Comedy Shortlist Unveiled

By Tim Cornwell Arts Correspondent

HEARD the one about the Englishman, the Irishman, the Welshman and two Americans?

Comedians Russell Kane, David O’Doherty, Rhod Gilbert, and double act Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunhohler were yesterday shortlisted for the if.comedy award, the Fringe’s top accolade.

The absence of Scots on the shortlist means that there will again be no local winner. The last Scottish comic to win what was then the Perrier Award was Arnold Brown in 1986.

It is also the first time in 18 years that only four acts have made it on to the shortlist rather than five. They simply stood out above the rest, said Nica Burns, the if.comedy awards producer.

“There’s little political content, no credit crunch, it’s personal stories,” she said. “People have not gone for wider things, the world situation, to provide a lot of material.”

The nominations saw a return to solid stand-up after the wild and provocative antics of last year’s winner, Brendon Burns.

In Rhod Gilbert and the Award Winning Mince Pie, the “Welsh misery” comedian leaves his fictional home of Llanbobl for the questionable world of motorway service stations.

Kane, in Gaping Flaws, looks at Britons’ relationship with their national faults, while Schaal and Braunhohler’s review-style show is premised on a hopeless play they have written.

O’Doherty’s show, Let’s Comedy, includes songs about text message break-ups and jokes centred on myspace pages and mobile phone brands. “I live in these times, so that is my day to day,” he said.

The Dublin-based comedian first came to Edinburgh in 1999, when he won the Channel 4 Newcomer competition. He wrote his current show during a tour in Australia and New Zealand. His act, he said, explored “how people seem so unhappy in their relationship. The difficulty of settling on anything and the problem of hype in modern times”.

Among those vying for the separate newcomers category are comic Pippa Evans, whose five-character sketch show centres on a self- help group for lonely people.

Until March, the 26-year-old Londoner worked for a charity organising holidays for the elderly. “I’m dazed and confused. I feel a little bit like I’m drunk and everyone is walking round me very fast,” she said.

Another newcomer is Mike Wozniak, a former NHS doctor from Portsmouth in his first year with a solo Edinburgh stand-up show.

The importance of the Intelligent Finance Comedy Awards or if.comedy, formerly the Perrier comedy award, is often downplayed by critics. But with a 28-year history it is considered the oldest and most established accolade for a Fringe comedian, that can help a little-known name into comedy’s top ranks.

With comedian Sarah Millican also in the running for the newcomer’s prize, Ms Burns hailed a “new generation of women” in comedy.

As well as the short-listed names, “there are a lot of other very, very good young women out there now and I think that’s a great step forward”, she said.

The winners of the GBP 8,000 top prize and GBP 4,000 newcomer’s prize will be announced on Saturday.

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