There’s efficiency, then there’s the process that led to Sam Nicoresti winning the most prestigious award in live comedy. “A year ago my girlfriend asked me to marry her,” says Nicoresti on accepting the £10,000 prize last weekend. “[When] we were talking about how to pay for the wedding, I joked and said, ‘It’s easy, I’ll just win the Edinburgh comedy award’.” Can it be true? Is Nicoresti not only the first transgender winner of the so-called Oscars of comedy, but the first ever to manifest victory by force of strategic will?
“It’s amazing what you can do,” she grins, three days after her triumph, “if you set your mind to something.” And that’s what Nicoresti has done in the last 12 months, turning around a niche career in alt-comedy, pointing it towards stardom, and pressing her pedal to the metal. Her winning show Baby Doomer was palpably the set of a comic zeroing in on a mass audience – notwithstanding the hot-potato status of her subject, life as a trans woman, nor her background in leftfield humour with a collective called Weirdos. Nicoresti’s previous biggest hit was a satirical multimedia show with the memorable title Cancel Anti Wokeflake Snow Culture.
