Reporting

Reporting Methodology

February 2026, I posted a lot of data updates for social media accounts (February 23rd 2026 reports) and have had to repeat a lot of the explanatory text, on each post (which I’ll be deleting shortly). This was to compensate for people coming into the blog through search engines that may only see one of the posts.

A more efficient approach would be to have one page to link to – which will be this one.

Tacked on the end are some notes about Google Trends, which I peruse from time to time.

Statistics

As there are now many posts, within this blog, that cover statistics (of various types) – the most recent posts are listed / linked on the Stats page – here.

How it started…

Going back a couple of years, I investigated internet usage of a little over 100+ comedians from the UK, US and (later on) I added one from India.

I was intrigued after noticing that some people that I regularly saw on UK TV only had tiny followings on social media (compared to my perception of their success).

These appeared to be successful comics that had started out 25+ years ago and yet some only had accounts on 1-2 platforms and didn’t post that much content.

I started to look into what sort of platforms they all utilised and found that they were spread across: BlueSky Social, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Only Fans, Patreon, PunchUp.Live, Snapchat, Spotify, Apple podcasts etc., Threads, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitter / X, Website (their own), Website (their management company), Vimeo, YouTube

I’m sure there may be even more now.

I got a little obsessed at analysing the different ways that they were communicating their tour info, who was putting out personal photos on Instagram, who had merchandise ranges.

Going back a decade or so comedians (in the UK) were still having to pay for posters (in the street), adverts in newspapers and tour flyers. Collectibles that have now vanished as tour teams now just put a promo clip on TikTok etc.

That may seem like a good thing but that information now (mostly) gets deleted once the event has happened. With older tours there were adverts in the press, that can be looked up in archiving websites.

What got me interested was looking at who started out with Jimmy (way back in 1998) and thinking about how much his promotional strategy may have contributed to his career.

I then focussed in on the bigger platforms, the ones being used by over 60% of the group mentioned above:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • Twitter / X
  • YouTube

Which was when I started to look at subs / follower numbers and also began to whittle the numbers down to a more manageable list. Looking at 100 people across all of those platforms was time consuming.

As of the August 31st 2026 reports the list is now down to 27. Although it may have to back go up to 28 as I had noticed one of Trevor Noah’s accounts and realised that his cumulative numbers total 42.5m. He’s benchmarked for next time.

Missing Names?

If you have a favourite comedian and his / her name is not to be seen – they would have dropped off, at some point over the past couple of years, because their accounts don’t see a lot of activity. Or because they have pulled away from mainstream social platforms and gone to places like their own website, Only Fans or PunchUp.Live.

I was looking for the big guns: to see who gave away the most product, how they operated and so on. Not just MY perception of who was successful.

To pick out a couple of random Brits as examples…

  • I love Lee Mack as much as the next person but his website (here) hasn’t been updated in a LONG time and he has ZERO social accounts. He fell off my list very early doors.
  • Jack Dee has become more active recently (website here) due to his podcast launch. But his Instagram (here) only has 198k followers (Aug 2026) and his YouTube channel (here) currently has 59 videos and 2.8m views. Again, I love Jack’s comedy but those numbers had put him in bottom 20% of my list and so eventually he dropped out.

The original list of names included:

Acaster, James / Allen, Tom / Ansari, Aziz / Attell, Dave / Ayoade, Richard / Bailey, Bill / Bea, Aisling / Beckett, Rob / Birbiglia, Mike / Bishop, John / Boyle, Frankie / Brand, Jo / Brennan, Neal / Bridges, Kevin / Brydon, Rob / Burr, Bill / Byrne, Ed / Carr, Alan / Carr, Jimmy / Chappelle, Dave / Chowdhry, Paul / Conaty, Roisin / Cummings, Whitney / Davies, Alan / Davies, Greg / Dean, Larry / Dee, Jack / Delaney, Gary / D’Elia, Chris / Distefano, Chris / Djalili, Omid / Dommett, Joel / Fielding, Noel / Flanagan, Micky / Gaffigan, Jim / Gervais, Ricky / Gilbert, Rhod / Gillis, Shane / Glaser, Nikki / Godliman, Kerry / Goldsmith, Stuart / Hall, Rich / Hanley, Phil / Hart, Kevin / Helm, Nick / Hill, Harry / Hills, Adam / Holmes, Pete / Howard, Russell / Hunter, Reginald D / Iglesias, Gabriel / Jefferies, Jim / Jeselnik, Anthony / Jupp, Miles / Kane, Russell / Kay, Peter / Kearse, Leo / Khan, Guz / Kreischer, Bert / Kumar, Nish / Lee, Stewart / Louis C.K. / Love, Judi / Lycett, Joe / Mack, Lee / Manford, Jason / Maniscalco, Sebastian / Maron, Marc / McCausland, Chris / McIntyre, Michael / Millican, Sarah / Morril, Sam / Mulaney, John / Noble, Ross / Norcott, Geoff / Normand, Mark / O’Briain, Dara / O’Doherty, David / Papa, Tom / Parsons, Andy / Pascoe, Sara / Ramsey, Chris / Ranganathan, Romesh / Richardson, Jon / Rife, Matt / Rock, Chris / Rogan, Joe / Rowe, Adam / Ryan, Katherine / Santino, Andrew / Schulz, Andrew / Schumer, Amy / Segura, Tom / Shlesinger, Iliza / Silverman, Sarah / Tiernan, Tommy / Von, Theo / Walsh, Holly / Walsh, Seann / Wang, Phil / Wehn, Henning / Whitehall, Jack / Widdecombe, Josh / Wilkinson, Joe / Wolf, Michelle

US v UK v India

The numbers achieved by American comedians (and Mr Khan, from India) are HUMONGOUS, compared to the Brits. Starting out they have a MUCH bigger audience base – something that is changing as Brits spend more time Stateside and YouTube / Netflix publicise their work Internationally.

