Here is a picture of Foster’s Award winner John Kearns pulling a comical face. I don’t know if it was his choice or if the photographer coaxed him into it, but it feels like the kind of thing that comedians have to do sometimes to earn a crust. You never get politicians being asked to gurn like a loon during a photoshoot.
Will Franken has won Best Performer in the inaugural Barry Awards, the new prize for Fringe performers voted for by Fringe performers. Bec Hill, who set out to write an award-winning show after she drunkenly told the Superman actor Dean Cain that she was an award winner, won the award for Best Show*. And Peter Buckley Hill and Bob Slayer tied for the award for Best Person. Here is a full list of the results, plus quotes from the winners.
Scotland’s longest running comedy club – The Gilded Balloon – is expanding west with the launch of a brand new club in Glasgow, opening on Friday, August 29.
Hosted in collaboration with Drygate Brewing Co – the UK’s first experiential craft brewery – Gilded Balloon Comedy at Drygate looks to bring together the very best craft beer and comedy under one roof.
So John Kearns won the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award today. The first ever Best Newcomer to win the main prize in the following year and, perhaps more significantly, the first Free Fringe performer to win the Edinburgh Comedy Award. The Free Fringe has been having more of an impact every year since Imran Yusuf first picked up a Best Newcomer nomination, but that’s another story. I want to celebrate and discuss Kearns’ victory here.
The Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award winner is announced at lunchtime today in a ceremony starting at 12.30pm, so I guess I’d better have a crack at picking a winner. I suggested five nominees earlier in the week and got four of them right. Picking an outright winner is a tougher call altogether, but here goes.
It must be quite intimating for So You Think You’re Funny finalists to look at the roll call of previous winners. Can they join the likes of Peter Kay, Tommy Tiernan, Lee Mack and Dylan Moran? Not that you could see any sign of nerves on the face of first entrant Elliot Steel who strutted on after compere Zoe Lyons' lively warm-up and delivered a bullet-proof 8 minutes about being a 17-year-old sarf Londoner and doing everything adults do, but illegally.
The comedy world is still waiting for white smoke to emerge from the panel meeting and the official Foster's Award shortlist to announced any time now. So while we wait these were my predictions after the first week. There will probably be five or six nominees when the official list is out, but I haven't seen anyone since the first week who would knock this quintet off the list. Then again, there is always likely to be a curveball so this could be completely wrong...
Sara Pascoe
James Acaster
The nominations for the 2014 Foster’s Comedy Awards have been announced. They are as follows:
Sara Pascoe
James Acaster
John Kearns
Liam Williams
Alex Horne
Romesh Ranganathan
Sam Simmons
Pages
Zircon - This is a contributing Drupal Theme
Design by
WeebPal.
