- Ken Kesey
Kenneth Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 - November 10, 2001) was an American author, best known for his novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", and as a counter-cultural figure who, some consider, was a link between the "beat generation" of the 1950s and the "hippies" of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a hippie," Kesey said in a 1999 interview with Robert K. Elder.
- Mel Gibson
Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson (born January 3 1956) is an American-born actor, director, and producer raised primarily in Australia. After establishing himself as a household name with the "Mad Max" and "Lethal Weapon" series, Gibson went on to direct and star in the Academy Award-winning "Braveheart". Gibson's direction of "Braveheart" made him the sixth actor-turned-filmmaker to receive an Oscar for Best Director.
- Joey Skaggs
Joey Skaggs (born 1945) is a U.S. media prankster who has organized numerous successful hoaxes and other presentations. He is considered one of the originators of the phenomenon known as culture jamming. In his youth, Skaggs studied at the High School of Art and Design and School of Visual Arts in New York. Between 1966 and 1968, Skaggs organized crucifixion performances on Easter Sundays.
- Justin Timberlake
Justin Randall Timberlake, (born January 31 1981), sometimes known as JT, is an American pop-R&B singer and actor. He came to fame as the frontman of pop boy band 'N Sync and has won four Grammy Awards. In 2002, he released his debut solo album, "Justified", which sold over seven million copies worldwide. Timberlake's second solo release, "FutureSex/LoveSounds", was released in 2006 with the #1 U.S. hit singles "SexyBack", "My Love", …
- Ashton Kutcher
Christopher Ashton Kutcher, (born February 71978) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is an American actor. He came to fame in the late nineties by playing Michael Kelso in the television series "That '70s Show", and is known for the MTV celebrity prank show "Punk'd". He has become a lead actor in Hollywood films, and a television producer and creator of television series such as "Punk'd" and "Beauty and the Geek", as well as others.
- Alan Abel
Alan Abel (b. 1930) is an American prankster, hoaxter, writer, mockumentary filmmaker, and jazz percussionist famous for several hoaxes that became media circuses.
- Tony Hawk
Anthony Frank Hawk is a professional American skateboarder. He is considered one of the most successful and influential persons of modern vertical skateboarding. He is credited with the invention of many aerial skateboard tricks including the Stalefish, Madonna, and McHawk, and over 80 others, but is most famous for being the first to land the 900 (two and a half rotations-900°-in the air before landing back on the pipe) during the televised June 27, 1999 X Games, …
- Luther Blissett
Luther Blissett is a multiple-use name, an "open reputation" informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and social activists all over Europe and South America since Summer 1994. On the Usenet, the first reference to the Luther Blissett Project appeared on 7 November 1994. It was a trumped-up report on alleged uses of the multiple name all over the world, …
- Allen Funt
Allen Funt (September 16, 1914 - September 5 1999) was an American producer-director, best known as the creator and host of "Candid Camera" from the 1940s to 1980s, as either a regular show or a series of specials. Its most notable run was from 1960 to 1967 on CBS.
- Jeremy Beadle
Jeremy Beadle (born April 12 1948) is an English television presenter, writer and producer, born in Hackney, London.
- Noel Edmonds
Noel Ernest Edmonds (born 22 December 1948 in Ilford, Essex) is a British television presenter, DJ and executive who made his name on BBC Radio 1 in the UK. He is more recently known as the presenter of the television gameshow "Deal or No Deal". Edmonds has also worked closely with Richard L. Lewis, who has written and produced various programmes that Edmonds has worked on.
- John Safran
John Safran (born 1972) is an Australian documentarian and media personality, well known for pranks and indelicate handling of controversial issues. He is known for his outlandish stunts such as rummaging through Australian television personality Ray Martin's rubbish in "John Safran: Media Tycoon" (an early pilot for a TV series), placing a temporary fatwa on the life of Rove McManus, …
- Hugh Troy
Hugh Charles Troy, Jr. (1906 - 1964) was a US painter who is noted for his pranks. Troy was a son of a Cornell University dairy professor of the same name, and both father and son were members of the Quill and Dagger society. Troy attended Cornell as an architecture student from 1922 to 1927, although he was suspended without receiving a degree due to a particular joke that offended the administration. Although many of his practical jokes on campus are legendary, …
- Joe Orton
Joe Orton (1 January, 1933, Leicester, England - 9 August, 1967, Islington, London), born John Kingsley Orton, was a satirical modern playwright. In a short but prolific career from 1964 until his death, he shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. "Ortonesque" became a recognised term for "outrageously macabre".
