YouGov have updated their polling for most famous / popular comedians for Q2. Q1 blog post is here.

I’ve moaned about this poll before along the lines of:

• Many of these older names are COMEDIC ACTORS. The poll should perhaps be named “people on the telly-box that people that like filling out polls find amusing”
• There are some big names missing – who decides the list?
• Why has Ian Hislop got on the list (not a comedian) – I would imagine Paul Merton would have something to say.
• How many people responded in each group?

Blah blah blah

Fame

This ranking is just a “have you heard of…?” type question. Positions 1-5 are Gold and 6-10 Silver.

Viewing the percentages data – Gold is 95+% and Silver 90-94%.

This tells us…”bloke that has been on UK telly (a lot) for the best part of 3 decades…is recognised by lots of people”.

Popularity

This ranking is probably the one that comedians could roast each other about – how popular are they with each age range? It would just be nice if there were MORE actual comedians on the list.

As someone who likes a bit of data analysis this is where it’s frustrating in that, to understand it better, I need more detail. From quarter to quarter there is no clue as to how many people responded, are they comedy fans, do the same people respond each time?

The ranking / position gives a table that looks clearer (in that you can see that Jimmy has made progress this quarter).

But it’s still messy as Gen X responder totals, for example, have changed by 9 places (below) and yet the difference (above) is only 1%.

I just hope no one relies on this info to decide on something like who to put on TV…or they may be trying to find an agent for Wilfred Bramble.