UK's 10 best ever comedians named — number one is Scottish

TV critic Gary Bushell has named his top 10 stand-up comedians of all time — and at the top of the list is the 'funniest man alive'

Who ranks as the finest TV stand-up comedian? As Harry Hill memorably declared: "There's only one way to decide it - FIGHT!" However, since that approach remains unavailable, television critic Gary Bushell has revealed his picks for the 10 greatest comedians in history.

Bushell, who boasts four decades of experience as a journalist and critic across multiple national publications, describes his selection as a "considered top ten of stand-up comedians who also make or made TV shows". He clarifies that the roster is "confined to solo turns (so no Morecambe and Wise) and doesn't include comedy magicians like the immortal Tommy Cooper or the squeakier Joe Pasquale".

Penning his rankings for The Express, he encourages readers to "feel free to disagree at the end". Something that, given some of the personalities featured on this roster, seems rather probable. However, it's hard to disagree with his choice for number one.

10. Jasper Carrott

The Birmingham-born performer began his career in folk clubs, crafting observational material to distinguish himself from acts who simply rehashed others' material before flourishing in stand-up and securing regular television appearances. He's been absent from screens recently, explaining, "for a very good reason: I can't dance, I can't skate and I'm a crap cook".

Gary remarks: "The Beeb's belated tribute to Jasper, 80, was tucked away on BBC4. A shame. The evening over-flowed with comic joy as Carrott noted 'a cougar for me would be 98 with an insatiable lust for bingo... Where would you go after a date? Back to her place, the care home!'" Highlighting that Robin Williams was an admirer, Gary notes that Jasper "has always had a nice line in smart, relatable stand-up. His TV show Jasper Carrott: Back To The Front found him reflecting on teenage boys: 'Surly, rude, uncommunicative, spotty... and what do we do? We make them into shop assistants'."

Following his unexpected chart success in 1975 with Funky Moped b/w Magic Roundabout, he established himself as a television mainstay for years, fronting programmes such as Carrott's Lib and Canned Carrott, whilst also appearing in The Detectives (co-created by Steve 'Peaky Blinders' Knight), a dry parody of police procedural series.

Among Jasper's finest one-liners was: "Laughter is the best medicine - unless you're diabetic, then insulin comes pretty high on the list."

9. Lee Mack

Lancashire-born Lee Mack, whose real name is Lee Gordon McKillop, has become synonymous with his role as team captain on BBC1's Would I Lie To You?

His razor-sharp wit, elaborate fabrications, and brilliant intellect have transformed this clever revival of Call My Bluff into essential viewing and one of the rare comedy successes on contemporary television. A former Pontins Bluecoat, Lee, 57, scooped the So You Think You're Funny prize at the 1995 Edinburgh Fringe and secured a Perrier Award nomination five years later.

In 2006 he devised, co-wrote and starred in the smash-hit sitcom Not Going Out which continues to this day.

While it may not possess the emotional resonance of timeless gems like Porridge and Steptoe and Son, the programme delivers a relentless barrage of laughs with lightning-quick quips such as "I'm going to donate my body to science, keep my dad happy – he always wanted me to go to medical school."

The writing team dedicates 10 months being "locked away, getting the stories right" according to Lee, who has consistently aimed to mirror the American sitcom formula: "Friends, Seinfeld, Frasier – every ten seconds there's a gag."

8. Harry Hill

"The 'wide-collared loon', whose live blend of surreal absurdity and sharp one-liners translated into hours of TV hilarity," says Gary. "Harry Hill's TV Burp, his long-running show, was essentially Gogglebox with a side of laughter. Born Mathew Hall and raised in Kent, the former doctor transformed the programme into a comedy masterclass, blending clips with catchphrases, puppets, snippets of songs, stunts, double takes, physical comedy, off-the-wall gags, unexpected guests and sharp observations. Spotting Paul Burrell's biceps on I'm A Celebrity, Harry jested: 'Where'd he get those muscles? ...It's from carting [Princess Diana's] stuff up into the loft!'".

Hill's comedic catchphrases included gems like 'stalagmites, stalactites – you've got to have a system'. Celebrities and minor actors from the shows Harry was critiquing would make appearances in the studio, alongside the badger parade, The K Factor (Hill's knitting-themed response to The X Factor), and regular brawls.

"Who is the naughtiest vegetarian?" he queried before instigating a showdown between Heather Mills and Hitler.

"Harry and his team of writers would endure hours of television for the sake of a single joke, so it's no surprise that he eventually called it quits after eleven series (121 episodes)," remarks Gary.

