Popular award-winning Irish comic, newspaper columnist and TV presenter Dara O’Briain has been dubbed Terry Wogan’s ‘heir apparent.’ One commentator even said: “If you don’t laugh at Ó Briain, you must be dead.”

He hosts panel show Mock the Week, and has been involved in similar programmes including Have I Got News for You and QI. O’Briain has also toured the UK and Ireland widely, taken the Edinburgh Festival by storm and rowed up the Thames in a TV recreation of the novel Three Men in a Boat.

Here are some of his funny quotes.

• To Chico: What’s the time? Chico: It’s Chico time! Dara: Really? I make it 20 minutes past Chico time.
• On his imaginary English child: He won’t have an asterisk above his head, as in ‘I love you, but – check asterisk, go to bottom of the page – you shouldn’t have invaded Ireland for 800 years.’
• I think the English are bipolar. ‘We’re the greatest, no we’re terrible’ – that’s a constant English struggle. Crime is down, there’s little poverty – yet it’s always the worst time to have lived here.
• This is the first time that Irish people go: ‘You’re going to England? Sure it’s full of terrorists. Come to Ireland. We’ve no terrorists. They’re all playwrights now.’
• My iPod holds 3,000 albums. I own, like, 90 albums. My iPod sits at home, sullen, frustrated, and underused, like a wife who gave up her career and the kids turned out to be shite.
• When a big wind sweeps across America, there isn’t a building left standing: the southern states must have been built by the first two little piggies.
• On his grandmother who, as a teenage member of the old IRA, hid in a ditch to escape a British army patrol: Would a 16- year-old today manage to stay in a ditch for six hours, without texting their friends – “am in a ditch, where r u?”
• I’m technically Catholic, it’s the box you tick on the form: ‘Don’t believe in God, but I still hate Rangers.’

Catch him live at the Hammersmith Apollo in this clip:

O’Briain tours extensively across Ireland and the UK during the rest of the year, including nine dates at the Hammersmith Apollo in September. His first book, Tickling the English, is out now.

An actor, comedian, impressionist and writer who began his comedy career doing voices for Spitting Image, this is Hugh Dennis. Together with comedy partner Steve Punt, who he met as a Cambridge University student, he formed half of The Mary Whitehouse Experience.

Dennis has performed on various TV and radio shows, including My Hero, in which he took the role of obnoxious GP Piers Crispin. He has guest hosted Have I Got News for You, stars in BBC sitcom Outnumbered, detailing the lives of a middle-class London couple and their three children, and is in great demand as a voiceover artist.

Here are some funny quotes by this popular comedian.

• In my experience, the married man’s allowance is… about once a month. (At taxation awards ceremony.)
• When asked what the Queen would not say in her Christmas speech:
  “Yum, I’ve just eaten a swan,” or: “This year, I am in an unusual location – I am in a cave with Osama Bin Laden.”
• Sat Nav is terrible. You know when people have a Sat Nav on as they’re not looking at anything; they’ve no idea where they’ve gone, or where they are going.
• On ways not to start a party political broadcast: My fellow paedophiles…
• Viewers of a nervous disposition may be interested to know that your television is off and I am speaking to you from inside your head.
• I’m sure there’s a connection between what I do now and what my father (a bishop) did – both of us dress up and stand in front of lots of people.
• Itchy skin, dry flaking scalp? You disgust me!
• Tired of a messy toolbox? Then you need the Abu Hamza multi-tool! (From Mock the Week, when asked to describe what a television announcer is unlikely to say.)
• You may be interested to know that I’m completely naked and playing with myself. (From Mock the Week, unlikely things to be said in programme indents.)

See Hugh in action in Mock the Week, doing his ‘showaddywaddy’ line:

Mock the Week returned to BBC2 in June, and the second DVD of the series is out now. Catch Hugh in Outnumbered on the BBC, or watch repeats on Sky Channel G.o.l.d.

Image used under creative commons license, flickr/dantaylor.

The football loving godfather of ‘lad’ humour, comedy veteran Frank Skinner has been doing stand-up since the 1980s. He became a household name presenting football show Fantasy Football League between 1994 and 2004. With ex-flatmate David Baddiel, he presented Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned from 2000 to 2005. In 2007, he returned to stand-up after a 10-year break from the circuit.

His own chat show ran from 1995 until 2005 and Skinner topped the charts with football song Three Lions for Euro 1996. It was re-released in 1998. Other TV credits include Have I Got News for You, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and Mock the Week.

Here are some of his funniest quotes.