Because there is such a vast difference my reporting always shows (1) a filter of the whole group and then (2) the top 3 Brits (highlighted gold) and top 3 from USA / India (highlighted blue).

The definition of Brit / US refers to where their main performance location is, as that reflects the comedy culture they are performing within and gives you an idea of what TV shows they may be on, venue size etc.

So Rich Hall and Reginald D Hunter were identified as Brit – which means their potential audience reach is smaller than it may have been if they had remained in the US. But then they dropped off the list…

Demographics

Something else that can affect the data is the demographic of the audience.

For example – Matt Rife (I believe) initially blew up through TikTok clips being watched by a younger generation. Today that platform is being utilised by a lot of comics from the generation before him, but they are playing catch up.

As you can see on the 2026 August 31st stats – in relation to Brits – Michael McIntyre has some catching up to do and Peter Kay’s numbers are a bit limp!

Kevin Hart, as ever, was ahead of everyone else’s game, in terms of how to market yourself as a comedian.

YouTube numbers / Podcasts etc.

This data was intended to be about stand-up comedy but podcasts are def muddying the water. Joe Rogan, for example, tends to use his Joe Rogan Experience accounts and his podcast is drawing most of the audience.

  • Some channels are a combination of Stand up, TV appearances, Podcast episodes and personal clips. So don’t assume that this is all straight up “stand up” material.
  • The number of years since the channel was set up will make a difference.
  • If views or video totals go down this is often because there’s been a clear out of older content. Or a counter has stuck – see below.
  • Jimmy’s Heckle Amnesty crowd work videos have had a massive impact (view Playlist here).

Ticket Sales

One stat that we cannot get at is ticket sales and, even if we could, that’s a tricky one because:

  • A comedian that hasn’t toured for many years (Peter Kay) may sell out a tour more quickly than one that tours 2-300 nights a year, EVERY year (Jimmy Carr). It looks good, in the press, when there is a story about how quickly tickets have shifted, but it’s not entirely indicative of consistent demand.
  • The price of tickets can affect whether a venue sells out (or not) and it’s hard to measure that as it varies from country to country and also between smaller venues and arenas. Plus, some countries (USA) add on local taxes – and then you have varying VAT rates. Don’t imagine that the full ticket price is going to the artist – there are a LOT of expenses to pay out first.
  • Just because someone is advertised as appearing at a venue – doesn’t mean it was 100% sold out. This past year there have been a few examples (mostly non comedians) of people that have set up “a night with” experience (or similar) and then had to cancel, due to poor ticket sales.
  • Internationally some comics announce that they are going to “country X” but then only do major cities. From a fan’s perspective, there is appreciation for comedians that are willing to travel to do smaller towns – but that can look less impressive, to the MSM, as it means performing in smaller, more remote venues.

All of which means the only other figures we can dig into would be around social media accounts and video upload / viewing statistics, across the various platforms.

The only people that have data on ticket sales are the comics themselves and the ticket vendors / venues.

Net Worth

I’ve never looked into this, as a metric, because it’s not worth considering. Websites that CLAIM to know how much a comedian is worth…are fibbing (being polite here).

Read more on What is Jimmy Carr’s net worth? (here).

Free Counters

There are a number of free counters around that let you see activity on social accounts. Example here is Jimmy’s main channel on Livecounts.io

They use APIs to (allegedly) give live updates – but I’ve found all kinds of issues.

Sometimes a counter can stick for days or even weeks and many of these sites don’t have contact info, to tell them something isn’t working.

And sometimes a counter seems to have dropped by a large amount and, viewing another one for the same account, the number is completely different.

Because of various “online safety bills” other platforms

Rounding (& other anomalies)

  • Sometimes I cannot access a counter and have to just look at the account’s displayed number, which may be rounded to the closest 100k
  • Some people may follow the same comedian on multiple platforms – can’t do anything about that
  • Some followers may be inactive accounts – but this is going to be the same for everyone (see next section)

Age Verification / Bot Purging

Around October 2025 X / Twitter removed 1.7m accounts (bots or inactive) – see here.

Because of various “online safety bills” other platforms are now doing the same and so many accounts, across all socials, are losing Subs / Followers.

Google Trends

Google search has a Trends website that anyone can access (here).

If you enter Jimmy’s name, for example, you can set a timeframe / geographic location and then see what words or phrases are being used, from around the world, to find information on him.

For anyone that’s not tried it before – it’s a bit quirky. When you generate a query, you don’t get to see how many searches have been made. You just get a number between 0 and 100.

Google explain it (here) as:

Numbers on the graph don’t represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalised and presented on a scale from 0-100, where each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. The numbers next to the search terms at the top of the graph are sums, or totals.

A line trending downward means that a search term’s relative popularity is decreasing—not necessarily that the total number of searches for that term is decreasing, but that its popularity compared to other searches is shrinking.

What they mean by that second paragraph is that if 100k people triggered a Jimmy Carr search today (and look at the most searched for word or phrase – e.g. Tour) then it could show 100. But if another 100k repeated the same searches tomorrow (and other words / phrases were searched for more) then it would show a lower number.

For a September 2026 example of utilisation – see Is Jimmy Carr gay?

Measuring Success?

There are lots of debates to be had around which comedian you find funny, who you think is the GOAT and so on.

Obviously, comedy (and a sense of humour) is completely subjective and, as that sort of argument cannot provide us with a metric, we can only look for some data, to measure relative career success. Seeing someone regularly on UK panel shows isn’t a great indicator of how things are going on the touring side.

Figures are posted in this blog, from time to time (see Stats), and then you can argue it amongst yourselves!!

Updated: 2026 September 6th