The comedy industry, standups with dreams of glory and canapé waiters all breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday night: the Edinburgh comedy awards have been saved. The awards, considered comedy’s Oscars since their inception in 1981, were under threat after the withdrawal of their previous sponsor, the TV channel Dave, in May. But last night, their director Nica Burns announced three new backers.
The new sponsors are Sky, the TV producer and distributor DLT Entertainment, and the Victoria Wood Foundation, and they will respectively lend their names to the best show, best newcomer and panel prize awards. Burns said: “I cannot thank [them] enough for responding so swiftly and decisively in the true spirit of the fringe. It’s a wonderful endorsement of the awards’ place in the fabric of Edinburgh.” The awards had faced cancellation this summer, after 40 years of star-making on the fringe. Some of its celebrated previous winners include Frank Skinner, Bridget Christie, Hannah Gadsby and Steve Coogan.
Since the end of their relationship with original sponsor, Perrier, in 2005, the awards have been financed by a succession of organisations, with West End impresario Burns herself funding them (the cost is estimated at £200,000) in 2009 and 2018 when backers were not forthcoming. Post-Covid, she said, “how business is conducted and how everyone manages their budgets has all changed”, and the old model was no longer sustainable. “The route of one big title sponsor is over.” The plan is for the prize to be placed into a charitable trust, allowing it to fundraise smaller sums and access budgets from a wider range of sources.
“This puts us in a position to withstand any future crisis,” said Burns. “With this [rescue package] being pulled off so quickly and successfully, we now have very clear thinking about how to work in the future. These awards should belong to the industry as a whole, and have a wider group of people fighting for and championing them.” In the process of seeking emergency backing, Burns said she was heartened by the support expressed for the awards, and for “how they help centre the buzz around comedy, and create a rare opportunity for live comedy to be the talking-point art form”.
That’s not a feeling shared by everyone. When I spoke to the standup Jordan Brookes after he won the award in 2019, his feelings were ambivalent at best. The awards “ruin people’s mental health,” he said. “[The prize] makes people very bitter, that they have to compete with one another. And that’s anathema to what the point of comedy is. I would happily be the last winner of the Edinburgh comedy award.” And when news of the awards’ funding crisis broke, comic Elf Lyons, a former nominee, spoke to Newsnight about her mixed feelings towards the prize, suggesting that more categories should be introduced to reflect the burgeoning diversity of the art form.
I have sympathy for those who wish the prize would go away. I don’t love seeing artists turned into competitors, and I acknowledge that the conversation in Edinburgh can be dominated by it. And of course it isn’t definitive, and like all prizes – the Oscars conspicuously included – it frequently backs the wrong horse.
But I’ve mellowed towards the awards, just as they have warmed to offbeat comedy. Earlier claims of a bias towards slick, TV-ready standup are nowadays, after victories by the likes of Brookes and last year’s oddball champ Sam Campbell, harder to sustain. I tend now to agree with Burns that – for those of us who love comedy, if not always those who perform it – the awards bring dramatic structure to the three-plus weeks of the fringe, spicing up its third act when the shortlist drops in the final week. And in our attention economy, they do steer eyeballs towards an art form, live comedy, that is transitory by nature and isn’t always afforded the consideration nor appreciation it deserves.
There is also so much history to the awards now, too. You may quibble, as I do, with some of those who have been honoured – but the list of past winners still has value as a pantheon, and reveals the distance comedy, and the Edinburgh fringe, have travelled since Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry and co (AKA the Cambridge Footlights) claimed the inaugural crown.
The fringe itself certainly agrees: “It is wonderful news to hear that the Edinburgh comedy awards will go ahead as usual this year,” its chief exec Shona McCarthy said. The judging panel for the 2023 awards, including industry figures, critics and members of the public, will be announced soon. The fringe kicks off on 4 August; the canapé-speckled prize-giving bash is on the final Saturday of the festival. The best show winner bags £10,000, with £5,000 each for best newcomer and panel prize.
So will it now be a mad scramble to get ready in time? “Of course it’ll be a scramble,” said Burns. “But we’ve done it before.” She has been running the awards since 1984, when an obscure Californian outfit called the Brass Band bagged the gong, and were never heard of again. “So we know what we’re doing.”
