Jimmy Tingle

About Jimmy Tingle

Regarded as one of the top social and political humorists in America, Jimmy Tingle has worked as a stand up comic, producer, writer, actor, filmmaker and commentator in several mediums from the early 1980s to the present day.

He worked for two seasons with 60 Minutes II on CBS as the humorist / commentator in the Andy Rooney spot. He has worked as a contributor and satirist for MSNBC and has appeared on The Tonight Show, CNN with Tom Forman and Larry King’s Weekend, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The American Comedy Awards, as well as his own HBO half hour comedy special.

He has been a guest on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and was the US correspondent on The Strategic Humor Initiative with Sir David Frost on The BBC.

Tingle recently returned to school, earning a masters degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government where he was selected to give the graduate address at Harvard’s 2010 commencement ceremony.
His newest film Jimmy Tingle’s American Dream, directed by Vincent Straggas, won Best Documentary at the Independent Film Quarterly Film and New Media Festival in Los Angeles in 2011and aired on over 60 PBS affiliates around the US.

His latest one-person show Jimmy Tingle for President — The Funniest Campaign in History was an uproarious hit during the election cycle of 2012 with corporate clients, non profit groups and the general public, and is now available on DVD at his website.

Tingle has the rare distinction of winning the prestigious “Best of Boston” award as both a performer in 2001 in the “stand up comedy” category and as a producer in 2007 for Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theater.

Film credits include consulting and playing a television talk show host on Chris Rock’s Head of State; a neighborhood bartender in Next Stop Wonderland; a priest in Boondock Saints; and a restaurant owner in By the Sea. He played himself in the International Emmy winning arts documentary Damned in the USA and was a co star on the PBS travel documentary America with the Top Down

His theatrical credits include writing and starring in four one-person shows all of which were directed by Larry Arrick- Jimmy Tingle’s Uncommon Sense; Jimmy Tingle in the Promise Land; Jimmy Tingle’s American Dream and his latest production, Jimmy Tingle for President — The Funniest Campaign in History.

Tingle was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts where the social, political and economic diversity of that city laid the groundwork for his development as a performer and satirist. After graduating from Southeastern Massachusetts University in 1977 he started performing during the early stand up comedy scene in Boston in the 1980s and quickly rose through the ranks from open-mike performances to paid engagements, headlining at comedy clubs, theaters and colleges nationwide. His professional career has spanned nearly three decades.