Aside from England and Japan, are there comedy clubs in other countries? Do they value hilarity the same way we do? Do they have stand-up guys on TV? Just wondering.
I was wondering about this lately… we don’t have a tradition of stand up comics. Though we do have political comedy comentators… but not the same thing.
From what little I have read (very little, to be sure) France doesn’t really have stand-up per se, but they do have comedy clubs where comedians do sort of sketch comedy. Germany, Canada and Holland have standup comedy clubs (I’ve seen shows from such places, never been there myself). My sister-in-law just got back from Japan and said she’d gone to a sort of dinner theatre thingie that had some elements of standup and sketch comedy - performers coming out and doing short bits alone or with others, and lots of people laughing, although she freely admitted that despite her familiarity with the language, none of the jokes made any sense to her.
Ireland has the Cat Laughs festival; Canada the Just for Laughs one; there’s thriving stand-up comedy in Scotland and Wales (not just England!), as well as Australia and New Zealand, and I saw Billy Connolly and Barry Humphries perform in Hong Kong, but they were performing for an expatriate audience.
I am not sure about non-English speaking countries, however.
[yakov smirnoff]
There are stand-up comics in Soviet Russia. They’re there.
They’re DEAD, but they’re there!
[/yakov smirnoff]
There are stand-up comics in South Africa. Not too many good ones, but that’s no different than the States, I hear. 
The Independent Armchair Theatre down the road even has Open Mic’ Night, and the Cape Comedy Collective has several members who’ve moved on to TV work.
There is indeed a tradition of stand-up comedy (and the associated drinking and heckling) in Australia. The Melbourne International Comedy Festivawl finished just last week.
In Soviet Russia, jokes tell you.
Sorry, Aussies and other English-speaking countries. I should have included you in the “I-know-they-have-comedy” list.
Hmmmm…I wonder about places like Sri Lanka or Costa Rica. Or Israel.
The Netherlands doesn’t have a tradition of stand-up comedy.
For decades we used to have a more pedestrian version called ‘cabaret’, which is nothing like Liza Minelli. It consisted of an older guy sitting on a bar stool in a large theatre and telling jokes at a leisurely pace, interspersed with songs. We call this ‘kleinkunst’, or ‘little art’, which sums up the experience rather well.
However, a couple of years ago a few Americans set up a stand up comedy cafe in Amsterdam, which was a hit and led to more cafe’s. By now there are quite a number of Dutch stand-up comedians.
Well, Singapore has 'em, or used to, at least… I remember watching it a few years ago, but I must admit that I haven’t watched Singaporean TV for a few years now… So I’m not too sure if it’s still running.
It was in Chinese, though… the format is as someone describes, 2 stand up comedians, Jack Neo and Moses Lim, providing banter and such in between sketches of oddball situations…
Oddly enough, I don’t remember any such shows in English. There was a ripoff of some American comedy(?) show, and it was titled “Tonight with Gurmit Singh”. Got canned a few months later. Wasn’t too popular, I guess.
There’s stand-up in Iceland, although it is very recent and in the English/American mould. Sketch (sp?) comedy has been around here for ages, of course.
Hey now, I watched a great stand up show there in February. Laughed myself silly.
And there’s always Barry Hilton.
I’m constantly hearing about how Bo Parnevik, father of golfer Jesper Parnevik, is the most famous comedian in Sweden. Not sure if he does standup – I’ve heard him called the Robin Williams of Sweden. Any Swedes care to comment on Bo? Is he a famous comedian? Famous for what? And is he funny?
Tusculan, We have: Raoul Heertje, ofcourse. The first circumcised foreign guest at ‘Have I got News for You’ [BBC England] * I saw that. He was great!*
And there’s - wait for it - ‘Boom Chicago’ in A’dam. [Guess what language they use]
We have a few stand-up comedians in Malaysia, but the most successful ones don’t really limit themselves to stand-up comedy - they also act and produce other stuff. Sketch comedy is more common. The expats I’ve seen at shows seem to understand most of the jokes despite the highly Malaysian-ised flavour of the script, which is pretty impressive.
I just want to point out that Canada is famous for its comedy. So its most deffinitely a big cultural element here.
Israel has a long and proud history of sketch comedy, often in conjunction with music and singing - much like the classical British Musical Theatre (but slightly more sophisticated). A lot of it is cheerfully absurdist and deeply satyrical.
As for standup, there was a huge boom in the Nineties which seems to have died down a bit (and thank God for that - for a while every shlub with a mike and a smirk considered himself a comedien). Comedy is one of the great Israeli pastimes.
Actually as far as Soviet and post-Soviet Russia go we have always had comedy clubs. They are not stand alone comics more like Monty Python style groups usually consisting of 10-20 people. Cool thing is that every once in a while they compete on national TV and all the way up to 10-5 years ago when they all sold out and the whole thing stated going according to script rather then improv it was a sight to see.
As far as stand up comedians go stand up is not done as a stand-alone thing. Usually an author will right a funny book and also do some stand up on TV along the themes of the book.
What I really enjoyed about the humor situation in Russia is that there always seemed to be more non-sitcom non-cartoon humor oriented programming on tv there then anywhere else in the world (Estonia/Turkey/US/UK from my personal experience)
Are Israeli Jews funny like American Jewish comics? I mean, style-wise…do you have your Hennys and Lennys and Jerrys?