Comedy Performance

Whether you’re looking for tips on how to make your friends laugh or trying to become a paid comedian, How To Be Funny has something for everyone. This book is packed with funny anecdotes and expert advice to help you take your sense of humor from okay to outstanding!

The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour is Canada's top award for humour - and nobody has won it more times than Arthur Black, who carried off his third medal in June 2006. Now, in case there is anyone left standing who still disputes Black's claim to the title of Canada's funniest man, Harbour presents the laughing proof: a retrospective of Black's best hits, high-graded from eleven previous collections stretching back over the past 20 years.

Omid Djalili's fascinating story begins with an unconventional childhood spent at his family's London guesthouse for visiting Iranians. At school he is kept busy with the beginnings of a passionate love affair with football but he hopes one day to live a more intellectually fulfilled life. For one wonderful summer in California it seems that maybe he will find his spiritual home at UCLA.

Based on the award-winning 10-million-plus-hit blog 1000awesomethings.com, The Book of Awesome is an international best-selling high five for humanity and a big celebration of life's little moments. Sometimes it's easy to forget the things that make us smile. It’s tempting to feel that the world is falling apart. But awesome things are all around us, like: popping bubble wrap; wearing underwear just out of the dryer; fixing electronics by smacking them; and much more! The Book of Awesome reminds us that the best things in life are free (yes, your grandma was right).

In a year when South Korea announced that its new robotics museum will be built by robots, and French cheese terrorists put a camembert through every French MPs letterbox, The Book of the Year returns with another dose of barely believable yet bona fide facts and stories from the past 12 months. Each week for the past five years, Dan, James, Anna and Andy - the creators of the award-winning, chart-topping comedy podcast No Such Thing as a Fish - have wowed each other and millions of listeners with the most astonishing trivia they have learned over the previous seven days.

It’s been 20 years since Mean Girls hit theaters, winning over critics and audiences alike with its razor-sharp wit, star-making turns for its then unknown cast, and obsessively quotable screenplay by Tina Fey. Fast forward two decades and Mean Girls remains as relevant as ever. Arguably, no other movie from the 2000s has had as big of an impact on pop culture. In So Fetch, New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, offers the first ever authoritative book about this beloved classic that shaped an entire generation

488 Rules for Life is not a self-help book, because it's not you who needs help, it's other people. Whether they're walking and texting, asphyxiating you on public transport with their noxious perfume cloud, or leaving one useless square of toilet paper on the roll, a lot of people just don't know the rules.

Tom Scharpling is good at being funny, which is a miracle, considering what he’s survived. Like hitting a deer and narrowly escaping with his life on the night of the 2016 election. But that’s nothing compared to the struggles he had earlier in his life. It Never Ends is his memoir of a life writing comedy amidst a lifelong struggle with mental illness, a story he has never told before. It’s the heartbreaking account of his intense coming-of-age, and the lengths he’s undertaken to pull away from the brink of self-destruction.

Because no one will write an unauthorized biography about Emmy-winning actor and comedian Chris Elliott, he has done it himself. Listener, you’re hereby warned that much of this book will be disturbing. The Guy Under the Sheets is a behind-the-scenes memoir so personal, so provocative, that Elliott nearly sued himself to halt publication: The most shocking revelation, corroborated by numerous unnamed sources, is that Elliott is not the absurdist comedian that Rolling Stone once called "a genius". In fact, he’s a slightly dim-witted no-talent from a celebrity family.

"Lenny Bruce Live at the Curran Theatre, San Francisco, Nov 19th 1961" captures the raw, unfiltered brilliance of one of the most influential and controversial comedians of the 20th century. On that historic night in 1961, Lenny Bruce took the stage at the Curran Theatre and unleashed his sharp wit, incisive social commentary, and fearless exploration of taboo topics.

From Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, the youngest comedy writers ever for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and masterminds behind the viral 2018 Yale graduation speech, comes a hilarious collection of short stories taking on coming-of-age, memes, sex, politics, relationships, and Goop, with satire, self-deprecation, and utter irreverence.

These clean jokes will make you laugh for hours! This audiobook is perfect as a gift for your dad, bros, or as a collection of jokes to tell your kids.

Michael Palin's diaries begin when he was newly married and struggling to make a name for himself in the world of television comedy. But Monty Python was just around the corner...Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the Pythons then proceeded to tour the USA and Canada. As their popularity grew, so Palin relates how the group went their separate ways, later to re-form for stage shows and the celebrated films The Holy Grail and Life of Brian.

“There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate,” he wrote. “When he can’t afford it and when he can.” The publishing company Twain owned was failing; his investment in a typesetting device was bleeding red ink. After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars back when a beer cost a nickel, he found himself neck-deep in debt. His heiress wife, Livy, took the setback hard. “I have a perfect horror and heart-sickness over it,” she wrote. “I cannot get away from the feeling that business failure means disgrace.”

i>39 Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is a seriously funny, offbeat, and irreverent memoir that chronicles the early days of Saturday Night Live and features some of its greatest personalities---Al Franken, Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Michael O'Donoghue, and Chris Farley.

'I have just had one of those absolutely mad mornings when you go out to have a browse at tagines and end up coming home with a brand-new gas ring expander. I think I was probably as surprised as anybody. Sometimes life is just like that, isn't it?' Award-winning food writer Damien Trench takes you on a journey through his childhood and his early inspirations - culinary and otherwise - with occasional diversions to the present.

Grammy Nominee for Best Spoken Comedy Album
Once again there's good news for those of us who rage at the evening news, shake our heads at Washington's business-as-usual, or watch as politicians carom helplessly between political crises and sex scandals: Dennis Miller is back performing his fourth installment of hilarious observations, I Rant, Therefore I Am. More from Miller.

Michael Krasny has been telling Jewish jokes since his bar mitzvah, and it’s been said that he knows more of them than anyone on the planet. He certainly states his case in this wise, enlightening, and hilarious book that not only collects the best of Jewish humor passed down from generation to generation, but explains the cultural expressions and anxieties behind the laughs.

Erin Gibson has a singular goal - to create a utopian future where women are recognized as humans. In Feminasty - titled after her nickname on the hit podcast Throwing Shade - she has written a collection of make-you-laugh-until-you-cry essays that expose the hidden rules that make life as a woman unnecessarily hard and deconstructs them in a way that's bold, provocative, and hilarious.

Is there a more sociable province than Newfoundland and Labrador? Or anywhere in Canada with a greater reputation for coming to the rescue of those in need? At this time of Covid, singer, songwriter and best-selling author Alan Doyle is feeling everyone's pain. Off the road and spending more days at home than he has since he was a child hawking cod tongues on the wharfs of Petty Harbour, he misses the crowds and companionship of performing. We're all experiencing our own version of that deprivation, and Alan, one of Newfoundland's finest storytellers, wants to offer a little balm.