These Are a Few of the Funniest Things: 2025 in Comedy
Our writers pick their funniest things of the year, from Fringe shows to farting on the telly to seeing your pals rolling into the sea
If the funniest thing of the year is supposed to be the show stuffed with the most one-liners or with a zany, high octane energy, I may have woefully missed the brief. Even if the consensus is that it should be a show promising at least one joke, then there is an argument that Mark Silcox’s The Gold Trader still falls short.
But no show has felt more excitingly authentic to whatever singular vision the performer was aiming for: toe-curling awkwardness, incoherent mumbling and steadfast confidence in the face of staggering bemusement. [Cameron Wright]
It's hard to pick between moments like Celia Imrie farting on Celebrity Traitors or Fringe highlights like Rob Duncan's tech turning against him (Printer of the Year), or Cam Poter's clowning masterclass (Just to be Close to You), so I won't. Mostly because my friends are way funnier than any of them; from one working on a new walk to avoid getting static shocks from the taps at his work, to another barrel rolling into the sea in Barcelona after Primavera at 7am, they are the best! [Tallah Brash]
Luke McQueen's audacious bonfire of the vanities, Comedian's Comedian, was the top live show for me. On screen, Such Brave Girls (BBC3) was savagely brilliant – ruthless in its satire on feminine wiles, and South Park, meanwhile, doubled down on the seepage between the banality of internet culture and the banal evil of Trump and his crew. And then two very funny books: Nicola Barker's TonyInterruptor – an antic exploration of art and authenticity that makes for compulsive reading, and Richard Ayoade’s The Unfinished Harauld Hughes: his ‘auteur-biography’ which is an absolute joy. [Emma Sullivan]
Sam Campbell combines genuine unpredictability with a frankly inexplicable mainstream appeal; people *love* this weird wee guy. His material is great, he’s very engaging, but it’s his Andy Kaufman-esque moments of confrontational oddness that stay with you. The ‘I’ve abandoned my show, now what’s gonna happen’ conceit is one thing; paying that off by getting a full haircut with 40 people watching, staring them all down via the barber’s mirror, is another, and exactly how he ended Joke Experts, his three-hander with Rose Matafeo and Paul Williams at the end of August. Like Kaufman, he’s a man born to annoy, but forced to entertain. [Peter Simpson]
Maybe it’s because I’m in my thirties now, or perhaps because the ‘here-lies-my-trauma-peppered-amongst-some-shite-puns’ brand of comedy feels, frankly, exhausted, but the comedy I’ve enjoyed the most this year has come from middle-aged women who have simply stopped giving a fuck. It’s refreshing, it’s often shouty, it’s the right amount of self-deprecating and self-aggrandising and it is, most importantly, really funny.
Desiree Burch’s hour at the Fringe this year – The Golden Wrath – in which she laid bare the horrifying symptoms of the perimenopause kicked things off for me, and it culminated just a few weeks ago at The Stand’s Bona Fide where Loretta Maine (Showstopper’s Pippa Evans) sang about how equally crap and delightful having a kid can be.
If we’re forced to exist (and break down) in a patriarchy, thank Lord(e) there are funny women compelled to write and perform about it. [Sarah Hopkins]
It was an absolutely vintage Fringe year for John Tothill. His show This Must Be Heaven (touring in 2026) was life-affirming and all the usual Fringe bait but more importantly, deliriously funny and told the story of Victorian oyster fiend Edward Dando in a way that no Wikipedia page could ever live up to. I will happily pay to see Tothill perform a Fringe show every year until one of us dies.
Also, do yourself a favour and Google 'trombone covers of popular songs pt 1 – Jet 2 holiday'. [Laurie Presswood]
Reshma Meister had me in complete stitches at Piggy Time in the Fringe. Her grinch-fingered, sellotape-faced League of Gentlemen-esque character ‘The Guy at That Party’ is a phenomenally odd creation and I can’t wait for her to do something longer-form with him. It totally captured what the Fringe is all about and I’m pleased to say ‘I best be doing my rounds’ has wormed its way into my lexicon.
A worthy runner-up is Ed Night. Thanks to his Comedy Award nom, he had the (anti) pleasure of performing five minutes to a room of yawning pensioners (and me) for Radio 4 in the final throes of the festival. Within seconds he accused them of knowing him from work (his occupation, dark as you like). Watching their outrage cascade from row to row was intoxicating. [Polly Glynn]