New Year’s Eve 2013 C5 broadcast a 3-hour run down of 50 Greatest Stand-Up Comedians, hosted by Meera Syal.

British linear TV stations used to run a lot of these shows – which I assume are pretty cheap to make. You get permission to show some stand up clips and intersperse it with some “talking heads” and you have, after ad breaks, 140 minutes of TV (for anyone that isn’t going out partying). Sorted.

The problem with researching this one is that, although sites such as Chortle detailed who had been commissioned to make the show, I can’t find any info as to what the methodology was. No mention as to whether it was a public poll or something whipped up by C5.

The entry on IMDB lists MOST of the results (here) and a couple of post broadcast reviews (which tended to be 1*) confirmed some of the positions. I’m assuming that info is near enough and have replicated it, below, for completeness.

There are a handful of Americans in the list and it’s a travesty that Robin Williams is down at 38! (I know, comedy is subjective).

It looks like it could have been pasted from somewhere like the YouGov polls (samples here). They tend to have some oddities in their lists (I’ve moaned about that before).

Would you define Tommy Cooper as a stand up? He was a comedy magician (and hugely popular) but, if asked, I would not have put him in the stand-up genre.

1 – Billy Connolly

2 – Eddie Izzard

3 – Tommy Cooper

4 – Victoria Wood

5 – Dave Allen

6 – Michael McIntyre

7 – Richard Pryor

8 – Frank Skinner

9 – Jo Brand

10 – Bob Monkhouse

13 – Lee Evans

14 – Frankie Boyle

15 – Sarah Millican

16 – Peter Kay

17 – Ross Noble

18 – Ricky Gervais

19 – Dame Edna Everage (Barry Humphries)

20 – Les Dawson

21 – Steve Coogan

22 – Lenny Henry

23 – Joan Rivers

24 – Jasper Carrott

25 – Tim Vine

26 – Jimmy Carr

27 – Jenny Eclair

29 – Alan Carr

30 – Paul O’Grady

31 – Roy “Chubby” Brown

32 – Ben Elton

33 – Bill Hicks

35 – Eddie Murphy

36 – Russell Brand

37 – Jack Whitehall

38 – Robin Williams

39 – David Baddiel

40 – Graham Norton

41 – Bernard Manning

42 – Alexie Sayle

43 – Harry Enfield

44 – Frankie Howerd

45 – Whoopi Goldberg

46 – Paul Hogan

47 – Julian Clary

48 – John Bishop

49 – Frank Carson

50 – Johnny Vegas