by Patrick Hurley

Created on: September 19, 2010

There are two types of comedians, those who can recite with perfect timing the comedy writing of their staff and those who are naturally funny. Bob Hope Rodney Dangerfield and Phyllis Diller are examples of the first group. Here is my list of the top ten comedians who are funny because they don't need great material to make us laugh. They think and look funny naturally and none of them relied on profanity, sex or racism to be funny which elminates Pryor, Rock, Lopez, Williams, Murphy and Kinison on my list. I just want good, clean humor. The hardest kind to bring laughs.Since I have performed stand up comedy to over six million people live, I know how tough clean comedy can be.

1. George Carlin. He gets into our head and makes us think about what is stupid about ourselves and the world around us. He makes us think. You can tell he is struggling with the same dumb thoughts we have lived with for years and has decided to stand up and confront those absurdities. We miss him.

2. Steve Martin. The absurdist. He hit the country in 1978 and left us breathless! He was dumb and dumber in a white suit. But, there was something classy and intelligent about him. I bought all his albums and memorized them. I still listen to them. I still laugh! He was not like any comedian we had ever seen before.

3. Dennis Miller. If you sit down and really listen to his rants you will find yourself nodding in agreement most of the time. He hates stupid things people do and say and is intellectual in his review of them. I not only laugh out loud when I listen to him, I feel smarter, too.

4. Ellen Degeneres is funny. Humor comes out of her heart. It is obvious. She is not reading a script she is laughing at all the funny things that happen to her and around her. Most of her humor is clean, too. She is ten times cleaner than Kathy Griffin and relates to us more than Roseanne Barr. All she does is make us laugh at EVERYTHING. She just invites us into her living room and soon we are seeing ourselves.

5. Jonathan Winters. The man is crazy. He was Robin Williams BEFORE Robin Williams. He can ad lib any character and story line. His mind is out of control. He is certifiably crazy, but when he is sane enough to go on a roll with the characters in his head, he lays us out!

6. Stephen Wright. No one, I mean NO ONE had more thought provoking concepts with his play on words than this man. He made me wonder, "What DID happen to Preparations A-G?" I just sat there and shook my head at

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