Who is Australia’s Funniest Comedian?

Over the last four Fridays I have been looking at the countries that make up the place known as the United Kingdom to see how they are represented here in Australia by immigrants.

So far we’ve had:

• The Irish in Australia: For Queensland and Country
• The Scottish in Australia: A Gecko Encounter
• Welsh in Australia: Their Most Famous Immigrant
• English in Australia: Does UK Humour Work Down Under?

… and in each of those posts I’ve given you an idea of how many people move from those countries to Australia. I’ve also had a look at the sense of humour from each of those countries to try and see how well it is received here in Australia.

We’ve tried to find out whether the UK and Australia are in tune with each other when it comes to laughter. By and large, it seems we are.

Having covered all four countries though, what next? I thought it would be a great idea if I went on to write about…

Australians in Australia

But then again, maybe not.

Unlike those UK countries, “Australians in Australia” does not have its own Wikipedia page. So I would not be able to copy and paste any of those statistics as I have done before explaining how many people have moved here from those countries and how many claim to have ancestry from those countries.

Perhaps I don’t need Wikipedia though; I already know that around 25% of Australia’s population are immigrants, so maybe…

“Australians in Australia represent around 15.5 million of the population, something like 75% of all inhabitants of the country. This is easily the highest percentage of any one group residing in Australia, not overly surprising considering all of these people were born there.”

So maybe “Australians in Australia” is not such a great idea, but looking at it from the other side, not all Australians born in Australia stay in Australia. Quite a few move out and migrate to go and live somewhere else.

Australians NOT in Australia

In last week’s post I also asked the question “Who is Australia’s best comedian?”

Quite a few names were put in the frame; Tim Minchin, Carl Barron, Jimeoin (can’t give it to him with that accent!), Josh Thomas, Hamish and Andy, Tom Gleeson, Kevin Bloody Wilson, Kitty Flannegan and Adam Hills. I watched them all on YouTube, but none of them quite did it for me.

Tim Minchin was an interesting suggestion, only because he wasn’t born in Australia, but he is Australian, no doubt about that.

The winner

This guy WAS born in Australia, but moved to the UK in 2002 when he was in his mid-30s.

He was a top comedian here before he moved away and he goes down well when he does pop back to gig in Australia. He has also made a hugely successful career for himself in the UK since he left.

So there is no doubt that Australian humour can work well in the UK and as we’ve already seen, comedians from each of the four UK countries can make people laugh in Oz.

Conclusion

Humour does travel successfully between Australia, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England.

Come on! Who is the winner?

He is Steve Hughes and you have no idea how many videos I had to watch before I found one without swearing on it in order to comply with my own website policy.

Found this one, no swearing at all until, would you believe, the (almost) very last word! It’s not the worst word in the world though, so we are going to run with it. Otherwise I will probably spend the rest of my life watching Steve Hughes videos on YouTube.

Here he is, live from the Apollo which is, of course, in London’s West End.

So there you have it.

So far from what I’ve seen Steve Hughes would get my vote as Australia’s funniest comedian, but I’m always on the lookout for someone funnier. This post is called “Who is Australia’s Funniest Comedian?” and although I have given you my answer, the question remains:

Who is Australia’s Funniest Comedian?

If you think you have the answer to that question, please let me know in the comments below…