About Us

About Us

Our aim is to administer an antidote to the daily grind delivering a mix of homemade and hand-picked distractions.

We are always looking for new contributors – so if you want to get involved send us some examples of your work.

The Poke aims to champion all manner of new and exciting comedy talent rising up from the internet, give them a platform and then work on developing projects together. We also love fast-turnaround topical stuff.

With the help of our growing army of followers we handpick the funniest stuff on the web delivering up to 10 daily updates.

The Poke Community

We have amassed over 2 Million fans who have signed up to Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube feeds plus our weekly newsletter.

Greg James told his Radio 1 listeners “The Poke is one of the funniest, most retweeted accounts on Twitter” and former Deputy PM John Prescott reckons that a retweet by The Poke is better than a peerage.

Poke Things

We remixed Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s tuition fees apology speech video – which chalked up 2.2 Million views on YouTube. It went on to become a Top 40 hit in the iTunes download chart.

The video was singled out as one of YouTube’s Top 10 Defining Moments Of The Year Read more about what happened > here.

The Poke was featured on a Greg James BBC Radio 1 documentary about internet trends and several of our videos have made appearances  on Channel 4’s Rude Tube as well as Have I Got News For You, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Graham Norton and Russell Howard’s Good News.

Leveson The Musical topped the Guardian’s Viral Video Chart and got nice write-ups in the Daily Telegraph and Huffington Post.

We’ve also had a bit of attention across the pond – in outlets like Time and in The New Yorker and New York Times for our Mad Men Mr Men comic strip.

We had 5000 requests for poster for our Daily Mail Tube Map – however Transport For London’s legal department weren’t very keen on us printing them so we didn’t.

One of our stories about a zombie invasion caused quite a stir in French media.

The Poke Events

We have have supported, LOCO London Comedy Film Festival, Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival, The Smalls Film Festival, Popcorn Comedy and Manchester’s CoFilmic.

Read what > The Guardian thought.


History

The Poke was founded in Aug 2002.

It started life as a magazine. 50,000 copies were printed and distributed via independent record shops and up at the Edinburgh Festival.

The idea was to provide an outlet for upcoming comedy writers.