What does an Edinburgh comedy award win mean for Sam Campbell? And what does a Sam Campbell win mean for the award? This most coveted trophy in live comedy has propelled dozens of comics into the big league since its foundation in that Year Zero of alternative comedy, 1981, when the winners – featuring Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson, among others – were Cambridge Footlights. Steve Coogan, the League of Gentlemen and Hannah Gadsby later joined the pantheon, much to the delight of the organisers, it’s assumed: the award’s prestige is sustained by its winners’ subsequent success. So can we now expect Campbell to follow in these clown-sized footsteps?
His win, announced on Saturday, was both likely and unexpected. Likely, because the Aussie won the equivalent award in 2018 at the Melbourne comedy festival, hot on the heels of Gadsby and Sam Simmons – both of whom promptly did the double by winning in Edinburgh too. Campbell didn’t emulate the feat. His popularity in the UK has been slow to build: when I first saw him in Edinburgh, when he’d already won the director’s choice award at Melbourne, he was playing to a single-figure audience. His talent and distinctiveness was never in doubt – but would audiences fall into line behind it?
