Ted Chippington

Ted Chippington (real name Francis Smyth; born February 1962 in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England) is a British stand-up comedian.

Noted for his diffident on-stage persona, Chippington avoids observational comedy in favour of anti-humour and jokes which are mostly variations on the same theme, delivered in a West Midlands monotone. He also frequently performs his own versions of well-known songs in a similarly listless style. His act has left audiences bemused or hostile, with heckling a frequent occurrence during his performances.

His deadpan style has won him a small number of devoted followers. Stewart Lee has often cited Chippington as the reason he began stand-up comedy, describing Chippington’s act as “a mixture of surrealism and insolent provocation and uncompromising boredom” and citing him as “the first post-alternative comedian”. Another admirer, Richard Herring, talks of Chippington’s “contempt for the very idea of jokes”. For his part Chippington – who describes his own act as being influenced by Lenny Bruce and Owd Grandad Piggott – says he is an “anti-comedian” and that he only started doing his act “to annoy people”. He has even claimed that his main reason for retiring from the stage in the 1990s was that he was becoming too popular.

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