Poet and stand-up wins comedy award
Updated on 29 August 2009
Performance poet and stand-up comedian Tim Key has won the Edinburgh Comedy Awards at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Girish Juneja reports.
Judges behind the award, which used to be known as the Perriers, picked Key's show The Slutcracker as the winner of Best Comedy Show.
Nica Burns, producer of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, hailed the 32-year-old comedian as "star in the making".
He said: "Tim Key is a one-off, an adorably diffident performance poet and stand-up. His charming show is full of surprises.
"Tim has funny bones and is a star in the making."
This year's winners were decided by a panel of seven judges and three comedy punters.
Key, from Cambridge said of his victory: "It means quite a lot, it's like a nice big panel of people that think my show is good and I guess it reflects that my show was all right this year."
As well as winning the £8,000 prize, Key will also get an invitation to perform at the Montreal, Toronto and Chicago Just for Laughs comedy festivals.
Jonny Sweet – who is soon to appear as a young David Cameron in a docudrama on TV channel More4 –picked up the Best Newcomer Award for his show Mostly About Arthur.
The 24-year-old said afterwards: "I was so happy to be nominated I didn't really think about winning."
Sweet was presented with a £4,000 cash prize and added he "really looking forward" to celebrating his victory.
Peter Buckley Hill also won £4,000 after collecting the panel prize for the Free Fringe.
Funnyman Frank Skinner, who won Best Comedy Show at the festival in 1991, presented the awards at a ceremony in Edinburgh this afternoon.
And he said standards had been high among the shortlisted comedians.
Skinner insisted: "The standard is high every year. I don't subscribe to the idea that this award isn't as good as it used to be and all that.
"I think anyone who wins this is top-notch comic. You've got to be brilliant to win it, and to be nominated I think."
He also said the winners had been "absolutely elated" with their success.
He added: "It's a massive thing. It's not saying that suddenly you're a better comic, you're still the comic you were, but more people know about you, you're going to get more witnesses to watch what your doing.
"It feels like a beginning because now people are really going to be noticing what you are doing."
