The 10 best female comedians

Victoria Wood

The grande dame of British women stand-ups, Wood has featured character comedy, jokes, sketches and songs and draws heavily on her Lancashire roots and keen observations of ordinary women's experiences. Though she is best known for her television work and has won Baftas for writing and straight acting, Wood also won the best live stand-up category at the British Comedy Awards in 1991 and 2001. Her best-loved song is "The Ballad of Barry and Freda", a hymn to middle-aged sexual frustration that features the unforgettable line: "Beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly."

Sarah Silverman

Silverman, 39, has forged a career out of upending political correctness and challenging complacent Eeast coast liberalism. "I don't care if you think I'm racist," she once said, in response to a high-profile complaint about her comedy. "It's more important that you think I'm thin." Silverman's satire is scalpel-sharp, often drawing on her Jewish heritage in her stage persona to ridicule bigotry. In 2008, she won an Emmy for her song "I'm Fucking Matt Damon", performed as a duet with Damon as a spoof confession to her then-boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel on his show Jimmy Kimmel Live! Her autobiography The Bedwetter (Faber) is out now.

Joan Rivers

Whatever you think of Joan Rivers' comedy, you have to admire the durability of her career. Born in 1933, from the mid-1950s she spent a decade braving Greenwich Village clubs in an entertainment world dominated by men, before her first television break on The Johnny Carson Show in 1965. "I was insanely persistent," she says. Rivers rightly regards herself as a pioneer, her brassy persona creating a brand of self-deprecating humour that opened the way for women after her to talk on stage about subjects once regarded as unsuitable for women or comedy.

Shappi Khorsandi

Iranian-born Khorsandi moved to London with her family when her father, satirist Hadi Khorsandi, was deemed an "enemy of the revolution" for his writing. Much of her early comedy drew on her childhood experiences of the culture clash and of the death threats against her father, but she also focuses on more everyday observations of life and relationships, giving audiences the impression that they're chatting with an old friend who can be charming and waspish in the same breath. Khorsandi has lent her support to various free-expression campaigns and has twice appeared on Question Time.

Lucy Porter

Diminutive Porter has been a regular on the stand-up circuit for almost a decade and her Edinburgh shows have delighted audiences for almost as long. Her breezy delivery and fondness for interacting with the audience (she usually gives away sweets during her shows) is often a means of slipping more serious ideas under the radar; previous shows have seen her attempting to grapple with economics, morality and love. She also writes for a variety of television comedy shows and appears regularly on panel shows such as Mock the Week and Have I Got News for You.

Josie Long

Long, 27, represents a new, lo-fi kind of female performer. Diffident, proudly nerdy and offbeat, with her often childlike air of wonderment, she has won over a fanbase tired of cynical, wilfully offensive comedy. Long began stand-up at the age of 14 and won the BBC new comedy award at 17. After graduating from Oxford, she performed at experimental comedy clubs and toured with Stewart Lee as his warm-up act in 2005 before winning the if.comedy (formerly the Perrier) newcomer award in 2006 with her first Edinburgh show. She is also hugely popular in Australia, where she is a regular at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

Laura Solon

Solon made headlines in 2005 when she became only the second woman to win the Perrier comedy award, at the age of 26. She'd begun performing with the Oxford Revue while an undergraduate, where she had decided that character comedy suited her better than straight stand-up. Her shows feature an array of surreal characters and have been praised for their originality. After the Perrier win, Solon was quickly signed up by the BBC to develop comedy projects and has written and performed three series of her Radio 4 show, Laura Solon: Talking and Not Talking, as well as appearing with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse in their television shows.

Gina Yashere

Yashere turned to comedy after working as a lift engineer, completed her first tour in 2000 and has toured successfully ever since. In 2002, she was voted best female act at the Black Comedy awards and nominated best female stand-up at the Chortle awards. Her big break came in 2007 when she became one of the 10 finalists in the NBC reality show, Last Comic Standing, which brought her to a US audience and in 2008 she was the first British comic to appear on the influential black comedy show, Def Comedy Jam. She has since branched out into acting and has recently recorded a comedy special for US channel Showtime.

Sarah Millican

Newcastle-born Millican started performing comedy at the age of 29 and her early sets were largely based around the experience of her recent divorce. Her combination of a warm delivery with eye-wateringly explicit material about sex and relationships proved hugely appealing, and she accumulated many award nominations as she worked the club circuit before taking her solo show to the Edinburgh fringe in 2008, where she won the if.comedy best newcomer award. Her first Radio 4 series, Sarah Millican's Support Group, aired earlier this year and she has appeared on numerous television panel shows.

Miranda Hart

Most recently seen in her own BBC2 sitcom, Miranda, and taking part in the million-pound bike ride for Sport Relief, Hart is an accomplished actress and comic whose one-woman shows have been a highlight of the Edinburgh fringe for the past 10 years. She first took what she describes as "a terrible show" to Edinburgh in 1994 and decided that if it got one OK review and one night with more than 20 people, she would try comedy for a living. When one audience reached 21, she was committed. Her material is largely character- and sketch-based and often draws on her physical attributes – she is 6ft 1inch tall. 

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