• A dog is not intelligent. Never trust an animal that’s surprised by its own farts.
• If my career fails there is always alcoholism to fall back on.
• When you have sex with a glow-in-the-dark condom, it’s like being in a lighthouse. It’s light, it’s dark. It’s light, it’s dark. It’s light, it’s dark.
• Muslim women, instead of wearing the head-to-toe burka thing, they could wear Disney character suits. They’d be covered, and it’s a little more fun.
• You know you’re getting old when, after they’ve cut your hair, the barber asks: ‘Do you want me to trim your ears as well?’.
• It’s horrible when you’re having sex and you have to stop halfway through, like when the doorbell goes, or the saucepan boils over … or you run out of money.
• My mate has the campest walk ever. We did a sponsored 13-mile walk once and I tied his shoe laces together as a joke. He didn’t even notice.
• When I was a kid I ran everywhere. Do kids still run these days? I thought all that glue sniffing might have slowed them down.

Watch a clip from the first episode of TV show Frank Skinner’s Opinionated:

Read Skinner’s regular Times column, or download a podcast of him on Sony award-winning form on Absolute Radio. His latest show, ‘Opinionated’, began its run on BBC2 this April. DVDs of his various stand-up performances are also available.

Image used under creative commons, from flickr/friendsofthestars.

Liverpool funny man John Bishop has been a stand-up comedian for the past decade, and, back in 2001, reached the final of all the major new act competitions. He has been described as ‘frankly hilarious’ and ‘a gloriously gifted storyteller.’ His material is drawn from his life’s experiences, from fatherhood to cycling around the world, to playing semi-professional football, to being a nightclub doorman.

Bishop acted in E4’s teen drama Skins, has a regular weekend slot on Liverpool radio station Radio City, Bishop’s Sunday Service, and appears on Sky One’s A League of Their Own, the panel game show hosted by James Corden.

Here are some of his most popular jokes.

• Edinburgh is the only place you can be sunburned and get trench foot on the same day.
• “It must be cool having a dad who’s a comedian,” I overheard a friend say. “No,” came my son’s reply. “He’s a knob.”
• On his teenage son: To be honest, I’m not sure the same kid comes home each night.
• On Courtney Love: I was only in her company two hours, but I can’t blame that Kurt Cobain fella.
• I have been privileged to get to know Kenny Dalgish and I would call him a friend – though his lawyer would call me a stalker (I don’t know why – just because I was in his garden!).
• There are some muscles I don’t think I need my personal trainer to find as I won’t be using them at my age anyway
• I’ve lived in Manchester since my 20s and I’ve only been in three fights –not a bad average.
• On performing in front of comic legend Ken Dodd: It was like trying to make love to your wife in front of a porn star – ‘I’m doing my best here! I know you can probably do it better but don’t look at me like that!’.

Catch John Bishop For One Night Only:

He is playing the Edinburgh Festival throughout August and tours the UK and Ireland this autumn. He is doing humorous animations through the Apple iTunes store every day of the World Cup, and his Live DVD is out now.

Image used copyright owned Queens Hall/Flickr, used under creative commons.

Russell Howard first made his mark on the comedy world when he reached the final of a prestigious new Channel 4 stand-up event at the Edinburgh Festival – aged just 19. Since then, a freewheeling, apparently effortless style, love of improvisation and an ability to go off on a tangent have helped his meteoric rise to comedy’s premier league.

A panellist on BBC Two’s Mock The Week, he hosts his own BBC Three show Russell Howard’s Good News while also appearing as a regular guest on TV’s Would I Lie to You and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

• So my mum bought a jacuzzi, and I was in there along with my father and my sister, when my mother decided it would be the ideal moment to say – ‘Guess what everyone in this jacuzzi has in common? You’ve all sucked on my tits.’
• From the makers of Alien vs. Predator: Alien vs. Pingu. K9 – stop humping the toaster!
• I like the authentic punk dance you did there. It’s like a child dizzy off lemonade
  (from Never Mind The Buzzcocks)
• I’d love the ability to give someone an orgasm just by touching them
• Russell was asked for his method of stealing a chicken from a supermarket. It involved putting it on his head and simply walking off in the confusion.
• With Michael Jackson, what I thought was really interesting was the people saying: ‘He looked really well in that final video.’ I was, like: ‘No, he didn’t – he looked like someone had melted goat’s cheese over a sex doll.’
• If I were to die of anything vaguely sex-related or had taken Viagra, you just know there’d be headlines of ‘Russell How-hard’ in the newspapers.
• I’m the munter of my friends. I’ve got wonky teeth and a lazy eye. My friend Rob is disgusted I’m a heart-throb.

Catch Russell Live at the Apollo here:

This funny man appears at arenas across the UK in spring 2011, with his largest and most ambitious tour to date. The DVDs Russell Howard Live and Live Dingledoodies are out now. You can also read his good news blog online.