"His subsequent ITV programme, Alien Fun Capsule, carried on the TV Burp humour in a panel show format, leaving celebrity panellists both puzzled and amused. Lorraine Kelly was asked to blow into a bagpipe breathalyser after being shown a clip of her younger self seemingly tipsy."

Harry's stand-up routine was just as eccentric: "My Dad used to say 'always fight fire with fire', which is probably why he got thrown out of the fire brigade."

7. Peter Kay

"Everything this cuddly comedy nice guy has ever done on TV has been quality," writes Gary. "From Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights to the dialogue he wrote for his 2004 Coronation Street character Eric Gartside, a Newton and Ridley drayman who dated Shelley Unwin."

Hailing from a working-class Irish family, Kay was born and raised in Bolton, with his down-to-earth, relatable comedy remaining faithful to his origins.

His 2010–2011 stand-up tour shifted over 1.2million tickets. His earlier comedy performances have been reshown on television countless times, leaving most audiences able to recite every gag: "I saw a fat person wearing a sweatshirt with 'Guess' on it. I said: 'Thyroid problem?'".

Gary explains: "Much of his humour is recognisable and drawn from real life including this true story about an elderly neighbour: 'There was a power cut one night, so my mum went round to see if she was all right. She said 'I thought there'd been a power cut – then a bus went past with its lights on'."

His 2004 television advertisements for John Smith's bitter capitalised on his relatable charm with memorable phrases "'Ave it!" and "Two lamb bhunas."

Kay managed to secure three chart-topping singles, including Is This The Way To Amarillo alongside Tony Christie. His performance portfolio spans from Doctor Who – where his menacing character Victor Kennedy was revealed as a malevolent extraterrestrial known as the Abzorbaloff – to portraying Danny Baker's Cockney stevedore father Fred in the fondly remembered Cradle To Grave.

Peter's final series was the more subdued comedy Peter Kay's Car Share (2015 – 2018).

Gary observes: "Peter's humour brought traditional northern comedy up to date without losing its mass appeal. He might be standing on the shoulders of giants, but in the process he turned himself into a 21st century Goliath."

6. Jim Davidson

"He has been cancelled, arrested (and acquitted), insulted and branded a 'racist, sexist, right-wing dinosaur'," writes Gary.

"Jim Davidson's career has seen more twists and turns than a fairground Waltzer but in the process his TV career produced a success of gems."

Gary observes how growing up on a southeast London council estate in Kidbrooke, Jim was influenced by Dave Allen and motivated by edgy working-class stand-up performers like Jimmy "Kinnel" Jones and Peter Demmer. The youngest child of a Glaswegian father and an Irish mother from Cork, Jim's talent for impersonation flourished at St Austin's boys' school in southeast London whilst mimicking teachers.

At the tender age of 22, he clinched victory in his heat on ITV talent show New Faces in 1976, spinning it into this jest: "I rang home and said, 'Mum, I've won New Faces, you'll never have to work again'. And she didn't, the lazy cow'."

Gary shares: "Jim came second in the final and his subsequent TV career spanned sketch shows, sitcoms, stand-up (Stand Up Jim Davidson), and a stint as the mischievous Phantom Flan-Flinger on the fantastic Saturday morning kids' show Tiswas. BBC1 poached him to host snooker game-show Big Break for ten successful series.

"He then took the reins of The Generation Game for six years, transforming it into an anarchic blend of the original show and Tiswas, stuffing funny putty into every conceivable nook. The range of Jim's comedic skills, including gag-telling, physical comedy, impressions, anecdotes, and songs, is often ignored by his critics. In his diverse career, he has also been an actor, playwright, panto star and businessman. He launched his own comedy streaming channel Ustreme during lockdown."

5. Les Dawson

Gary comments: "Snobbish critics wrongly dismissed him as a peddler of cheap 'misogynist' mother-in-law jokes, but Les, the Manchester-born son of a brick-layer, was a unique and intricate comedian.

"He found the most joy performing whimsical self-penned comic monologues. As one writer noted, he was 'a big fat, heavy slob of a man but with a very sensitive mind'.

"Dawson's routines flowed from a northern life that was already fading into memories – a world of clogs and shawls, pubs and social clubs."

Following Les's triumph on Opportunity Knocks in 1967, the BBC handed him his enduring programme Sez Les.

He became a fixture on the comedy panel show Jokers Wild. His quick-fire gags included: "Ours is a football marriage, we keep waiting for the other one to kick off", "I used to sell furniture for a living...the trouble was, it was my own" and "He drank so heavily, the only thing that grew on his grave were hops".

He also possessed a knack for more elaborate, sophisticated material such as: "In awe, I watched the waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered chariot towards the ebony void of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang, for ever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this, I thought... I must put a roof on this toilet."

