A comedian who won the UK Pun Championships and was crowned the country's punniest performer has shared his top five gags.
Lee Brace, 40, has been performing comedy for years but he's been cracking puns for even longer, and he knows only too well that they can be met with laughter or a groan.
The Londoner described puns as the Marmite of the comedy world, but said performing at the UK Pun Championships was a breath of fresh air as everyone gathered was a proud pun lover.
And it turns out Lee's quite good with a pun, as he was crowned the winner - and now he's shared his top five gags, which saw him come out on top.
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Lee, who shares content on YouTube, said: "On Monday I won the UK Pun championships, it was good - an amazing feeling - It's a total sell out for the past six years, it's set in a life-size wrestling ring.
"It follows the format of a rap battle, in the boxing ring there's eight contestants, we get brought in in pairs to battle it out.
"Topics are picked randomly on the night. We get given 20 topics beforehand but we don't know what's going to be picked on the night.
"I've done comedy for about 20 years, on and off, and then I tended to do puns on social media but I've never done them live. I had to write about 200 puns and it's good to go up against other comedy writers and win it.
"I think I'm alright at them, I think."
"I like how simple puns are, and I just like the wordplay really. I like the fact they can get a groan from the audience, at the pun championships it's nice to see people crying with laughter at them, which doens't always happen.
"They're a bit like marmite, but at the championships, everyone goes for puns - it's their favourite type of humour.
"It's different to normal stand-up, when people are voting for you you win your round through whoops and cheers from the audience.
"Then you go through to the next round, it's totally the audience that decides.
"In my normal standup, I do lots of character stuff, I do one-liners and anecdotes, stuff like that. I'd like to say I'm Steeve Coogan-esque with my characters and my stand-up is kind of Lee Mack-ish."
Lee's favourite puns, which won him the competition are -
- I took my Spanish friend for a picnic at the weekend. He said “Gracias!” I said, “Yeah, I should have bought a blanket!”
- When I was a kid, my Mum used to run a dating site for chickens. She did whatever she could to make hens meet.
- I've just applied for a job as a waiter. Well, someone has to put food on the table.
- Whenever there's an eclipse, my Dad starts shaking and twitching. Lunar-tick!
- For Christmas, I bought my girlfriend a book about Hypochondria. Well, what do you buy the woman who has everything?
The event, held in Leicestershire, was hosted by Jason Byrne who picked topics at random for the competitors.
Other contestants were Ben Emmett, Cosmic Kat, Daniel Edison, Geoff Alderman, Kat Molinari, Lee Brace, Pauline Eyre, Daniel Edison, and Stevie Vegas.
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