Ed Smeall Bio

Ed Smeall started his career in the early 70's as a concert promoter in Montreal working with such artists as Dave Brubeck, Lionel Hampton, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Jackie Mason, Billy Preston, Loggins & Messina, Bill Withers, to name just a few.

Shortly after he formed a booking agency that became so successful that the number one agency in Canada at the time bought him out and moved him to their Head Office in Toronto. A few years later he left Concept 376 and formed The Agency which became Canada's largest contemporary music agency. The Agency handled the live appearances of Bryan Adams, RUSH , The Guess Who, Loverboy, Gino Vanelli, Chris DeBurgh, & Bachman Turner Overdrive to just name a few. Ed was also the personal agent for many recording acts including Corey Hart, Spoons, & Men Without Hats.

He left The Agency after 10 years to become an entertainment consultant and manage some artists. His first client was Concerts Productions International where he was hired to market close circuit boxing matches by satellite across Canada, involving top level fighters such as Sugar Ray Leonard and Mike Tyson.

In 1986, he was hired as a consultant by Yuk Yuk's to set-up a booking agency for their comedians. At the same time he continued to run his own management firm managing Virgin recording artists The Northern Pikes. When The Northern Pikes first album went gold and started working internationally, he left Yuk Yuk's to concentrate full-time on artist management.

Five years later and after three gold albums, he parted ways with The Northern Pikes and came back to Yuk Yuk's where he stayed until 2004 when he got the bug to go back into artist management. In July of 2004, Ed opened Giggles Comedy Agency with just 2 acts, Russell Peters and Scott Harris. Shortly thereafter a fan leaked a video clip of Russell Peters onto the internet. Ed saw this as an opportunity to broadcast Russell to the world and unleashed a relentless e-mail campaign that soon saw 3,000,000 hits to his website. Today Russell Peters is one of the most successful touring comedians in the world. In 2009 he made the Forbes list as one of the Top 10 earning comedians in the world. Russell has moved on to Los Angeles but Ed stayed behind with his wife and 4 children and continues to pursue his passion of booking entertainers all around the world from his home base in Toronto. In December of 2008, Ed fulfilled another dream, of booking an entertainer on all 7 continents, when he booked an act into the Antarctica on Christmas Day, 2008.

Giggles Comedy Agency books entertainers at major corporate events, conventions, association meetings, community events, sport team fundraisers, cruise ships and comedy festivals.