Image used is from Flickr, used under Creative Commons License.

Comedy Central voted comedian, actor, writer, producer and director Chris Rock the fifth greatest stand-up comedian of all time. With his trademark high-pitch delivery, the American’s wide-ranging material covers family, politics, romance, music, and class and US race relations.

He has toured extensively and worked across film and TV, and is well-known for comedy sketch series Saturday Night Live, which he did in the 1990s. He hosted the 2005 Academy Awards, and film credits range from Nurse Betty to Beverley Hill Cops 11.

Here are some of his famous lines.

• Never go to clubs with metal detectors. Sure, it feels safe inside. But what about all those niggas waiting outside with guns? They know you ain’t got one.
• There are only three things women need in life: food, water and compliments.
• I don’t get high, but sometimes I wish I did. That way, when I messed up I would have an excuse. But, right now, there’s no rehab for stupidity…
• You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is black, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America’s Cup, France is accusing the US of arrogance, Germany doesn’t want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named ‘Bush’, ‘Dick’, and ‘Colon.’
• You cannot beat a woman in an argument. It’s impossible. ‘Cos men, we are handicapped when it comes to arguing, because we have a need to make sense.
• A man is only as faithful as his options.
• Have you been watching American Idol? Getting Paula Abdul to judge a singing contest is like getting Christopher Reeve to judge a dance contest.
• It’s hard for a man to turn down sex … if they chase us, we can’t run that fast.

Chortle at Rock’s hilarious video How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police:

No tour dates currently scheduled, but Chris Rock’s award-winning documentary Good Hair is out on DVD. He stars with Adam Sandler in the movie Grown Ups, to be released in the UK in summer 2010, along with his other new film, Death at a Funeral.

Image from Wikipedia, available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

This popular funny man is best known for live shows Bewilderness and Part Troll, and his surreal comedic style. He has been described as ‘a hobbit with a wicked sense of humour’ and ‘the funniest bearded, babbling, bug-eyed druid the world has ever seen.’

Bill Bailey’s TV work, including being team captain on panel show Never Mind the Buzzcocks and his part in Channel 4 sitcom Black Books, have garnered Bailey a huge following. He is a regular on intellectual panel show QI, and had a role in E4’s teenage drama Skins, among other TV appearances. Here are some of his funniest lines.

• It’s not a beard, it’s an animal I’ve trained to sit very still.
• I once punched a bloke in the face for saying ‘Hawk The Slayer’ was rubbish, when what I should have said was ‘Dad, you’re wrong.’
• There’s more evil in the charts than in an Al-Qaeda suggestion box.
• Add a drop of lavender to milk, leave town with an orange, and pretend you’re laughing at it.
• What I’d like to do now – well, what I’d like to do now is grow my beard very long, weave it into my pubes and strum it like a harp.
• Toughest job I ever had? Selling doors, door to door.
• A lot of people say there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I actually think there’s a yawning gulf. You see some poor bugger scuffling up the road with balloons tied to his ears, he’s not going home to invent a rocket, is he?
• Three blokes go into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability.
• I’m English, and as such I crave disappointment. I actively seek it out

Watch the We Are Most Amused event:

DVDs including Bill Bailey: The Collector’s Edition and The Many Moods of Bill Bailey are available now. He is playing some dates in London in June 2010, and one in Bristol, before touring Australia and New Zealand all summer.

Image used is from Flickr, NickWebb, used under the Creative Commons license.

Described as ‘the spiritual son of Frankie Howerd’, Alan Carr was first discovered in 2001 when he won the BBC New Comedy Award for stand-up. The following year, his Edinburgh Festival show was the Telegraph’s Critic’s Choice, and he hasn’t stopped working since.

He has barely been off Channel 4, with a three-year run of The Sunday Night Project, co-hosted with Justin Collins, ending last year. His quiz show, Alan Carr’s Celebrity Ding Dong, first aired on the channel in 2008, while further series of Alan Carr: Chatty Man, was first screened last summer, and a further three series have been commissioned.

Here are some of this comics best lines:

• I got spotted in Greggs the bakers. The girl went: ‘We never get anyone off the telly in here.’ Which was a lie. Half of f*****g Fat Club were by the pasties.
• I got on the property ladder this year. It’s murder getting that deposit together. You start having dark thoughts, looking at your mum and dad thinking, ‘If only they had an accident…’.
• I drink too much. Have you ever done that where you wake up and there’s someone in your bed and they’re a munter. Pulling back that sheet, it’s like Silent Witness ain’t it.
• I had to have a brace because I had big teeth. If I’d gone to Africa I would have got poached.
• What am I supposed to do if I go bald? Get a wig? Fat, goofy, gay, wig. I might as well get a piano and start an Elton John tribute act!
• On house-hunting: They said it was split-level and open-plan, but then again so is an NCP car park.
• On silly children’s names - ’The other day I was served by a girl in Boots called Mmmm… Danone’.

