Television
![Seinfeld_English_logo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Seinfeld_English_logo.png)
On television there are comedy talk shows where comedians make fun of current news or popular topics. Such comedians include
Jay Leno,
Conan O'Brien,
Graham Norton
Graham William Walker (born 4 April 1963), better known by his stage name Graham Norton, is an Irish actor, author, comedian, commentator, and presenter. Well known for his work in the UK, he is a five-time BAFTA TV Award winner for his comed ...
,
Jim Jefferies,
James Corden,
John Oliver
John William Oliver (born 23 April 1977) is a British-American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. Oliver started his career as a stand-up comedian in the United Kingdom. He came to wider attention ...
,
Jonathan Ross,
David Letterman, and
Chelsea Handler
Chelsea Joy Handler (born February 25, 1975) is an American comedian, actress, writer, television host, and producer. She hosted the late-night talk show ''Chelsea Lately'' on the E! network from 2007 to 2014 and released a documentary series, ...
. There are sketch comedies, such as ''
Mr. Show with Bob and David'' and
Monty Python who created their sketch comedy show ''
Monty Python's Flying Circus'' (a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
''. The most acclaimed sitcoms include
.
Comedy is increasingly enjoyed online. Comedians with popular long-running podcasts series include
. Comedians streaming videos of their stand-up include
.
There are many established formats for jokes. One example is the
or double-entendre, where similar words are interchanged. ''
'' often used puns and double-entendre.
are examples of current comedians who deploy numerous puns. Jokes based on puns tend to be very quick and easy to digest, which sometimes leads to other joke forms being overlooked, for example in the Funniest Joke of the Fringe awards. Other jokes may rely on confounding an audience's expectations through a misleading setup (known as a 'pull back and reveal' in the UK and a 'leadaway' in the US).
is an example of a comedian who has used this technique.
's standup. In
humour there is an intentional mismatch between a message and the form in which it is conveyed (for example the work of
). Other joke forms include observation (
).
personality traits. In the study, researchers analyzed 404 male and 119 female comedians from
. The participants were asked to complete an online questionnaire designed to measure psychotic traits in healthy people. They found that comedians scored "significantly higher on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of people who had non-creative jobs." Gordon Claridge, a professor of experimental psychology at the
and leader of the study claimed, "the creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis—both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."
However, labeling comedians' personality traits as "psychotic" does not mean that individual is a psychopath,
, and neither does it mean their behavior is necessarily pathological.
'' publishes an annual list of the most financially successful comedians in the world, similarly to their
. Their data sources include
. The list was topped by
in 2016. In that year, the eight highest paid comedians were from the United States, including
, who became the first woman to be listed in the top ten.