Not nostalgic - I'm still listening to them (and replacing the vinyl with the CD versions)
Top Players are:
Monty Python
Derek & Clive (when theres no kids about)
Bad News
and Ivor Biggun

And there was, as you suggest, something "thrilling" about the comedy LP (1 - re-hearing classic sketches, dialogue & jokes 2 - hearing some really rude swearing.)

Now its straight on YouTube after the jokes been delivered - no waiting 3/6/12 months for an album to turn up (is that a good or bad thing? Don't know. Probably both

Was played several hundred times in our house. This makes me a crashing bore for accuracy when it comes to the sketches featured on that record.

We also had a Morecambe & Wise record which was a constant pleasure. Even better is that as one gets older, the more jokes you get. For example:

(woman, Eric's fiancee, trying on ring in jeweller's)
- "Oh dear...It doesn't seen to fit"
shopkeeper (Ernie) - "We can make it bigger for you"
Eric - "How can you make her finger bigger?"
Ernie - "No no no! The ring! We can make the ring bigger"
Eric - "Oh. You see, if you could make her finger bigger, there's a little job I wouldn't mind you doing for me."

Thinking back, I'm sure I had a few - but can only really remember the 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' LP.

I think they may have done 2 - it was the first one I had.

I also had a few C90's that were liberally copied and shared (Home taping is killing comedy?). Derek and Clive - obviously. But I also remember a couple of 'I'm Sorry, I'll read that again' tapes doing the rounds. And some Goons.

But the latter were probably taped off the radio from repeats.

I don't remember if this was on any of his albums, I've only got it as a single

I owned, and both were played to death. The first was a lp by the Goodies, mostly song based but very funny... well it seemed so at the time.

The other one was an lp by Jasper Carrot, this was a real favourite with my friends and myself, we had many a great time listening to it, can remember one sketch about the 'nutter on the bus' which I remember as being hilarious.

Have not heard these lps for well over 25 years so cannot say whether these have stood the test of time

See Amateur Transplants for a modern medical take in the same vein (excuse the pun!)

of 'Nixon's missing tapes'.

Screamingly funny and cut to the quick. Probably not funny to anyone who wasn't around during Watergate though :-)

...and the albums seemed to be very finely targeted at those of an (ahem) relaxed state of conciousness

Unless a Russkie internet DOS attack one day proves impossible to reverse. On heavy rotation on the radiogram chez Johns were Monty Python Live At Drury Lane ("Joyce! Come and listen to the cussing on this record he's listening to" quoth my Dad) and Hancock's Blood Donor & Radio Ham. I also fondly recall Radio Stars' Songs For Swinging Lovers (on Chiswick!) which was all comedy, though I'm not sure how it would stand up today.

and my flatmate at art school had about three Python albums that got some playing, then John Cooper Clarke came along and it was punk rock, year zero

I do remember seeing a Jasper Carrot show on telly back in 3 channel days and he had me in pain he was so funny

Radio Ham & Blood Donor was my fave LP as a kid - easily better than With the Beatles!

Picked up 'Frankie Howerd At The The Establishment' at a car boot sale last week and its wonderful - you can hear Kenneth Williams braying laugh from the audience throughout

Otherwise it was the NTN Oclock album (Gerald The Gorilla was a fave), all the Python stuff, Connolly, Carrott LPs. The local olibrary was a great place to borrow that stuff and take reference copies onto a cassette

Later I got into Richard Pryor,Derek and Clive andBill Hicks albums

Especially the albums FM/AM and Class Clown both of which I found used in a one dollar bin, Indecent Exposure, a late 70's best of and my all time favorite Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics from 1990. After Carlin died I got very into his late 70's album On the Road which opens with a long bit about how death isn't as big a deal as people make it.

I find Cheech and Chong's last album, 85's Get Out of My Room underrated. Its almost a concept album, centering around accurate college radio and morning zoo crew show parodies.

Lately I've been listening to Patton Oswalt and Maria Bamford's standup albums. They're great but I think something that's missing from most recent comedy albums is audio based skits.

Tough one. Looks like therre'll be few on my list:

Python - check
Derek and Clive - check
Carrott In Notts - check
Ivor Biggun - currently listening to Fruity Bits; a hoot

The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy albums/cassettes. Not only funny, but crammed full of good muso bits for spotters. A Rainbow In Curved Air seemed to turn up a lot in it I remember. It was a staple of early secondary school life.

However, I still love listening to someone not mentioned here yet: Mike Harding. His comedy/folk albums from the 70's/80's are crackers. I especially love Komic Kutz. His old BBC shows are probably long wiped, which is a pity as they were bloody funny.

Noo, don't go, it's a good story. In the dear dead days of the early 70s, Max had a crossover hit album (ie it sold a few copies east of Chepstow) called 'Live In Treorchy' featuring all his classics ('Up and under, here we go/Is the song of the Pontypool front row', 'Oggy, oggy, oggy!!! Oy, oy, oy!!!', etc; how our Welsh sides ached). When the album went Gold, Boyce's manager was very surprised to get a call from a big American label boss saying he loved Max's album and was very keen to license 'Living In Treachery'.

The Great Bell was always a favourite track and now have this on CD

http://open.spotify.com/album/1aQIM77sH0rEaHmA36K1Hv

Have this single too, a song about Marty

Pete and Dud.
The Misty Mr.Wisty.
Monty Python Live at Drury Lane.
Bill Hicks Rant In E Minor.
Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.

