For the first time in Edinburgh fringe festival history, the top comedy prize has been handed to a woman – and a man. Standups Hannah Gadsby and John Robins will share the lastminute.com best comedy show award because the judges on the panel of critics, who scoured the pubs and halls of the city this month for a winner, found it impossible to choose between them.
“Both shows, which could not be more different, were hotly debated and fiercely fought for. Comedy has many possibilities and audiences very different funny bones,” said Nica Burns, the West End stage producer and longstanding director of the fringe award after the ceremony on Saturday.
“And, yes, they will both receive £10,000 each so it’s been an expensive year; in the 37 years of the Edinburgh comedy awards this has never happened before, and it is unlikely it will ever happen again.”
Robins has already attracted interest outside Edinburgh this summer because his show, The Darkness of Robins, focuses on the breakdown of his relationship with Sara Pascoe, the comedian and panel show star.
She had a well-reviewed show, LadsLadsLads, at the fringe this year, predicated on the same personal theme; but did not make the nine-strong shortlist, which you might think would do nothing to smooth relations between the former partners.
Yet when Robins, a 35-year-old from Bristol, accepted his award, he said: “The first person to congratulate me [on being nominated] was Sara, and I’m wearing the lucky beagle [charm] she gave me before the festival.”
The other winning show, Nanette, is Gadsby’s last, she has declared, and was the result of a blog she wrote about equal marriage rights in Australia. The effort of being a lesbian performer working in the face of what she describes as a tide of sexist and homophobic disapproval has proved too much, she said.
Receiving her award, Gadsby said: “Standup comedy is a great arena and such an accessible way to find your voice, and I’d be interested in mentoring young comics.”
As well as breaking with protocol, the awards ceremony was also unusual this year because, in honour of the 70th anniversary of the festival, four famous winners of the prize flew in to hand over the prize.
Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and their co-writer Jeremy Dyson – who all made their names on the The League of Gentlemen – won the award in 1997 when it was known as the Perrier, and officiated, alongside last year’s winner, Richard Gadd.
“It was a real vindication of our work,” Shearsmith said. “It wasn’t just us doing it for our friends. It was the Perrier award for goodness’ sake, something every comic wanted to win.”
“The thing I most remember was being hot,” Pemberton added. “We were in the hottest room at the fringe, the Pleasance Attic, in dinner suits.”
When The League of Gentlemen – which is returning to television and tipped for a live stage comeback – walked off with the prize, the defeated fellow nominees were hardly relegated to obscurity. They were Al Murray, Graham Norton, Milton Jones and Johnny Vegas. “Who, at the time, would have thought that all the shortlisted acts would become household names?” Burns said.
Shearsmith and Pemberton are now best known as actors and as the creators of the acclaimed BBC2 show Inside Number 9. Stage actor Gatiss is a co-creator of Sherlock – he appears as the detective’s elder brother Mycroft – and is a writer on Doctor Who. Dyson created and co-wrote the West End show Ghost Stories.
The winner of the best newcomer award for £5,000 is Natalie Palamides, for her show Laid, about female fertility.
The seven other nominees for the best show award this year were: Ahir Shah, Elf Lyons, Jordan Brookes, Mae Martin, Mat Ewins, Sophie Willan and Spencer Jones.
Additional reporting by Veronica Lee
