The cliche about Edinburgh fringe comedy is that, instead of jokes, it’s all tears and dead loved ones. No one ever said that about the Edinburgh comedy award ceremony – but they could now, after an event on Saturday marked as much by high emotion as laughs. Ahir Shah’s winning show, Ends, is about his grandfather’s migration to the UK, the changing face of multicultural Britain, and the comic’s imminent wedding. Accepting the award – the most prestigious in live comedy – he was visibly moved, although that didn’t preclude a choice quip about this year’s Indian double whammy (with Mumbai-based Urooj Ashfaq winning the best newcomer prize). “Rishi,” said the 32-year-old, “is really delivering for the community!”
It was a deserving win for a cracking show, one that – almost as an aside – argues for Britain as the least racist country in the world. All the more remarkable that Shah arrived in Edinburgh with a work-in-progress (therefore not eligible for the award), its development delayed by the death in April of his director Adam Brace. The show was hastily re-categorised mid-festival.
The closest runner-up was probably Julia Masli’s ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, which I’d have loved to see win. But no one can take Masli’s extraordinary fringe away from her, and the show will go on to great success – not least at Soho theatre, where it takes up residency in January. Shah has been a fixture at the Edinburgh fringe since his late teens, and in 2010, as a fresh-faced Cambridge student, was accused of plagiarism by Stewart Lee. He’s come a long way, via earlier award nominations for Control in 2017 and Duffer in 2018, to finally claim the prize.
The other weepy moment came when the Victoria Wood award (formerly the panel prize) was won by Show for Gareth Richards, an event organised to support the family of the musical comic and former best newcomer nominee who died earlier this year in a car accident. His friends, the comics Mark Simmons and Danny Ward, paid touching tribute in accepting the award, for an event that saw a rotating cast of comedians (including Stewart Lee, Jack Whitehall and Dara Ó Briain) perform in the slot Richards had booked for this year’s fringe before his death in April.
The win for Ashfaq in the best newcomer category was the surprise of the event. For me, several of the rookie nominations went to eye-catching performers with so-so shows, Ashfaq’s included. In Edinburgh as part of a clutch of Indian comics presented by Soho theatre (who have a base in the country), the 28-year-old is certainly an engaging standup, if not one who, to this viewer, stood out from the crowd. Also on the shortlist, Bill O’Neill’s The Amazing Banana Brothers was a more complete show; Dan Tiernan and Martin Urbano slightly more distinctive comics.
Ashfaq’s win also marks a rare victory in the 42-year-old awards’ history for a comic whose first language isn’t English; last year’s best newcomer was the bilingual Mexican act Lara Ricote. Had Masli won, it would have been, to my knowledge, the first main-prize win for an act from beyond the Anglosphere. That breakthrough must now wait for another day.
In a very funny speech to introduce the awards, former champ John Robins offered a glimpse of the life-changing success now on offer to the winners. Having shared the award with Netflix phenomenon Hannah Gadsby in 2017, Robins deadpanned, they have shared (he likes to imagine) their subsequent success. Pause. “We have won an Emmy…” After Robins’ address, last year’s winner, the Aussie Sam Campbell, introduced a note of anarchy with off-message jokes about the judging panel, the sponsors, and some scurrilous bantz about your humble critic – which became a running joke, to gales of laughter from the crowd, for the rest of the ceremony.
Quite the out-of-body experience, let me tell you, to end my Fringe 23. It’s been a cracker. In Robins’ speech, he spoke movingly about the incredible creativity and hope on display every year at the fringe, adding what a privilege it is to be even a tiny part of it. I couldn’t agree more. I leave with heart full and head buzzing from all the wonderful shows I’ve seen, just a little haunted by the (possibly) great ones I’ve missed – and looking forward already to next summer.
