The Progress 1000: London's most influential people 2018 - Performance: Comedy

Katherine Ryan
Natasha Pszenicki
10 October 2018

Katherine Ryan

Comic

The London-based Canadian is a comic at the absolute top of her game, currently wowing audiences at the Garrick Theatre. She has brought style to stand-up and her tongue is every bit as sharp as her dress sense. She is a TV regular and maybe she has America in her sights, having just filmed a Netflix panel show, The Fix, aimed at the USA.

Lost Voice Guy

Comic Lee Ridley

Real name Lee Ridley, made history becoming the first comedian to win Britain's Got Talent, delivering deadpan gags via a talking iPad.

Michaela Coel

Actor

The Progress 1000, in partnership with the global bank Citi, is the Evening Standard’s celebration of the people who make a difference to London life. #Progress1000

After her TV breakthrough with Chewing Gum, and Black Mirror, in the Star Trekky USS Callister, the political and passionate Coel has restless energy and boundless talent. There's an imminent London-set Netflix musical Been So Long and a third series of Chewing Gum is reportedly in the pipeline.

Deborah Frances-White

Comic/writer

Presenter of podcast The Guilty Feminist, recently shot a satire pilot for C4. Expect to see much more of her on our screens.

Rachel Parris

Comic/musician

Parris' slots on BBC2's The Mash Report, most notably her riff on Piers Morgan meeting Donald Trump, went gloriously viral.

Lolly Adefope

Comic/actress

From tiny Fringe shows Adefope is now conquering America, landing roles in Shrill and Miracle Workers opposite Daniel Radcliffe.

Joe Lycett

Comic

The Birmingham comedian has carved out a niche as our most waspish prankster, submitting a sculpture to the Royal Academy, asking price £12.5 million.

Jamali Maddix

Comic

Imagine Michael Palin as a bearded, tattooed twenty-something Eastender... Maddix is making his name with immersive globetrotting documentaries as well as stand-up.

Will Sharpe

Comedy creator

London-born Sharpe rewrote the sitcom template with the disturbing, touching Flowers for Channel 4 and also stars in new BBC legal comedy Defending The Guilty.

Adam Kay

Comic/writer

Ex-registrar Kay's warts-and-all best-seller about his hospital job, This Is Going To Hurt, is now being adapted for TV.

Mo Gilligan

Comic

Camberwell's Gilligan can number Drake and Stormzy among fans of his instagram posts and his observational humour is making him a live draw too.

Daisy May & Charlie Cooper

Comedy writers/actors

The siblings created and starred in the Bafta-winning mockumentary This Country, unearthing the painfully funny side of life in the Cotswolds.

My Dad Wrote A Porno

Podcast

Podcasting came of age when this online hit about naff erotica fronted by Jamie Morton, James Cooper and Alice Levine filled the Royal Albert Hall.

Greg Davies

Comic

This towering ex-teacher has two fine sitcoms under his belt, Man Down and Cuckoo, but his greatest claim to fame is as host of groundbreakingly daft challenge show Taskmaster.

Grace Campbell

Activist/comic

Just when you think every hidden camera concept has been done Campbell – daughter of ex-spinmeister Alistair Campbell – and her colleagues added a feisty feminist twist in Riot Girls.

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