The first declaration – Jimmy Carr is officially the first UK 1 billion view comedian (on YouTube).
1 BILLION VIEWS
He has 4 YouTube channels and, between them, they have been viewed (as of today):
1,001,771,704
From a YouTube only perspective the Brit in 2nd place is Russell Howard with 558,373,800, meaning Russell is 443 million behind Jimmy.
And 3rd placed Jack Whitehall has only 233,129,846 views (768 million behind Jimmy). Ricky Gervais is way down the bottom (of my list) with only 84 million views in total.
Unbelievably in a 12-day period Jimmy’s accounts have had another 72 million views.
But YouTube is not the full story and, actually, Jimmy passed the billion+ milestone a long, long, LONG time ago, if you look at his output across various platforms.
Is Jimmy the most watched Brit ever??
And, just to be clear, I mean amongst Comedians / TV presenters (not Queen Elizabeth I etc.). I would imagine someone, right now, is removing their shoes and socks to try and work out how many views Clarkson has had!!
Brace yourself…
Methodology
Just some quick notes, before you browse the numbers:
- None of the numbers below include any of the unofficial versions posted on YouTube, social accounts, Reddit, Daily Motion etc. Those views will add 10s of millions more to the numbers
- These are just the “major” shows. There are several 100 more that I’ve not bothered with – breakfast shows, chat shows, panel shows without videos posted on YouTube, shows that were 20 years ago – too many to count
- These numbers will all be on the low side as I was not opening up video links. So, if the thumbnail shows 1m or 125,000 – that’s the rounded number that I added to my spreadsheet
- With a show like YFOM there were some clips that were just featuring contestants – those were ignored
- With some playlists the same video was there twice – those were skipped too. I also did my best to not include duplicates across playlists
- With QI I just took the views from the 50 videos that showed Jimmy in their thumbnail
- Celebrity Juice doesn’t feature, even though Jimmy was on 20 episodes, as the few clips online are not on official accounts
- If you look at a playlist – don’t use the “views” number as that is from the playlist level. The totals for the videos within have to be added
- I’ll type million out in full, to make it stand out from any totals that are just k (thousands)
- I have tons of finer detail – this is just the headline numbers
TikTok Account
Which British Comedians have the most TikTok views? Jimmy’s total needs carrying forward to the big number…down below.
- Jimmy Carr – 540,428,096
- Jack Whitehall – 286,693,853
- Russell Howard – 254,629,852
Netflix Specials
What about adding in the Netflix views? Adding together the numbers from 2023 to June 2025 Jimmy is the Brit in 2nd place – but this is another massive number to add to his YouTube billion.
Hours viewed:
- Ricky Gervais – 32.1m
- Jimmy Carr – 11.4m
- Jack Whitehall – 6.6m
Jimmy’s Other Socials
The Heckle Amnesty videos (and others) get posted to Jimmy’s other social accounts on Instagram, Facebook, X and Threads.
These figures are harder to get an exact number on but (looking back at a couple of years’ worth of data) I’m confident in saying that they have combined views of well over 1 billion (over and above the numbers mentioned above).
Amazon
Last One Laughing UK hasn’t had an update in some time but, back in April, it was reported as having 7.98 million views
The Big Pitch with Jimmy Carr
These podcast episodes are on the Netflix YouTube and Spotify accounts. They’ve surpassed 372k on YouTube, so far.
Channel 4
The biggest C4 show by far – 8 Out of Cats Does Countdown has over 850 million views
C4 and E4 and Comedy Central all have clips for 8 Out of 10 Cats, which come to over 340 million views
Big Fat Quiz has both its own channel and also clips on C4 and these come to 180.5 million views
Adding up I Literally Just Told You, The Last Leg and Celebrity Rebrand adds another 832k
Celebrity Child Genius has 2 clips totalling over 1 million
Comedy Central
Your Face or Mine has a ginormous 175.8 million views.
Jimmy Carr’s Am I The A**hole is fairly new but contributes 43k views.
Jason Manford’s Complaints Department has 4 clips that Jimmy features in – another 20k views.
Rhod Gilbert’s Growing Pains – Jimmy’s episode has 2 clips with 13k views.
Roast Battle UK has 8.87 million views.
Lip Sync Battle has 2 clips totalling 149k views.
With Drunk History UK Jimmy was technically not the “main attraction” as he was only the narrator and the playlist (of 84) included some Black History episodes that he didn’t narrate. The remaining 66 (of the 84) videos have had 23 million views.
BBC / ITV
Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (BBC) and The Jonathan Ross Show (ITV) featured in some clips on Jimmy’s channel. There are then 10 additional clips, on Jonathan’s channels, that come to 4.2 million views.
I Can See Your Voice added another 1.13 million.
QI – scrolling down the videos there are 50 thumbnails featuring Jimmy and they total over 20.8 million
Who Wants to be a Millionaire is over 2.7 million.
Would I Lie To You appearances are just under 3.6 million.
Top Gear is 2.9 million and Sunday Brunch 435k.
SKY TV
A League of Their Own clips total over 3 million and The Celebrity Chase 2.3 million.
US TV
Late Late Show With James Corden has clips worth over 2.2 million.
Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon has multiple appearances that have racked up views of over 5 million.
Podcasts
Jimmy has already recorded 100+ podcast episodes and, just adding up the biggest ones (Rogan, DOAC, Modern Wisdom, Kill Tony, Conan O’Brien, Jordan Peterson) is a massive 29 million.
These shows in particular are likely to have generated millions more views as wellbeing accounts (mental health, wise quotes etc.) post clips from them all the time, across ALL social channels.
The Final Countdown…
These figures came from a couple of hours of me listening to podcasts and noodling around, clicking through playlists. I think the number is FAR higher than my guesstimate because I’ve not yet completed researching all of Jimmy’s TV / Radio / Internet / Streaming output.
My current list of TV appearances is 1,244 episodes, of various shows, and another 83 best of / highlights unseen.
None of those 100s and 100s of viewing hours of broadcast terrestrial TV are included within these numbers – and they will be substantial. Look at your TV listing any night of the week and you will see repeated show on C4, E4, Comedy Central etc. etc.
Adding up all the figures mentioned above…
Drum roll, please….
4,225,104,382 views
I declare a winner.
I think he’s the most watched Brit EVER. I can’t think of anyone else that comes close and, if you disagree, you can’t just throw a name at me…you have to go and do the research and provide some evidence.
That’s the deal!!
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