Tim Vine

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Tim Vine
Born	4 March 1967 (1967-03-04) (age 42) Cheam, Surrey
Medium	Stand-up comedy, television
Nationality	British
Website	www.timvine.com

Tim Vine (born March 4, 1967 in Cheam, Surrey) is an English stand-up comedian. He is the brother of Jeremy Vine, the British television journalist and presenter on BBC Radio 2. His stand-up act consists primarily of a series of quick-fire one-liners and puns. On 7 October 2004 Vine broke the Guinness World Record for the most jokes told in an hour with 499, beating the previous record of 362. Each joke told by Vine had to get a laugh from the paying audience to count towards the record. He held the record until May 2005. Vine has taken his comedy act on a tour of the United Kingdom, most recently in his February 2006 tour entitled "Current Puns".

He has appeared regularly at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, with shows such as "The Time Vine Shambles", and "The Tim Vine Fiasco". In 2006, he had a large advertising hoarding erected featuring his name and image, with a small sub-heading "...is not appearing at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival"

On television, Vine co-launched Five with Julia Bradbury on 30 March 1997 and presented the game show Whittle on the channel. Vine has also presented the game show Fluke on Channel 4 and later Fort Boyard Takes on the World on Challenge. Vine was also one of the regular team of comedians to write for and appear in the ITV comedy series The Sketch Show, and played the role of namesake Tim in the BBC One situation comedy Not Going Out. In 2005, he appeared alongside other celebrities in Spelling Bee, shown on ITV1. Tim appeared as a contestant on Comic Relief does Fame Academy on the BBC in 2007. He was voted out on Friday 9 March. He appeared at the Spring Harvest festival in 2007 alongside John Archer at Skegness and Minehead, and at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in May 2007 for a show entitled Tim Vine, Live in Concrete. In September 2007, Vine appeared with his brother Jeremy on the celebrity version of ITV1's Who Wants to be a Millionaire where they raised £1000 for the Fire Services National Benevolent Fund.

On radio, in 2002 he made a guest-appearance as himself on The Griff Rhys Jones Show on BBC Radio 2.

His musical talent, aside from the comedy songs in his act, includes playing the guitar, piano, and drums, and he has released an album of non-comedy songs, which can be bought at his shows. Vine is a Christian and occasionally plays the drums at his church. He was in several bands, including Flare Generation with brother Jeremy Vine. Both Tim and Jeremy Vine were educated at Epsom College in Surrey.

In December 2007, Vine launched his first podcast, 'Tim Vine Celebrates'^[1]. The first episode Tim Vine Celebrates... Christmas was released for free on 19th December.

1 Jokes
2 Books
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Jokes

Many of Vine's jokes have been falsely attributed to Tommy Cooper^[2]; the West End show about Tommy Cooper actually features some of Vine's jokes.

Note that these jokes are intended to be heard, rather than read.

So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me "Can you give me a lift?" I said, "Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it."
So I rang up a local building firm and said, "I wanna skip outside my house." He said, "I'm not stopping you."
Now, most dentist's chairs go up and down, don't they? The one I was in went back and forwards. I thought, "This is unusual". Then the dentist said to me, "Mr Vine, get out of the filing cabinet".
I went to the butchers the other day and I bet him fifty quid that he couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf. And he said, "no, the steaks are too high".
I was reading this book, 'The History of Glue'. I couldn't put it down.
I got a job as the Duke of Edinburgh's hairdresser. The other day I parked outside Buckingham Palace and a policeman came up to me and said "have you got a permit?" And I said, "no, I've just got to take a bit off the back".
The other day someone left a piece of plasticine in my dressing room. I didn't know what to make of it.
Exit signs. They're on the way out, aren't they?
When I was at school people used to throw gold bars at me. I was the victim of bullion.
So I went to the doctor and he said, "You've got hypochondria." I said, "Not that as well!" (Tim Vine live DVD).

[edit] Books

Sit-Down Comedy (contributor to anthology, ed Malcolm Hardee & John Fleming) Ebury Press/Random House, 2003. ISBN-10: 0091889243; ISBN-13: 978-0091889241