The Sunday Herald's Scottish Culture Awards have come under fire for not including a comedy category.
Promoter Alan Anderson who, among other things, runs the Scottish Comedian of the Year competition, has written to the newspaper and has complained on Facebook about this omission from the awards, now seeking nominations for their third year.
Anderson says: "The awards are supported by Event Scotland, an organisation funded by the Scottish Government. However it appears that Comedy has been completely blanked by these awards. Is Comedy not culture?
The awards website opening front page blurb reads... "Scotland is at the cutting edge of cultural talent, having enjoyed decades of success in art, music, drama and dance. From The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to Celtic Connections, Scotland is bursting with cultural events all year round and has a host of successful artists being recognised nationally and on the international stage."
Anderson pointed to the Edinburgh Fringe festival: "The World's biggest arts festival, some say a massive big comedy festival. Since 2008 Comedy has dominated the festival by being the genre with the largest number of shows, performers, tickets sales and thus revenue generated."
The Scottish comedy scene is stronger than it has ever been. In the last 12 months Scotland's three largest cities have each had new large full-time comedy venues open, with another large national operator about to open what is expected to be Scotland's largest and most expensive comedy venue in Glasgow shortly.
As well as our big name TV stars like Kevin Bridges, Frankie Boyle, Susan Calman and Limmy, our comedians are winning or being nominated for awards internationally (Chris Forbes at Perth W.A. Fringe World, Ray Bradshaw at Adelaide Fringe, Colin Cloud on America's Got Talent).
Sadly, the Scottish Cultural Awards do not appear to have any categories relevant to comedy or comedians... but there's 3 categories for Actors!
Best Actor (Film)
Best Actor (Stage)
Best Actor (Theatre)
After that, there are categories for musicians, dancers, visual artists and writers. But what of the people who multi task and do almost all of the above?
Comedians write their material, they act their material, some sing and dance their material.
Celebrating culture is great. A nation's culture tells outsiders the story of that nation. Scotland is a nation of story tellers, a nation where we take the grim, the romantic and the political, then we joke about it. We are renowned across the globe for our humour.
When I launched the Scottish Comedian of the Year competition 13 years ago I posed this...
Ask any typical Glaswegian, Dundonian or Doonhamer to name you a great or famous Scottish ballet dancer, opera singer or orchestra leader and I bet they struggle. Ask them to name you a famous Scottish comedian and they will give you a list that starts with Billy Connolly, Ricki Fulton, Jack Milroy, Chic Murray and goes on and on and on.
Are Scotland's comedians not an integral part of Scottish society and Scottish culture?
