So Amy Gledhill has won the Edinburgh comedy award, catapulting herself into an elite pantheon that includes Tim Key, Bridget Christie, Hannah Gadsby and more. Hers will be a popular win, nowhere more so than with her fellow nominee Chris Cantrill, the other half of sketch act The Delightful Sausage, whose camaraderie and mutual affection always leaps off the stage. By pipping Cantrill and five other acts to the post, Gledhill, from Hull, becomes the sixth solo female winner of the award – in a year when male comedians were in the minority for the first time. She’s also a rare example of an act who, like Sam Campbell two years ago, wins having only performed for half the duration of the festival.
I couldn’t be happier for Gledhill – even if I didn’t consider her winning show, Make Me Look Fit on the Poster, the best in town this year, or even the best on that shortlist. The awards producer Nica Burns’ comments on Gledhill’s win (“It is a show packed with jokes and so much heart that everyone in the audience falls utterly in love with her”) applied equally to Gledhill’s 2022 debut, which saw her shortlisted as best newcomer. This year’s offering splices a handful of self-deprecating set-pieces (a calamitous trip to an outdoor climbing centre; outre tales of sexual indignity) with a meditation – slightly underdeveloped, to my mind – on how Gledhill sees herself, and is seen by others. But I don’t demur from Burns’ enthusiastic endorsement of an act who absolutely has the chops to be a breakout popular star.
