Who is the most "efficient" comedian or humorist?

Cafe Society
1

I define efficiency in this context as getting the most humor with the least effort.

To put this in perspective, a prop-comic or magician would be very inefficient because they use lots of stuff. A stand-up comedian such as Stephen Wright, who uses very little verbiage, would be extremely efficient. Someone like George Carlin or Bill Cosby would be in the middle of the scale because they often tell long-ish stories and jokes.

This isn’t who is funniest in absolute terms, or who you would most like to watch. Rather, it’s who gets the most bang for the comic buck.

My nomination is Roy Blount Jr. When he’s on the “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me…” panel, he’s like a comic ninja. He often requires only a sparse sentence, or a single word to break up both the audience and his fellow panelists, yet his humor is smart and incisive.

2

Henny Youngman

3

Harpo Marx or Marcel Marceau.

4

Steven Wright’s scthick is nothing but one liners. Theres no story line, no nuance, no buildup, his performance stops when he just stops talking.

Old school Robin Williams got more laughs while saying less but what he did on stage looked like a hell of a lot of work.

Roy Blount Jr…yeah, not so much. How about a link to some of his great stuff?

5

In the same line as Stephen Wright, I’d nominate Mitch Hedburg. His jokes seemed even shorter.

6

What about Rodney Dangerfield? Practically every sentence he’d say was a set-up and punchline.

7

Second Mitch Hedberg. Little set-up, few rambling ‘Did this ever happen to you?’ observations, all funny.

Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts are pretty damned efficient. He occasionally writes a (very) short story, but most are two sentences.

8

What made me think of him was a remark on Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me… The news story was that GW Bush had been asked about the best moment of his presidency. He supposedly said it was catching a big fish in his lake in Crawford.

The rest of the panel made mostly predictable jokes. When it settled down Blount simply said, “I’d like to defend the president on this. I think he was right.”

It was like comedy aikido. He seems to be able to do that sort of thing consistently, which is what got me pondering the idea of “efficiency” in comedy and humor.

9

Morey Amsterdam (or Buddy Sorrell, at any rate).

10

Jimmy Carr.

11

Rowan Atkinson. Definitely with Mr. Bean, but also with his one-man show, and many other things of his I’ve seen.

Here’s an example.

12

RealityChuck said:

Damn you! That’s what I was going to say. He spent decades repeating one joke.

13

You must admit that, as he delivered it, it was a brilliant joke, yet one not easily “gotten” out of context ((weary voice) if you have to explain it, it’s not funny.)

14

I immediately thought of Mitch Hedburg, although I couldn’t remember his name until someone else mentioned him. He could very easily produce an amount of laughter far longer than the time it took for him to deliver the lines. And he didn’t move on stage, he kept his head down and spoke into the microphone. Absolutely minimal stage presence, minimal joke length, but among the funniest comedians I’ve seen.

15

Shit, I’ve been listening to that show for years, and I didn’t even know it was supposed to be funny.

16

I was going to mention this. Every sentence he says is another joke. He probably tells more jokes-per-minute than any other comedian.

17

I remember reading once the Phyllis Diller, of all people, holds the world record for most laughs per minute.

18

Emo Phillips is pithy. And absurdly funny, if you’re into weirdness.

19

The jokes are aimed at UK audiences but Tim Vine probably breaks that rate easily.

20

Tim Vine has the world record of jokes per hour, actually.