The winners of the inaugural (ISH) Edinburgh Comedy Awards Best Show and Best Newcomer have been announced at the Ceremony at The Three Sisters today along with the Panel Prize.

The (Insert Sponsor Here) Edinburgh Comedy Awards began earlier this summer, when the long-established Edinburgh Comedy Awards lost their funding and looked unlikely to go ahead in 2023. 

But after the Edinburgh Comedy Awards found new sponsors, the organisers of the alternative ISH Awards decided to go ahead anyway because of a surge of support from comedians, producers, venues and Nica Burns who runs the Edinburgh Comedy Awards themselves.

A team of volunteer judges - including performers, producers and technicians - watched approx 600 eligible comedy shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (full run, not compilation). A long list was prepared in the middle of the Fringe followed by a short-list on the final Monday, and now the judges have voted for their winnners for Best Show and Best Newcomer - and both votes were tied - so the 2023 winners are joint winners in each category... 

BEST SHOW 

Julia Masli - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Paul Foot - Dissolve

BEST NEWCOMER 

Dan Tiernan - Going Under

Fiona Ridgewell - No-Nonsense

PANEL PRIZE

A Show for Gareth - