Rich Hall

Rich Hall is one of my favourite comedians currently working. After making a number of appearances on popular US talk shows, such as Late Night with David Letterman, and working as a regular on Saturday Night Live, Hall carved out a career for himself across the Atlantic in the UK, where he has become a mainstay of comedy panel shows, including QI and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He may have found a more ready acceptance of his dry sardonic humour in Britain; he certainly appears to have found more work here in the UK since the mind-90s than he has done in his native US.

He had published a number of books, including the excellent Things Snowball - a collection of short prose pieces that showcase his imaginative wit and love of language. My favourite piece is a response to a 'Dear John' letter written as if it were an academic article, fully footnoted and indexed. Hall also invented the term 'sniglet' - any word that isn't in the dictionary but should be - and has published several collections of them. An example of a sniglet is "Furnidents: The indentations left in carpet after moving heavy furniture."

The following videos are of Hall's 2005 appearance on Jack Dee Live at the Apollo, which includes language and ideas that may be offensive to some people.