1. Nick Helm – “I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” 2. Tim Vine – “Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels.”

3. Hannibal Buress – “People say ‘I'm taking it one day at a time.’ You know what? So is everybody. That's how time works.”

4. Tim Key – “Drive Thru McDonalds was more expensive than I thought ... once you've hired the car ...”

5. Matt Kirshen – “I was playing chess with my friend and he said, 'Let's make this interesting'. So we stopped playing chess.”

6. Sarah Millican – “My mother told me, you don’t have to put anything in your mouth you don’t want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards.”

7. Alan Sharp – “I was in a band which we called The Prevention, because we hoped people would say we were better than The Cure.”

8. Mark Watson – “Someone asked me recently – what would I rather give up, food or sex. Neither! I’m not falling for that one again, wife.”

9. Andrew Lawrence – “I admire these phone hackers. I think they have a lot of patience. I can’t even be bothered to check my OWN voicemails.”

10. DeAnne Smith – “My friend died doing what he loved ... Heroin.”

The best of the worst 1. Tim Vine – “Uncle Ben has died. No more Mr Rice Guy.”

2. Josh Howie – I've got nothing against the Chinese. Don't get me Wong.

3. Mark Olver – “During my first murder I was like a dyslexic having my back teeth removed ... losing my morals.”

Oh...and the best of 2010 1. Tim Vine "I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again."

2. David Gibson "I'm currently dating a couple of anorexics. Two birds, one stone."

3. Emo Philips "I picked up a hitch hiker. You've got to when you hit them."

4. Jack Whitehall "I bought one of those anti-bullying wristbands when they first came out. I say 'bought', I actually stole it off a short, fat ginger kid."

5. Gary Delaney "As a kid I was made to walk the plank. We couldn't afford a dog."

6. John Bishop "Being an England supporter is like being the over-optimistic parents of the fat kid on sports day."

7. Bo Burnham "What do you call a kid with no arms and an eyepatch? Names."

8. Gary Delaney "Dave drowned. So at the funeral we got him a wreath in the shape of a lifebelt. Well, it's what he would have wanted."

9. Robert White "For Vanessa Feltz, life is like a box of chocolates: Empty."

10. Gareth Richards "Wooden spoons are great. You can either use them to prepare food. Or, if you can't be bothered with that, just write a number on one and walk into a pub…"

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAy1zBtTbw] A follow-up to THIS POST on French street artist JR who won the 2011 TED prize. Lovely talk from JR as he explains what makes him tick and how we can use art to turn things inside out and upside down.

Find out more about and get involved in his projects here. Watch that film all the way through. Listen to what he says. It's really very beautiful and will bring tears to your eyes.

"What we see, changes what we are."

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxiSP_ch_oI] What is the true call of the wild? Here we travel down a very special river and are introduced to a wide variety of the animal kingdom who all contribute their name for the sake of music.

Directed by Damon Gameau Tropfest Australia ( world's biggest short-film festival, 700 entries, 16 finalists)

I mean, I liiiike it and all that. Shame he didn't go into full chopsticks with the dolphin chorus. Nice idea though.

Tropfest website says: 'The winning film is a branch into animation by Underbelly and Balibo actor Gameau, with a catchy lyrical and poetic narrative. The film was shot in his mother’s spare room for just $85 and on a liquid detox diet with his girlfriend by his side – somehow they are still together. “I’m quite new to stop animation, but I find it a quick and versatile way to express any idea that may be lurking in my head,” he says.'

JR exhibits his photographs in the biggest art gallery on the planet. His work is presented freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not museum visitors. His work mixes Art and Action; it talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xVNFEvC5ns]

JR’s career as a photographer began when he found a camera in the Paris subway. In his first major project, in 2001 and 2002, JR toured and photographed street art around Europe, tracking the people who communicate their messages to the world on walls. His first large-format postings began appearing on walls in Paris and Rome in 2003. His first book, Carnet de rue par JR, about street artists, appeared in 2005.

In 2006, he launched “Portrait of a Generation,” huge-format portraits of suburban “thugs” from Paris’ notorious banlieues, posted on the walls of the bourgeois districts of Paris. This illegal project became official when Paris City Hall wrapped its own building in JR’s photos.

In 2007, with business partner Marco, he did “Face 2 Face,” which some consider the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever. JR and a grassroots team of community members posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and on both sides of the security fence/separation barrier.

He embarked on a long international trip in 2008 for his exhibition “Women Are Heroes,” a project underlining the dignity of women who are the target of conflict. In 2010, the film Women Are Heroes was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and received a long standing ovation.

JR is currently working on two projects: “Wrinkles of the City,” which questions the memory of a city and its inhabitants; and Unframed, which reinterprets famous photographs and photographers by taking photos from museum archives and exposing them to the world as huge-format photos on the walls of cities. It asks the question: What is the art piece then? The original photo, the photo “unframed” by JR or both?

JR creates pervasive art that spreads uninvited on buildings of Parisian slums, on walls in the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa or in favelas in Brazil. People in the exhibit communities, those who often live with the bare minimum, discover something absolutely unnecessary but utterly wonderful. And they don’t just see it, they make it. Elderly women become models for a day; kids turn into artists for a week. In this art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.

After these local exhibitions, two important things happen: The images are transported to London, New York, Berlin or Amsterdam where new people interpret them in the light of their own personal experience. And ongoing art and craft workshops in the originating community continue the work of celebrating everyone who lives there.

As he is anonymous and doesn’t explain his huge full-frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passerby/ interpreter.

This is what JR is working on: raising questions…

Portrait of JR photo credit: © Christopher Shay Original link and copy for this page (with more images) at TED.