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Dan Antopolski's surreal won him the BBC New Comedy Award in 1998 as well as Perrier Award nomination in 2001. Dan has performed at the usual comedy clubs as well as international comedy festivals, with appearances at Montreal, Melbourne and New York.

And as an actor, Dan has starred in the BBC Two sci-fi spoof Hyperdrive as technical officer Jeffers and appeared in the Da Vinci Code movie as Jesus

Dan Antopolski – Silent But Deadly - Fringe 2009
Live Review

If Dan Antopolski felt a little abashed at winning the prize for the funniest joke at the Fringe with his nifty one-liner about hedgehogs, he nevertheless slips amusingly awkward, avowed admiration for the award’s sponsors, TV channel Dave, into the wallchart routine in which he extrapolates a reviewer’s view of him as ‘edgy’ into a league table of Jim Jeffries, Michael McIntyre and various shapes of furniture.

As bewildered as he is about his fresh success and perceived edge, he frequently seems equally bemused by his own imagination and invention, such as the mechanism with which he hoiks his wallcharts into his grasp. The more memorable of these is a stunningly funny statistical survey of various body parts laughed off in the US and UK. Juvenile crudity with recourse to maths, biology and cultural relativism, yes. Edgy, no.

In fact, Antopolski employs virtually every type of comedy here except boundary-prodding offensiveness, his assured blend of geeky arrogance turning even the suggestion of wife-swapping into an oblique acknowledgement of the credit crunch. Deft one-liners follow daft but lyrically dense rapping; martial arts displays precede one of the freakiest visual takes on Obama-worship yet. Antopolski possesses considerable game and although he knows it, he’s learned to rein in his more self-indulgent tendencies for his audience’s benefit.

He’s also got children. While he’s not above trotting out a few ‘kids say the funniest things’ observations, the young Antopolskis are chips off the old block, their wide-eyed intelligence but lack of tact depositing their father in scenarios of acute social embarrassment. Still, they do make him more attractive to women.

There are occasional misfires, as in a recalled pub scuffle hinging on the word ‘decimation’ that requires rather too much framing, while his closing rap, dissing a guy whose mother works at McDonald’s is less impressive than the scene-by-scene rhymes of his seduction technique in the show’s middle.

All in all, a fine, multi-faceted show that probably deserved to win some kind of award or other.

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Saw Dan at Pontardawe last night. Felt really sorry for him as alot of his gags people didn't get. He wasn't really given a warmed up crowd by the compere and there was a table of nobheads chatting and laughing that made it difficult to hear every word, which is important with Dan's stuff. I for one was laughing a lot. I actually went to the gig so see Dan in particular and thought the material was excellent. Tough crowd Dan, dont sweat it!

James, December 2009

I think Dan's material is a huge joy to watch. Cerebral, interesting and full of odd twists. It's the sort of comedy you have to watch with concentration, but the rewards for paying attention are always there. Always worth seeing.

Steve McBride, October 2009

Agree with Jason below, funniest man in Britain!

Clare, September 2009

Just saw his Edinburgh show - completely brilliant. So many different ideas, so many brilliant jokes. Dan Antopolski is one of the best comics in Britain. There I've said it!

Jason, August 2009

Saw him at Late and Live on Sunday. He did a great set and then his rap about McDonalds absolutely blew the roof off. Then he and American comic Des Bishop did a sort of rap-off and Dan did a bit from one of last year's raps (which I had seen) but it was great second time. Top notch comic!

Duncan, August 2009

Has a good rap about sandwiches. Anyone heard it? I reckon it'd kill at The Glee.

Brendon Burns, June 2009

Thank you Takk for that full account, detailing every nuance of that forgettable but now immortalised gig. You may wish to know that in the Cardiff Glee the following week I repeated the trick - cold and yet irresolute, as if distracted by trying to translate my ideas into your language Knuckle-draglish. However my rap about sandwiches is not bad - instead it is good. You are bad: you smell, you are ugly, have no money, you cannot even type the word Tall, which is a stupid name in any case. Look, anyone can write anything on this comments page: wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee wee. Chortle, you better put in all those wees: this is my work. Thank you.

Dan Antopolski, May 2009

Saw him at Birmingham Glee Club and, frankly, he was pretty awful. Either he was trying too hard to be too clever or his delivery was totally off (both in my honest opinion). Still, he perservered (with little success it had to be said). His rap about sandwiches was, well, just embarrassing. His anecdotes about his world were just not believable - for example when he recalled a situation where his two kids were asking him to sing the song about the brown man and the yellow man while travelling on the tube, his delivery meant it was hard to believe that he actually had two kids thus rendering the gag useless. Only a throw-in line about raping a tramp raised any sort of reaction from what had proved a pretty jovial audience who either were too polite or too bored to even bother heckling him. That kind of summed him up really.

Takk, May 2009

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