The Great Indian Laughter Challenge

The Great Indian Laughter Challenge is an Indian reality stand-up comedy series produced by Endemol India. The first four seasons aired on STAR One from 15 June 2005 to 26 September 2008.^[1][2][3] The show's fifth season premiered on 30 September 2017 on STAR Plus and was judged by Akshay Kumar.^[4]

The Great Indian Laughter Challenge
Genre	Reality
Country of origin	India
Original language	Hindi
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	193
Production
Production location	Mumbai
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	approximately 48 minutes
Production company	Endemol
Original release
Network	STAR One (season 1–4) STAR Plus (season 5)
Release	3 June 2005 (2005-06-03) – 30 December 2017 (2017-12-30)
Related
Laughter Knights

The show is based on a format where stand-up comedians perform and entertain judges and the studio audience with their comedy skills. The first three seasons of the show saw Shekhar Suman, an eminent TV personality and Navjot Singh Sidhu, former cricketer, cricket color commentator and Punjab politician."^[5] The show's initial episodes were hosted by Parizaad Kolah Marshall and later she was replaced by Shonali Nagrani. The fifth season is being hosted by Elli Avram. The set was designed by noted Bollywood production designer Nitin Chandrakant Desai.^[6] In the fourth season, Shatrughan Sinha replaced Navjot Singh Sidhu as judge as per season.

Seasons

In the first season, Sunil Pal was the winner, Ahsaan Qureshi was runner up and Raju Srivastava was second runner up. In the second season contestants from Pakistan were present and the winner Rauf Lala was from Pakistan. The third season was won by Kapil Sharma and the first runner up was Chandan Prabhakar both from Amritsar. Many other talented comedians like Siraj Khan, Sudesh Lehari, Rajiv Thakur, Bharti Singh, Navin Prabhakar, Jassi Kochar, Khayaali, Dipoo Srivastava, Ahsaan Qureshi have appeared in the show.

The first two seasons were followed by another show, The Great Indian Laughter Champions, which included top performers of the previous shows. Here also the judges were Sidhu and Shekar including some celebrity guests as well.

Recently the first woman to participate was Aarti Kandpal. The fourth season's finalists were Rasbihari Gaur, Bharti Singh, Suresh Albela, and a duo Sikander Sanam-Wali Sheikh (veteran stage comedians from Pakistan). The winner for the fourth season after a tough laughter war was Suresh Albela.

Season 5 had 3 mentors Zakir Khan, Hussain Dalal and Mallika Dua later replaced by Sajid Khan and Shreyas Talpade who along with Akshay Kumar, will select 12 finalists who will compete for the title.

Season I 2005

• Sunil Pal (Winner)
• Ahsaan Qureshi (First Runner-up)
• Raju Srivastava (Second Runner-up)
• Naveen Prabhakar
• Bhagwant Mann
• Parag Kansara

Season II 2006

• Rauf Lala (Winner)^[7]
• Rajeev Nigam (Runner-up)
• Khayali
• Pratap Faujdar
• Irfan Malik and Ali Hassan (Pakistan)
• Amanullah (Guest Appearance)
• Dr. Tushar Shah
• Rajkumar Javkar
• Saransh Bhardwaj (guest appearance)^[8]
• Gaurav K. Jha

Season III 2007

• Kapil Sharma (Winner)
• Sudesh Lehri ( Runner-up)
• Chandan Prabhakar ( Second Runner-up)
• Bharti Singh
• Deepak Saini
• Rajeev Thakur
• Parvez Siddiqui (Pakistan)

Season IV 2008

Winner of season 4, Suresh Albela.

• Suresh Albela (Winner )
• Sikandar Sanam (First Runner-up) (Pakistan)
• Bharti Singh (Second runner-up)
• Rasbihari Gaur (Third runner-up)
• Sunil Thakkar (Houston, TX)
• Wali Sheikh (Pakistan)
• Jaswant Singh
• Srikant Maski
• Ramdas Yeole
• Rehan Jamal (Pakistan)
• Sugandha Mishra
• Vinod Rathore
• Anirudh Madesia

Season V - 2017

• Abhishek Walia (Winner)
• Nitesh Shetty (Runner up)
• Vighnesh Pande
• Mohd Anas
• Parvindar Singh
• Vishwash Chauhan
• Shyam Rangeela
• Abhay Kumar
• Naman Jain
• Sumit Sourav
• Shikha Singh
• Vidushi Swaroop
• Ajay Singh Chauhan
• Gaurav Gupta
• Jayvijay Sachan
• Haider Rizvi (writer)
• Vankush Arora (Writer)