Gary continues: "Millions warmed to his grim-faced, gravel-voiced, glumly misanthropic persona. At his best Les channelled his hero, WC Fields (just as Jack Dee later channelled Dawson). Yes, he did mother-in-law jokes, but they evolved out of the real problems caused by young hard-up postwar couple being forced to live with in-laws. Dawson took over as presenter of BBC quiz show Blankety Blank from 1984 to 1990, turning it a vehicle for his po-faced put-downs.

"He is remembered now for his gurning face, his garden fence Cissie and Ada double act with Roy Barraclough. But beyond the broad comedy, Dawson appeared in Alan Plater's The Loner, and played the centenarian Nona in an Argentinian play of that name on BBC2. He also wrote 12 books included a funny Raymond Chandler spoof called Well Fared, My Lovely. The glum clown could play Hamlet when he needed to."

4. Paul O'Grady

Gary begins his praise of O'Grady by remembering this story: "Paul O'Grady was onstage as Lily at London's Vauxhall Tavern in 1987 when the pub was raided by the drug squad. Noticing the officers were all wearing rubber gloves, in the age of Aids paranoia, Lily quipped, 'Looks like we've got some help with the washing up'."

He adds: "Nothing phased him. O'Grady based his 'blonde bombsite' creation on the tough, colourful women of his own Birkenhead family and their neighbours. Savage was Paul's mother's maiden name and acid tongues abounded. He recalled 'The aunties would turn up at a wedding dressed to death, and there'd often be a fight. One cousin's marriage ended up in the Birkenhead News with the headline Fracas at Wedding'.

"O'Grady's father was a plant operator at an oil refinery, his mum worked in a factory and he'd had a strict Catholic upbringing. Unlike previous TV drag acts like Danny La Rue and Dame Edna, 'Lily Veronica Mae Savage' was a working-class peroxide 'slapper' who wore laddered tights and PVC mini-skirts and let her dark roots show. His comedy hit hard but as he said 'Noel Coward said work is more fun than fun, but then he didn't work in the Bird's Eye factory packing frozen fish fingers nine hours a day, did he?'".

Lily's debut proper TV appearance came on Channel 4's late-night Viva Cabaret!

Minor TV roles followed, including a brief stint in Brookside, before the persona was recruited by The Big Breakfast for celebrity interviews. Lily secured her own ITV An Evening With and by 1998 had inherited BBC1's Blankety Blank.

Among her publishable quips: "I went to the doctor the other day and he said I was a paranoid schizophrenic... Well, he didn't actually say it, but we know what he was thinking."

Gary continues: "Lily never lost her razor-sharp tongue or her subversive edge, but Paul tired of her and by 2001 he was presenting travelogues for ITV out of costume before starring in BBC sitcom Eyes Down (2003-04) and then presenting ITV's daytime chat show The Paul O'Grady Show which was rebranded as The New Paul O'Grady Show on C4."

3. Bob Monkhouse

"He was such a triumphant TV game show presenter for decades that people overlooked the fact Monkhouse was a brilliant stand-up comedian," explains Gary. Reminders of his talent were evident in his ITV show 'An Audience With' and his risqué best-selling DVD 'Bob Monkhouse Exposes Himself'.

The Kent-born comic was known for his photographic memory, quick wit, and exceptional gag writing skills, as evidenced by this self-deprecating one-liner: 'They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian...they're not laughing now. '.

Other memorable quips from Bob included 'I'd never be unfaithful to my wife – I love my house too much'. And 'I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my father.

Not screaming and crying like his passengers'. His writing was inventive, he was an excellent storyteller, and he didn't shy away from discussing his own life in his candid 1994 autobiography, 'Crying With Laughter.

'.

Robert Alan Monkhouse was the grandson of a custard powder magnate. As a lonely, overweight child, Bob felt unloved by his parents and found solace in writing jokes, which he sold to children's comics and later to comedians like the legendary Max Miller.

In 1948 he blagged his way into a BBC radio audition.

Soon after, he and Terry Scott became the BBC's inaugural contracted comedy duo.

Bob and his writing collaborator Denis Goodwin churned out as many as seven radio scripts weekly, whilst also crafting material for Bob Hope and Dean Martin.

On monochrome television Bob fronted Candid Camera, Mad Movies and numerous other programmes; he also featured in the debut Carry On picture.

In 1967 ITV lured him away to present Sunday Night at the London Palladium.

His triumph paved the way for his inaugural game show hosting role, The Golden Shot, succeeded by Family Fortunes, Celebrity Squares, Bob's Full House, Bob's Your Uncle and a revived Opportunity Knocks.

