British comedian Chris Gibbs has been described as a “comic genius” by the Globe and Mail, and “One of the funniest guys around” by the National Post. The Toronto Star has called his shows “darkly gleeful” and “comic stand-up gold”; and the CBC has said his delivery was “a combination of dry wit and barely controlled madness that threatens to go off the rails at any time”.

He has spent the last two decades creating and performing one-man comedy shows all over Canada and occasionally beyond; but sometimes he does other things too. He’s played at Just For Laughs in Montreal, performed stand-up in two CBC Winnipeg Comedy Festival Galas, He has won two Canadian Comedy Awards; Best Improv Troupe with ‘The Carnegie Hall Show’ and Best Comedic Play with ‘Plan “Live” From Outer Space’ He starred in the indie Canadian feature film, Run Robot Run, and in 2015, he played ‘Gizzardgulper’, one of the evil giants in the Disney feature The BFG, directed by Steven Spielberg.

Chris started his career in 1991, combining comedy with acrobatics in a street show in London’s Covent Garden. He spent the next few years honing his skills on the street while also performing in stand-up and improv shows around London. In 1993 he teamed up with a very, very funny performer named Peter Mielniczek to form the physical comedy duo ‘Hoopal’. They were quickly invited to perform in theatre, street and comedy festivals throughout Europe, and as far afield as Australia, New Zealand and best of all, Canada. In 1997 the two created their first indoor show, ‘A Quiet Night In’, at BATS theatre in the Wellington Fringe in NZ. The first review they ever received summed them up perfectly; “… it’s stupid, nonsensical, indulgent, pathetic, and insulting to the intelligence… I loved it!” Hoopal went on to create three more indoor shows, ‘A Very Different Night With Hoopal’, ‘Pure Hoopal’, and ‘Up Hoopal Creek’.

Chris moved to Canada in 2002 and immediately began writing and performing one-man shows. These include the stand-up comedy shows ‘A Legal Alien’ and ‘Like Father Like Son? Sorry’; the spoof motivational seminar ‘The Power of Ignorance’ co-written with TJ Dawe, and three plays about a detective in  Victorian London; ‘Not Quite Sherlock’, ‘Not Quite Sherlock: The Tunnel of Terror’, and ‘A Mystery at Murder Manor’.

Apart from live performance Chris can be found in print. A spoof self-help book based on the show ‘The Power of Ignorance’ was published by Brindle And Glass in 2006.

The Power of Ignorance: 14 Steps to Using Your Ignorance to Become Happier, Safer, More Confident and More Likeable, to Forget Your Limitations, Inspire Yourself with Successes You’ve Never Had, and Achieve Your Goals in Addition to Enhancing Your Ignorance To Promote All Those Things, and Well-Being Generally.

It is also, for some reason, available in Brazil.

Chris is currently working on a novel of ‘Not Quite Sherlock’