- Horace de Vere Cole
William Horace de Vere Cole (May 5, 1881-February 25, 1936) was a British eccentric prankster. His most famous trick was the Dreadnought hoax in 1910 when he fooled the captain of the famous Royal Navy ship. As an undergraduate at Cambridge University, Cole dressed as a sultan of Zanzibar - who was visiting London at the time - and made an official visit to his own college. Once he disguised himself to look like prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, …
- Jim Moran
James S. "Jim" Moran (January 1, 1908-October 18, 1999) was an imaginative publicist who was active in the 1940s and 1950s as a press agent for various clients: film studios, manufacturers and retailers. Moran made his mark when he went to Alaska on behalf of General Electric and sold a refrigerator to an Eskimo. He promoted a real-estate development by spending days looking for a needle that had been dropped into a haystack.
- Igor Vamos
Igor Vamos (also known as Mike Bonanno) is one of the leading members of The Yes Men, a culture jamming activist group. Their exploits in "identity correction" are documented in the film "The Yes Men". Known as Frank, he is a co-founder of RTmark. As Igor Vamos, he teaches Media Interventions and New Media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
- Harry Reichenbach
Harry Reichenbach (1882-1931) was a US press agent and publicist who dreamed up sensational publicity stunts to promote films. He worked both for actors, as an agent, and for the studios as a promoter. Among his first jobs was to promote a woman called "Sober Sue" who never smiled. He got her a contract at the Victoria Theater on Broadway and made them offer $1000 to any New York comedian who could make her laugh. Actually, the woman had Mobius syndrome - ie.
- Kayvan Novak
Kayvan Novak (November 23 1978, London, UK) is a British television actor of Pakistani origin. He has appeared in medical drama Holby City, spy series Spooks, and most recently as an Iranian intelligence officer in the Academy Award-winning film Syriana alongside Matt Damon and George Clooney. In 2005 he and Ed Tracy created Fonejacker, a prank call-based show as part of Comedy Lab for Channel 4. After the pilot, he was given a Christmas special.
- Jacques Servin
Jacques Servin (also known as Andy Bichlbaum) is one of the leading members of The Yes Men, a culture jamming activist group. Their exploits in "identity correction" are documented in the film "The Yes Men". As Ray Thomas, he is a co-founder of RTMark. He is a former Maxis employee, who was fired after secretly adding code into the game SimCopter, …
- Dick Tuck
Dick Tuck (b. 1924) was a U.S. Democratic Party campaign strategist, advance man, and political prankster. He began his career dogging Richard M. Nixon in the 1950s while working for U.S. Senate candidate Helen Gahagan Douglas, who had been subject to red-baiting by Nixon.
- Lance Krall
Lance Krall (born December 9, 1970 in Monterey, California) is an American comedian and actor, television writer, director, and producer. He is best known for his role in faux-reality show "The Joe Schmo Show".
- Brian G. Hughes
Brian G. Hughes (1849 - 1924) was a US businessman and practical joker. Hughes was a paper-box manufacturer and founder of the Dollar Savings Bank. Once he "donated" a plot of ground in Brooklyn to the Board of Aldermen who planned to have it made a public park. It turned out to be a 2- x 8-foot plot of ground near 6th Avenue and 63rd Street.
- Victor Lewis-Smith
Victor Lewis-Smith is a British satirist, producer, critic and prankster. He was educated at the University of York. He is known for his sarcasm and biting criticism.
- Karl Power
Karl Power (nicknamed "Fat Neck") from Droylsden, Manchester, is a sporting hoaxter, known for appearing, uninvited, at sporting events. Most notoriously he appeared in the Manchester United team photo before a Champions League match against Bayern Munich. After the stunt, there was a nationwide manhunt in the United Kingdom for the prankster with tabloid newspapers asking their readers to write in and give them information.
- Geoffrey Cohen
Geoffrey Cohen is a multiple-use name or nom de plume, an "open reputation" informally adopted and shared by members of Jewdas and Jewish activists all over Britain. The first known reference to Geoffrey Cohen appeared on 26 September 2006 in an article by Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent for The Times. <blockquote> "It’s not about the polarities of either abandoning the past or returning to it.
- Charles Vance Millar
Charles Vance Millar (1853 - October 31 1926) was a Canadian lawyer and financier.
- Kevin Conde
Kevin Conde was a former US security police officer near RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters (now abandoned) in England, best known for an alleged prank on fellow security personnel relating to a UFO sighting known as the Rendlesham Forest Incident. The incident was covered by the BBC documentary program 'Inside Out'. According to an 'exclusive confession' made to the BBC, this claim was a hoax.
- Ellen Sappington
- Jennifer Vincent
- Joshua Meyerson
- Julie Wilde
- Jack Fitzpatric
- Kurt Schmaljohn
- Charl E Brown
- Kimberly Aboltin
- Emily Kersman
- Nicholas Thomas
- Dex Bell
- Merry 2merry Pranksters