There's an Irish comedian called Dylan Moran who I've only seen ten minute clips of on a comedy variety show but he's hilarious. However as soon as he got mildly famous he went into sitcoms and I havent seen anything new from him since.

That seems to be the way though.

Some have been stated already, but here's my list:

Eddie Izzard
Richard Pryor
Bill Cosby
Chris Rock
Lewis Black
David Cross


Of course, the greatest ever are now dead, with the exception of Pryor:

Bill Hicks
Lenny Bruce

Okay he's not the "greatest", but he's one of my favorites:

Franklin Ajaye

Others on my list:

Carlin
Cosby
Pryor (eats Dave Chapelle, but right now Chapelle is topical, and pretty funny)
Williams (peaked 10+ years ago)
Miller (Dennis? WTF happened?)
Stephen Wright

izzard is number one.

hicks
milligan
pryor
connolly
chick murray
all come second

Eddie Izzard, Yes always good.

Ricky Gervais as a stand up, not to sure............Animals and Politics are basically rehashed stuff from the much much funnier radio show he used to do, which was all kind of just improvised chat with his co-writer Steve merchant and the shows producer Carl Pilkington search www.xfm.co.uk for it.

Funny though because Ricky Gervais was the real stand out talent on the Eleven o'clock show in the UK, was this probably the same with Doug Stanhope and The Man Show in the US?

Doug Stanhope for sure, some of his stuff has had me in tears.

I'm from the UK so I have no reservation about the man show, as I've never seen it, but I can imagine it doesn't have much relation to his own stand up?

www.dougstanhope.com

Can't wait to see him in the UK

Andy Kaufman

He's extremely dead, but yes a great comedian. But as for dead, Bill Hicks was the greatest.

I'm pretty out of it now, but I do like Jon Stewart. Does he count? If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have a CLUE what's going on in the world. And I get to hear it all skewed too -- bonus!

Norm McDonald

Can't believe this thread got three pages thick and nary a mention of Mr. Patton Oswalt. He's king of the nerds, and well worth anyone's time.
He's got an album on Mercury called "feeling Kinda Patton" and Chunklet put out a double cd called "222" which is the unabridged version of "Feeling kinda patton."

Seriously, motherfucker's a pants pisser.

the angrydragon is the greatest living comedian!!!!

STEVE MARTIN

"let's get small" album


very funny

"I'd like to thank everyone for coming out tonight. Thank you, thank you and thank you and you and you and you.