Nevertheless, he never abandoned live performances: "I still enjoy sex at 74," he quipped. "I live at 75, it's no distance."

Prior to Bob's passing in December 2003, he entertained an audience featuring younger comics including Mark Steel and Fiona Allen.

The performance titled Bob Monkhouse: The Last Stand demonstrated he remained current and, most importantly, still hilarious.

2. Bernard Manning

Gary says: "Mr Controversy. The combative bad boy who rose from the northern working men's club circuit to the simultaneous status of folk demon and national treasure. And the man of whom Stephen Fry said 'Few comedians I've ever seen have been able to make the art look so simple'.

"Liberal myths about Manning begin with the idea that he was outrageously right-wing and built a career on ethnic jokes. Neither claim is true. Bernard Manning once spoke to me with affection about Labour PM Harold Wilson; he also loved Nye Bevan for his oratory, but Churchill was his great political hero.

"And as for jokes, just watch his TV debut on ITV's The Comedians. The best included two attendants on a boating lake: One shouts, 'Come in number 91, your time is up'. The other said 'We've only got 90 boats'. 'Oh,' he said. 'Are you having trouble number 16?'".

"His gags on The Wheeltappers and Shunters' Social Club are also as clean as freshly fallen snow. Yes, Bernard's act got bluer and dodgier as time progressed but busting through the boundaries of good taste meant money in the bank for the greengrocer's son: 'Grown men that work on building sites don't want to hear 'ecky thump' and 'ooh dammit', he said.

"18-stone Manning had the timing of a Swiss watch and his 'world famous' Embassy Club in Harpurhey, north Manchester, was always packed. Older people were asked 'Is it cold in the ground this morning?' and suspected feminists were told they needed 'a good shag'. Yet his fans ranged from Madonna to historian AJP Taylor. Off-camera he got on with people of all colours and creeds. Bernard grew up poor, saying: 'We used to sleep five to a bed, and three of them used to wet the bed. I learnt to swim before I could walk'.

"His debut on BBC1's live Wogan chat show saw viewers flood the switchboard with complaints about his foul language and risqué gags. He subsequently feuded with Esther Rantzen and Joan Rivers on television, emerging victorious from both encounters. Only Mrs Merton managed to outwit him. In 1992, Jonathan Ross brought him onto his C4 programme for a parody segment – Bernard Manning Sings The Smiths. Television despised him yet couldn't resist putting him on screen. Even World In Action failed to destroy him with their covert footage of a 1995 police charity dinner. In 2005 he received an invitation to Celebrity Big Brother but declined, stating he was never discourteous to people he encountered."

1. Billy Connolly

"No explanation required," says Gary. "But if you need one, this former welder from the Glasgow shipyards is the funniest man alive. A masterful storyteller, the Big Yin started in the folk clubs in the Humblebums with Gerry Rafferty.

"'I used to be a folk singer but I was dreadful', he once said. 'I had a voice like a goose farting in the fog'. Yet young Billy – now Sir William Connolly – also had a razor-sharp mind. Comedy flowed out of him like sweat from Lee Evans. His humour was observational, his stories, based in reality, were engaging, and his language was unfiltered. Connolly made comedy seem effortless.

"Often he was the target: 'I always look skint. When I buy a Big Issue, people take it out of my hand and give me a pound'," he said. Along with: 'Whenever I wear something expensive it looks stolen'.

"He even made his Parkinson's diagnosis funny: 'I've got Parkinson's disease – I wish he'd f***ing kept it'. He appeared on Michael Parkinson's TV chat-show fifteen times, starting in 1975 the same year Billy topped the charts with his spoof version of Tammy Wynette's D.I.V.O.R.C.E. America loved him too. He advised Scottish-Americans how to identify tartans: 'It's easy – you simply look under the kilt, and if it's a quarter-pounder, you know it's a McDonald's'.

"Connolly's long and varied career has encompassed everything from a rib-tickling An Audience With to serious film roles via TV travelogues. But stand-up comedy was his forte. Billy has given it up now, and retired to the Florida Keys, but 2022's Billy Connolly Does series reminded us he's still hilarious. The show mixed old clips with new anecdotes, all sautéed in mischief and joy.

"Clips of Billy's drunk walking routine were still hilarious. Now teetotal, Connolly admitted alcohol doesn't make you clever: 'I found that out when I was in a phone box in London and I couldn't get out'.

"We got confessions – punching hecklers, punching paparazzi – vintage footage, and homespun wisdom. Billy was always fearless, original and near-the-knuckle. All reasons why he'd be cancelled in this strange age where humourless berks censor our greatest comedies and slap warnings on Dad's Army. Laughter can't be regulated. As Billy says, 'life can be funny, if you give it half a chance'."