Women are now funnier than men

With female comedians taking centre stage, it’s like women have finally crossed a frontier that eluded them for generations, says Ed Power.

The triumph of the female comedian has been swift and emphatic. As recently as 2008, it was possible for the late essayist Christopher Hitchens to argue a funny woman was the show-business equivalent of a unicorn — we might very much like for such a thing to exist that but that didn’t make it any more plausible.

The situation is today changed utterly — at the top table, at least, comedy is a woman’s world.