Chris Boland (www.chrisboland.com) · CC BY-SA 2.0

Helped invent British alternative comedy in the early 1980s, hosting London's Comedy Store and bringing a surreal, politically pointed style indebted to Spike Milligan and Monty Python to a new generation of stand-up. He was later voted among the greatest stand-up comedians in British television polls, and he went on to work as an actor, television presenter, and novelist.