Nick Helm has revealed how his joke that won Dave's Funniest Joke of the Fringe prize in 2011 was actually an edited version of a joke his father sent to him in an email.
Comedian Helm revealed the inspiration on Radio X this morning, telling host Toby Tarrant that he borrowed the joke from his dad and ‘whittled down’ for his act.
Helm has recently announced a new tour. Details and dates here.
Watch the video of Helm on the show HERE
Tune into The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X weekdays from 6:30am – 10am and on Global Player**
The transcript of the radio conversation is below:
Key
Nick Helm – NH
Toby Tarrant – TT
Dominic Byrne – DB
Transcript
TT: “You won the best joke of the fringe in 2011.”
NH: “2011, yeah. What’s that, 14 years ago now?”
TT: “That’s terrifying, isn’t it.”
NH: “What were you doing 14 years ago?”
TT: “I need to do some maths. I was at university studying history and not winning Edinburgh Fringe best joke. I'd say that I wasn't even winning the best joke in my house at uni!”
NH: “Ask me what I was doing 14 years ago.”
TT: “What were you doing 14 years ago.”
NH: “Crushing it!”
TT: “Haha! ‘Winning awards, that’s what I was doing!’ Shall I do it, or do you remember the joke?”
NH: “I do remember the joke. I do, because my dad wrote a very long, rambling email with that joke in it, and I edited the email and I said, ‘It's not like that, dad, it's like this.’ And it was like this three-paragraph story that ended with the punch line, and I rewrote it for him. And then I had 61 liners in all of my previews, and I'd whittle them down, and the ones that didn't get laughs, I'd cut them out, and then I whittled it down, and it was one out of six, because I only need six jokes for my shows. I do six jokes.”
DB: “That's all you need.”
NH: “Between five and six jokes, that's what you get with my shows. I only needed five or six jokes, and it was one of the ones that ended up. And then I never really thought that much of it. And then it got picked out, and then it won an award – I needed a password, eight characters long, so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. You’re welcome!”
TT: “So your dad wrote that?”
NH: “Yeah, we wrote it together. I’d say he gave me the slab of marble, and I used my skills as a comedian to chisel it down into an award-winning sculpture!”
The other jokes that made the top ten back in 20111 were as follows:
2) Tim Vine: "Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels."
3) Hannibal Buress: "People say 'I'm taking it one day at a time'. You know what? So is everybody. That's how time works."
4) Tim Key: "Drive-Thru McDonalds was more expensive than I thought... once you've hired the car..."
5) Matt Kirshen: "I was playing chess with my friend and he said, 'Let's make this interesting'. So we stopped playing chess."
6) Sarah Millican: "My mother told me, you don't have to put anything in your mouth you don't want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards."
7) Alan Sharp: "I was in a band which we called The Prevention, because we hoped people would say we were better than The Cure."
8) Mark Watson: "Someone asked me recently - what would I rather give up, food or sex. Neither! I'm not falling for that one again, wife."
9) Andrew Lawrence: "I admire these phone hackers. I think they have a lot of patience. I can't even be bothered to check my OWN voicemails."
10) DeAnne Smith: "My friend died doing what he loved ... Heroin."