Do the Bonzo's count ? Hilarious and corking tunes as well.
Viv Stanshall's Teddy Boy's Don't Knit and Neil Innes' Recycled Vinyl Blues, also.

bob newhart-great driving instructor and walter raleigh introducing cigarettes

bill hicks-flying saucer tour recorded over four nights he's in a really bad mood

doug stanhope-anything really he's that great

isn't it ? The nearest to a hearing a full gig, and his frustrated interactions with the audience are fascinating.
I was talking to someone recently about how obviously prescient he was re. the current state of world affairs. We could do with Bill right now.

a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather '.

' How do you'all know that ? '
' Well, we looked at the receipt. As soon as that cheque clears were goin' in. What time's the bank open ? '
It says it all.

My first ever LP purchased with my own money was a Goodies album. There, I said it.

I had all the Mike Harding / Jasper Carrott / Billy Connolly / Python / Derek and Clive albums on vinyl and played them to death. All my vinyl is now long gone. I know that the Harding albums have been reissued on CD so I'll buy them again at some point.

These days, I enjoy anything by Bill Hicks, Henry Rollins or Eddie Izzard. Any of you that like Hicks should definitely check out Rollins' spoken word stuff.

Why Bother : Peter Cook and Chris Morris.
Blue Jam : Chris Morris.

It just serves to remind me how much I love the diversity of an Ipod.

Both first and second - we were word perfect, particularly on Rowan Atkinson's brilliant schoolmaster. "NIBBLE!! Leave Orifice aloone."

As well as the Not the Nine O'Clock News albums - including a live one towards the end. There was also (totally different speed) a Peter Sellers album from the mid 70s, with the George Formby contest...

top choice for number 1! easily the best connolly ive ever heard. wipes the floor with his later stuff.

my fave bill hicks is still probably the 'sane man' film.
i prefer him in a *good* mood.

unfashionable it may be to say it but ben elton's MOTORVATION is a winner too. it's literally inconceivable what became of him in the 21 years since. what with blackaddrer and the young ones too, i swear if his taxi had driven off a bridge into the thames the night that album was recorded he'd be considered some kind of legend now.

But my two comedy LPs were one by the Grumbleweeds (much underrated as I see it) and Ronnie Barker's Unbroken British Record - a load of his stuff from the Two Ronnies. He was a genius.

"My love lies with Jeannie, she's a lovely girl from Twickers
She drives me cray-ay-ze without any trouble.."

Genius.

That's the key test.
For me the winner is Viv Stanshall's Sir Henry in all its bad glory.

"If I had all the money I spent on booze.... I'd spend it on booze".

What a motto.

a little derided now and he may have been an unattractive chracter as a person - but most of what constitutes "modern" comedy is unimagineable without him.

Some of the material has not worn well but his observations remain pretty much spot on.

Good selection on Spotify

The Best of Rambling Syd Rumpo LP (released as a CD in 2005) gets me every time. The LP versions were specially recorded (i.e. not lifted from the Round the Horne radio show) in front of a live audience - their hearty guffaws are highly infectious.

of the jury, vada well at the eek of the poor ome who stands before you, his lallies trembling.

Surprised no-one's mentioned this yet.

The double LP of Woody Allen’s stand-up act from the mid-60s is one of my favourites, with some classic routines: the Vodka ad, the moose, the talking lift...

As a general rule, LPs of comedians’ acts recorded before they became TV regulars are usually good value. An American friend gave me a cassette of a Bill Cosby album, recorded way before The Cosby Show, and it was surprisingly funny, given the gentle/non-existent humour of the sitcom.

Can't believe 60 posts & no mention of Flight Of The Conchords. Funny & funky.

Have just come back from the Edinburgh festival and it boggles my mind that the comedy album has become such an afterthought in Britain nowadays. I would desperately love to have a recorded copy of the shows put on by Daniel Kitson, Stewart Lee, Andrew Lawrence, Pete Johansson, Jason Cook, Richard Herring, Paul Sinha and several others because they deserve posterity and will probably be almost as funny the second time around. It seems now its DVD or bust which is a shame. Kitson has released his 2004 show as a podcast so maybe that's the future to just release your material you can't use again for free a year later and use that as an advertisment of sorts for your latest show of brand-new material.

It's not like the market for the comedy album is dead, anyways. As atrocious as he is Dane Cook's first two albums went platinum in the States only a few years ago. I used to think that was because the standup album was more embedded in the culture there, but looking at that top 50 list that started the topic that's simply not the case.

Fortunately these are available on BBC CDs or, if you are technically advanced, on a radio. Marvellous.

There are loads of classic comedy albums - George Martin cut his teeth on some of the early ones, particularly by Peter Sellers. Some of them go way back (Hoffnung, Victor Borge, Spike Jones & The City Slickers) through to the more modern classics mentioned by many of the Massive (Blaster Bates, Goons, The Navy Lark, Hancock, Dad's Army, Billy Connolly, Secret Policemen's numerous Balls, Not The Nine O'Clock News) all the way up to those of modern times (anything by the Gossip, Little Boots, Franz Ferdinand, or The Streets).

:)

fond memories of listening on my walkman to cassettes of Derek and Clive.
If you saw someone failing to stifle his laughter whilst walking around The London College Of Printing wearing silly headphones in 1982, that was me.
And in reply to an earlier post, their are many echoes of Vic and Bob in The Mighty Boosh (indeed, I once made a group of young people watch '...Big Night Out' to prove the point) but the Boosh are still wonderful in their own right. (see also, Flight of The Conchords for echoes of The Mighty Boosh - it's like a great cosmic wheel of comedy)

were always good for a laugh.

I believe this eventually appeared on one but, the story goes that Cook pretty much threw it together on the fly at the first Secret Policeman's Ball.

For me, this is one of the pinnacles of British post-war satirical comedy.

Terry Allen, Lubbock On Everything
The Ramones first
Anything by the Bloodhound Gang
The Darkness

Sorry, it's my bedtime...