You can catch Alan live at the Apollo, without leaving home, by clicking here:

You can lsListen to Alan with Melanie Sykes every Saturday between 6 and 8pm on Radio 2’s Going Out with Alan Carr, while Alan Carr: Chatty Man is back on our screens on Channel 4 this summer. Chart-topping DVDs including Tooth Fairy, Now That’s What I Call a Ding Dong and Channel 4’s comedy gala, for Great Ormond Street, are all out now.

Image from Wikipedia, available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Al Murray is best known for his stand-up character the Pub Landlord, a blunt, xenophobic licensee with distaste for anything not British (especially Germans, Scots and the French). First created in the mid-90s, the character is still hilarious. He is well known for catchphrases such as ‘A glass of white wine/fruit-based drink for the lady‘, and for his booming, gurning, lecherous persona who dislikes students and homosexuals.

He has released several popular DVDs including My Gaff, My Rules (pictured). To celebrate the big guy here are some of his funniest lines.

• If we had no rules where would we be? France! If we had too many rules where would we be? Germany!
• Is your dad proud of you, son? He’s never said so, has he?
• George Bush should be the man the Americans send to Mars.
• On the Swiss: They’re like a flat that will never sell because the Austrians, Germans, French and Italians are neighbours.
• On the Irish: They’re a sidecar to our motorbike, they’re going nowhere without us.
• We do not go in for philosophy in this country. We have our own system. It’s called wondering.
• The Taliban were bang out of order. If the dishes are done, there’s no need for a mask.
• Murray sometimes tells audience members what their names mean in Anglo-Saxon. One American woman named Bridget was told her name translated into ‘unwelcome cousin’.

See Murray do his stuff live at the Hammersmith Apollo:

Murray’s comedy has garnered several awards, including Edinburgh’s coveted Perrier prize, while his theatre show with the pub landlord, My Gaff, My Rules, was short-listed for a Laurence Olivier Award. A Glass of White Wine for the Lady, another stage tour, ran to critical acclaim, and his chat show Al Murray’s Happy Hour on ITV won a British Comedy Award and was nominated for a National Television Award.

Al Murray returns to the Edinburgh Festival this summer with what will no doubt be yet another sell-out show at the Pleasance Theatre, before touring the UK later in the year. DVDs including Time Gentlemen Please, Giving it Both Barrels and My Gaff My Rules are all available online now.

Image used is a the cover of his DVD ‘My Gaff My Rules’.

Actor, journalist, author, comedian and radio and TV presenter Russell Brand is well known for his flamboyant and outrageous style, and his career has been far from uncontroversial.

Having achieved mainstream recognition presenting the Big Brother spin-off Big Brother’s Big Mouth, Brand became known for his Radio 2 show, from which he infamously resigned following complaints about prank phone calls to actor Andrew Sachs. Along with stand-up, Brand is known for his film and TV appearances, and hosting award ceremonies. Here we celebrate some of his best lines.

Funny Quotes

• Some people…say America is not ready for a black President. But I know America to be a forward-thinking country, otherwise why would you have let that retard and cowboy fella be President?
• Bob Geldof…no wonder he’s such an expert on famine, he has been dining out on I Don’t Like Mondays for thirty years.
• Amy Winehouse – her surname’s beginning to sound like a description of her liver.
• I used to binge-eat and make myself throw up. I was a fat kid. Obviously I didn’t quite master the bulimia.
• On Peter Crouch: Even in name, he seems like a Victorian oddity. “Igor, fetch ‘the Crouch’ from the catacombs, we’re going to the graveyard”.
• On his looks: I would define my looks as Victorian child catcher – or an S & M Willy Wonka who likes to use a riding crop on his own leg.
• To a heckler: I, sir, am heterosexual, and one day I will show you the statistics and make you weep.
• Wondering what to say when meeting the Queen: ‘Are you aware I’m shagger of the year?’ But, stressing his respect for the monarch: When I lick a stamp I do it with my eyes closed.

Here is also a clip of him in action:

Brand has a string of feature films in development or post-production, including The Tempest and a remake of Arthur. A sequel to his bestselling autobiography, My Bookie Wook, is under contract. You can also order DVDs and CDs of his radio show, or Scandalous, the DVD of Brand live at the O2 Arena.

Image used is from Wikimedia Commons and thus is either; in public domain or freely licensed.