Stand up comedy is one of my favourite forms of entertainment. They say that laughter is the best medicine and all that - a laugh a day keeps the doctor away,  and I've always thought that a good stand up comedian doing his thing live on stage is much funnier than any scripted tv show or movie. So after having written a hub about The 5 Best British Comedy Series I figured that I just had to move on to doing one about the best stand up comedy. So what I have done is I've picked out who I think are the best British comedians and then searched for them on YouTube to find a video of them doing their thing to include here for you. I can't guarantee that the videos I've found show these guys at their absolute best, but they should be enough to give you a flavour of what each one is about, and hopefully to give you a few good laughs along the way. So, enough talking, here they are:

Michael Mcintyre is a tv comedian who does a lot of panel shows and presenting, but he also does a live stand up routine. In the clip below he is actually hosting a show with other comedians, but he is also doing some of his own material. He is great and improv and getting the audience involved by picking on the front row and encouraging a bit of heckling.

 From a stereotypical Englishman to the funniest man in Wales. Here he is on an Australian television show:

 This is another clip from the Live a the Apollo show. Dee has a great dry sarcastic kind of humour pretending to be always depressed and pissed off at everything. He doesn't do all that much stand up now as he writes and acts for both TV and movies, but when he does go back to his roots he is still great.

 An Iranian Brit Omid does some great ethnic humour as well as general stuff, and this clip shows him turning his humour on his home country of Iran.

 I wanted to get a good balance of different kinds of comedian so that there would be something for every taste, so here is one thats completely different from the others 've picked so far. Lee Evens is a very physical comedian, a little bit slapstick and theres a little bit of mr Bean in him. He always does a very lively, very funny show.

 Brand proved a bit too controversial for America, but he is very popular in Britain,  despite the controversies he has been involved in here too, and I really rate him as one of the best around. Not one to watch if your easily offended, but if your not you'l love him. Here he is on his 'Doing Life' tour