Described by Jay Leno as "the best joke writer in America," and considered by many, including "Weird Al" Yankovic, to be one of the funniest people on the planet, Emo Philips has performed over 6000 times throughout the English-speaking world, including a multi-week run at the Playhouse Theater in London's West End. Since starting out in Chicago in 1976 at the age of twenty, Emo has had award-winning comedy albums, several cable specials (including an hour-long one on HBO), and many appearances on network television, both in America and in the UK. He has appeared in films (most notably, as the table-saw demonstrator in UHF) and has lent his distinctive voice to animated TV shows (such as Slacker Cats, Doctor Katz, Adventure Time, and Home Movies), but his first love, stand-up, remains his true one.

"Has a glitteringly sharp comic mind. It's hard to criticise when your windpipe is in a reef knot from concussive laughter."

-Sunday Herald



"The absence has only made his heart grow funnier...one spot-on gag after another...his carefully constructed lunacy threatens to give the shambolic world of stand-up a good name."

-Metro



"It's a relief to discover the straightforward gagman…as a master of one-liners, he's way ahead of anyone else."

-The Independent



"A fascinating comedian. His stage persona masks how incredibly professional he is…a master gagsman."

-Scotland On Sunday



"His jokes are gold. And it's not just the way he tells them; it's the number of jokes he has....Absolutely top of the class in the laughing academy."

-The List



"Utterly idiosyncratic. Refreshing, cranky and extraordinarily funny."

-The Times



"Perfection….he sets demanding standards for any comic to achieve, and that even includes himself."

-Chortle



"If Kafka had done stand-up comedy, he might have talked and looked like Emo Philips."

-The New Yorker



"The E.T. of comedy…. A wise child spewing barbed aphorisms."

-The New York Times



"If David Lynch is Jimmy Stewart from Mars, Emo is Buster Keaton from Venus…."

-Evening Standard

"A postgraduate course in lunacy from the master of macabre mischief, incapable of presenting a stale premise or uttering a flat line. He is the velociraptor of comedy: smart, sneaky and merciless."-Star Tribune"His jokes are more perfectly constructed, and his personality more compelling, than anyone else's...his comic fusillade is irresistible."-The Guardian