Stand aside Stephen Fry...

Move over Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais is the most influential comedian on Twitter.

Fry has been knocked into third place in the Chortle survey of the Top 50 UK comics on the microblogging site, after Frankie Boyle.

It has taken Gervais just eight months to take the crown, since he only joined the site last autumn.

Although Gervais has fewer followers – 2.5million compared to Fry’s 4.5million – our chart has been compiled using a measure of how much influence each comic has.

We have used the Klout score, which takes into account how widely tweets are retweeted and responded to, so measures more active engagement rather than just number of followers. Every Twitter user has a Klout score of between one and 100 – and with 86 points Gervais outranks Fry.

Boyle has an even more modest 681,000 followers – but his controversial gags are widely retweeted.

Fry, sometimes dubbed ‘the Patron Saint of Twitter,’ topped a similar survey of comedians run by the Peerindex site in January last year – but Gervais only joined in October. He previously said he ‘didn’t see the point’ of Twitter, but quickly embraced it.

Gervais said today: 'It's a great honour to be the most influential comedian on Twitter. I haven't felt this proud since I was named "Most interesting man in telesales, 1996."'

Our full top 50 is below. Klout scores have been rounded, which is why all the people listed with the same score aren't equally ranked. We have counted only UK or predominantly UK-based comedians.

The 50 most influential comics on Twitter

1. Ricky Gervais 86
2. Frankie Boyle 83
3. Stephen Fry 81
4. Alan Carr 80
5. James Corden 80
6. Simon Pegg 79
7. Russell Brand 77
8. Dara O Briain 76
9. Sarah Millican 75
10. Graham Linehan 74
11. Jonathan Ross 74
12. Charlie Brooker 74
13. Jack Whitehall 73
14. Al Murray 71
15. Leigh Francis 71
16. Peter Serafinowicz 71
17. Chris Addison 70
18. Eddie Izzard 69
19. Mark Gatiss 69
20. Armando Iannucci 69
21. Jimmy Carr 68
22. Ross Noble 68
23. Rufus Hound 68
24. Tim Minchin 67
25. Robin Ince 66
26. David Baddiel 66
27. Dave Gorman 66
28. Miranda Hart 65
29. Graham Norton 65
30. Alan Davies 65
31. Richard Herring 65
32. Rob Brydon 64
33. Mat Horne 64
34. Jack Dee 64
35. David O'Doherty 64
36. Russell Howard 63
37. Sue Perkins 63
38. David Mitchell 63
39. Bill Bailey 62
40. Josie Long 62
41. Mark Steel 61
42. Stephen Merchant 60
43. Sharon Horgan 60
44. Boothby Graffoe 60
45. Bob Mortimer 60
46. Tony Cowards 59
47. Marcus Brigstocke 59
48. Omid Djalili 59
49. Mark Watson 59
50. John Cleese 58

Note: The initial version of this story overlooked Boyle and Graham Norton at No 28 for which we apologise.

Published: 21 Jun 2012