For the first time in its 43-year-history, male comedians are in the minority on the shortlist for the prestigious Edinburgh comedy award. The nominations for the prize, formerly known as the Perrier, also include two closely entwined pairs of comedians, with Catherine Bohart lining up against her former partner Sarah Keyworth, and Amy Gledhill pitted against the other half of her sketch double-act The Delightful Sausage (themselves twice previously nominated for the award), Chris Cantrill. Also featuring on the list are 2017’s best newcomer Natalie Palamides with the extraordinary Weer, and a pair of Australians: the tomfoolish Josh Glanc and the queer cabaret powerhouse Reuben Kaye.
The awards’ producer and West End impresario Nica Burns hailed the range of comic styles represented, “from clowning to character comedy to musical comedy and traditional standup”. The favourite is probably LA clown Palamides (already a Netflix star with her unforgettable special Nate), with an outrageous romcom pastiche that casts either side of her body as two lovers in a messy 1990s romance. East Midlander Keyworth’s show My Eyes Are Up Here, about their recent top surgery, already has a top prize in the bag from this year’s Melbourne comedy festival; acts including Hannah Gadsby with Nanette have done that awards double-whammy before. A victory for the singer and comedian Kaye would be seen as a vindication for his campaign, staged on and offstage, to resist burgeoning queerphobia in Australia and beyond.
Having secured best show nominations in 2019 and 2022 with The Delightful Sausage, the Yorkshire comics Gledhill and Cantrill’s solo shows both build exuberantly silly standup shows around issues in their personal lives: insecurities about her looks, in Gledhill’s case, and for Cantrill’s show (which Gledhill directs), loneliness in his newfound rural life. Bohart’s show Again, With Feelings is a career-best, an hour of thirtysomething panic from an Irishwoman completely unprepared for that moment when life demands one settle down. This year’s minority-male shortlist represents a significant turnaround for an award long bedevilled by bias in the other direction. When Bridget Christie won the prize in 2013, she was only the third woman to do so in its then 32-year history.
There could have been more on the shortlist: I’d say Katie Norris is unlucky to miss out on a nomination, and musical comics Flo & Joan, too, with their hot-ticket One-Man Musical. Meanwhile the best newcomer shortlist, also announced today, reverts to gender type. Candidates for the £5,000 prize are the fringe’s buzziest show, Joe Kent-Walters’ working men’s club-set hellscape Frankie Monroe: Live!!!; the playful American Demi Adejuyigbe; UK-based Singaporean Jin Hao Li; Abby Wambaugh, with The First 3 Minutes of 17 Shows; and Jack Skipper. Amid discussion this year about the changing role of the fringe, publicity for the awards was keen to stress Skipper’s roots in TikTok comedy. (TikTok partners with the Edinburgh fringe in its role as official “virtual stage” for the festival.) Some commentators have wondered aloud whether the fringe, traditionally a feeding frenzy for TV commissioners, can survive when comedy production on UK television is dwindling fast, and acts make their reputations as easily – and more affordably – on social media.
Perhaps the shortlist for the main award points to the same phenomenon. Contrary to the convention that a comedian’s year is built around premiering at the fringe, two of its shows (Bohart’s and Keyworth’s) made their UK bow many months ago at Soho theatre. And yet, they’re all still here, submitting themselves to an experience that, for all the changes happening beyond Edinburgh’s city limits, remains the best proving ground, and the most fun to be had, in world comedy.
The winners of the awards will be announced at a ceremony in Edinburgh on Saturday. The main prize is £10,000, and previous champions have included Frank Skinner, The League of Gentlemen, and Rose Matafeo, who herself contributed one of the finest standup hours at this year’s fringe, with her first show, On and On and On, since 2018 prize-winner Horndog. Last year’s winner, Ahir Shah’s show, Ends – which returned for a short run this August – is to be broadcast as a Netflix special in September. Which proves, if proof were needed, that reports of the death of the fringe, and its capacity to generate new superstars, have been greatly exaggerated.
