Tim Vine
English comedian
Timothy Mark Vine (born 4 March 1967) is an English comedian, actor, writer and presenter best known for his puns and other one-liners and his role on the TV sitcom Not Going Out (2006–2012, 2014). He has also released a number of stand-up comedy specials and written several joke books.
From 2004 to 2014, Vine held the Guinness World Record for the most jokes told in an hour: each joke had to get a laugh from the audience to count towards the total, and he set the new record with 499 jokes. In both 2010 and 2014, he won the award for best joke at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and he was the runner-up for each of the three years between.
Early life
Timothy Mark Vine was born in the Cheam suburb of London on 4 March 1967, the son of Diana (née Tillett), a housewife and occasional doctor's receptionist, and Guy Vine (died 2018), a lecturer in civil engineering at North East Surrey College of Technology. He is the younger brother of broadcaster Jeremy Vine and the older brother of artist Sonya Vine. He was educated in Surrey, attending Lynton Prep in Ewell, Aberdour School in Burgh Heath, and Epsom College in Epsom.
Career
Stand-up
Vine's stand-up act consists primarily of a series of quick-fire one-liners and puns, along with comedic songs and a bagful of props.
Vine and a security guard from his office job in Croydon started doing open mic nights as a hobby. During 1991, Tim Vine regularly honed his routine at the Comedy Café in London, adding other clubs throughout 1992.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7804427. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967, 2006, 2012 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tim Vine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.