I like a bit of analysis but hadn’t intended looking at Subscriber / Follower numbers again until year end. But then Riyadh popped up and with it came a ton of stories, posts and comments about how this comic or that comedian would never recover, they were finished – etc. etc.
It got me wondering whether it had had an impact on sub numbers, since a number of followers had announced their “departure”. The textual equivalent of flouncing out and banging the door behind you.
Firstly, some links to previous posts for anyone that may want to refer back.
- August 1st, Social accounts – looking at UK / US comedian accounts on the 5 major platforms
- August 5th, most followers – using that first data set – adding up the totals from the 5 platforms
- August 19th – it was reported that Jimmy’s main channel had hit 1.5m subs (it’s now 1.61m)
- Sept 13th, UK most subbed – following on from the 1.5m post, a mini report of the top UK comedians
For anyone that may not have noticed – Jimmy now has 3 YouTube channels
For the purposes of this data set – I’ve added the 3 together.
These numbers were collected on October 20th 2025, from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube.
As mentioned before – it’s quite possible that some people have accounts following the same people on all 5 platforms. No way of knowing. See the various caveats on here. It’s not perfect, I know. Just a bit of fun. A comedy league table!
I’ve also dropped the number of names that I’m looking at down to 28. A couple were because their accounts weren’t moving much as they were not posting regularly. Most were because numbers were under 1m.
Some of the names with very low sub numbers are a surprise as, in the UK, we get used to seeing certain faces on panel shows and this gives the impression that they are doing really well.
And they probably are perfectly happy with their tours and TV work. But many are under utilising social media and part of that may be because YouTube, TikTok etc. are beasts that need a constant feed of new content. You have to be prolific and have new stuff to grab attention.
No one can come remotely close to the Top 3 Americans:
- Kevin Hart – 281,310,212
- Joe Rogan – 63,555,639
- Matt Rife – 44,752,332
The numbers for the top Brits:
- Ricky Gervais – 25,484,421
- Jimmy Carr – 17,279,346
- Jack Whitehall – 16,023,531
- Michael McIntyre – 10,019,756
- Russell Howard – 8,880,994
- Sarah Millican – 7,203,810
- Peter Kay – 4,477,297
I’d last looked at these numbers on September 15th but hadn’t tracked everyone that went to Saudi Arabia. The Americans in my list lost between -0.33% and -1.83% of their total followers (which equated to a range of -27,924 and -632,532).
For the Brits – one lost -0.27% (-43,851) and the other gained +2.32% (+400,676).
The one that gained 400k…was Jimmy.
Despite the press making him the poster boy for their outrage campaign (some people got away with their names not even being mentioned) his growth rate slowed a little – but is picking up again.
I suspect this is because he’s been back and forth to the US and the size of that demographic has added new fans and balanced things out. Impossible to know.
The next closest to him was Ricky, gaining +227,421.
In the August 5th “most followers” post Jimmy was 9th in my list. He still is 9th, but is +82k closer to position 8 (Zakir Khan, India).
If you want to watch a mesmerising counter…LiveCounts.io has a link to Jimmy’s account and you can see the number of subs and views ticking over.
To see someone else’s account click on “Change User” and type in their account name, without a space.
Hypnotic, eh?
Leave a Reply