The top comedy prizes at this year’s Edinburgh festival fringe have gone to foreign talent. The Australian comedian Sam Campbell was named the winner of Dave’s Edinburgh comedy awards, the prestigious competition that celebrated its 40th anniversary this summer.
Campbell, 30, from Queensland, is now the fifth winner of the best show award to come from Australia, overtaking winners from Ireland, who have scooped the prize four times.
The newcomer award went to the Mexican-born American Lara Ricote, for her show GRL/LATNX/DEF. “You are being so nice to me. This is crazy!” said the 25-year-old comic, who has impaired hearing and talks about her disability on stage.
Ricote’s show tackles her “multiple minority status”, as well as the fact they are not all visible categories. “Being a minority is very in now,” she joked after winning her award. “I’m a girl, young, a Latina and have a disability, so I tick a lot of boxes. But I have to be very vocal about the minorities I’m in. I’m in an interesting place and in a very privileged place.” Ricote also won the Funny Women award for stage performers last year.
The show that earned Campbell the £10,000 main prize is the simply titled Comedy Show. “I deserve the award and I was expecting it,” he told the crowd, before correcting himself, “No. It was a big surprise. It’s insane.” The comic added that he was going to use the prize money “to be taller”.
Campbell’s midnight show, which only ran for the second half of the festival, came with a special “warning” from the comic: “I want to be worldwide performer. I hope you do not mind but this show will pretty much just involve me going up there and being nice with it.”
A former award-winner at the 2018 Melbourne international comedy festival, Campbell beat nine other contenders, including Alfie Brown, the son of actor Jan Ravens; Seann Walsh, the former Strictly Come Dancing contestant; and Jordan Gray, the competition’s first transgender nominee.
Among fans of the awards judge’s verdicts was Shaun of the Dead film director Edgar Wright, who tweeted how much he enjoyed Ricote’s festival show.
The organisation Best in Class, which supports performers from working-class backgrounds, won the panel prize for spirit of the fringe, an award that is not made every year. Pointing out the difficulty of funding a fringe show, Sian Davies, of Best in Class, said: “People can’t afford to live at the minute, let alone come up here. Best in Class is a sticking plaster at best. The fringe is full of systematic bias.”
Her cause met with approval from Campbell, who said: “It’s fucked when people can’t afford to do this. I’m not an expert, but for anyone who loses money here, that stinks.”
Davies explained that in 2018 she had been asked to audition for a fringe showcase. When she succeeded she was told she would need to pay £1,800 to secure her place. “When I tell industry people this, they roll their eyes. They can’t believe it,” said Davies. She was dropped by her promoter as a result, despite her friends efforts to raise the money. At first she said she “got angry”, then decided to bring her own showcase for working-class comics to the festival: “I don’t charge anyone for the privilege of coming and they’re paid. When you give us a seat at your table we can do this,” she said.
The lunchtime ceremony in the city’s Dovecot Studios art gallery was introduced by the director of the awards, Nica Burns, who said: “Together we have built the best comedy industry in the world. Our doors are open to everyone. All they need to be is super-talented and above all funny.”
This year the panel for the award, once known as the Perrier and now sponsored by the comedy channel Dave, was chaired by Sky Studios comedy producer Adnan Ahmed and included Dave’s director, Cherie Cunningham, and Channel 4 commissioning executive Joe Hullait.
