The Improv
There are some people who really shouldn’t be allowed to have microphones. So Comedy Central is doing this thing this week called #Comedyfest where they’re basically taking the concept of a live comedy… festival to the Internet. I thought that it might be fun to program a set of the absolute worst stand-up acts I’ve ever seen into one mega-set of flop sweat, failed jokes, awful impressions and more. You ready to laugh and cry at the same time? Let’s go.
Darrell Bluett
This legendary clip has been circulating on videotape for a few years. Dating from sometime in the late 1980s, early 1990s, it features young Darrell in a raspberry beret telling the most inept fat jokes ever, leading off with a story about a woman so fat she was “bigger than my great-great grandmother.”
Daniel Songer
It’s probably fair to say that Daniel Songer is the worst stand-up comedian of all time. The self-proclaimed “poet, singer and artistic dancer” has uploaded literally hundreds of videos of himself cracking jokes around his house, running out of breath and dropping to a squat to regain his composure. Oh, and he always wears jorts.
Gatis Kandis
Latvian-born Gatis Kandis stepped onto the stage on Britain’s Got Talent with good intentions, but the minute he opened his mouth things started going south for him. His attempts at audience interaction and weird obsession with toilets quickly got him booed off the stage.
Alisa Spitzberg
Alisa Spitzberg is probably best known as the woman trying to ruin comedian Tig Notaro’s career by claiming she is faking cancer. Interestingly enough, she’s also a stand-up comedian, but if her set here is anything to go off of, she’s got a ways to go before she hits the big leagues.
Craig McLoghlin
The propensity of TV talent shows has given tons of wanna-be joke-tellers a platform to expose their talent – or lack thereof – to the world. In this clip from Australian variety program The Footy Show, actor/singer Craig McLachlan takes the microphone to deliver some of the worst jokes ever, only to be rewarded with the crowd literally screaming for him to be removed from stage.
Brett Eidman
Let’s close this list with a particularly awful bit from “comedian” Brett Eidman, who took the opportunity to launch into an unfunny, racist attack on an Asian man in the front row that ended in the only way it should end: with fists impacting his dumb face.