Louis Virtel

Comedian and television star Louis Virtel first rose to prominence as a contestant on game show Jeopardy!. Virtel won an army of fans after throwing out a sassy retro-cool snap after answering a Daily Double correctly, and the clip soon went viral racking up more than 3 million YouTube views. Since his rise to fame he has appeared as a pundit on The Bio Channel, CNN and HLN and on Chelsea Lately. He is also the co-host of podcast Keep It!.

Virtel grew up in Lemont, Illinois and was huge fan of gameshows growing up. Feeling as if he was the only gay person in Illinois apart from his neighbour, he moved to Iowa to study journalism and landed an internship with The Advocate, finally finding his calling and crowd in Iowa City.

After graduating Virtel relocated to L.A where he wrote for Movieline and began to perform stand-up comedy on the side. Although he never took his comedy seriously at first, others soon began to take notice and his YouTube series Verbal Vogueing – featuring his famous snap whilst exploring pop culture and daily issues – became an online hit. The popular series also landed Virtel a gig writing After Elton (MTV’s gay blog), followed by his own show The Snap for the HitFix entertainment news website.

Virtel says he wants “To let people know that gayness exists and it’s OK”, and with his career on an unstoppable rise his ambition to become the “Madonna of comedy” is becoming a reality.