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1. William Shakespeare Not always my favourite - but Andrew Aguecheek, from whom I stole Percy in Blackadder - is my favourite ever funny character - and the play in Act 5 of Midsummer Night's Dream is my favourite ever comic scene. 2. Laurence Sterne Tristram Shandy the funniest, maddest, most illogical and wondrous book I ever read. 3. Charles Dickens Time and again he creates extraordinary, repetitive characters, who then turn out to have these extraordinary touching inner lives and inner goodness. And then, because I'm a philistine I move into the 20th century … 4. WC Fields The perfect Micawber - and, in fact, always and still perfectly, bizarrely funny. 5. Groucho Marx He sums up the comic energy that I'm always striving for and never achieve. 6. Woody Allen The greatest maker of comedy films, in all shapes, textures and depths. 7. Bette Midler Her reputation has become watered down recently, but when I first saw her live, she seemed to me the most fabulous woman who ever lived. 8. John Cleese I suspect the episodes of Fawlty Towers are the 12 greatest comic plays ever written in English. 9. Rowan Atkinson My pal and a genius. 10. Simon Bell Another wonderful friend of mine - not a professional performer - just to remind me that all of us professionally funny people are only aspiring to elicit the wonderful laughter we get all the time when we're with our friends and fooling. Back to Your millennium Vote >> More on French and Saunders's choices >>

Richard Curtis
Richard Curtis is the writer behind three of the most successful British films ever: Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Mr Bean.
In July Notting Hill broke the $100m barrier in the United States, beating British box office records in the US.
His other British comedy successes include the classic television series Blackadder and The Vicar of Dibley.
Richard Curtis is the co-founder and vice-chairman of British Comic Relief, the organisation that runs Red Nose Day.
He is an MBE with two Oscar nominations and several awards under his belt, including the Writers Guild of Great Britain Comedy Lifetime Achievement Award.

The next project is helping to fill the millennium Dome with a Blackadder special, starring his friend Rowan Atkinson and featuring 1,000 years of British history.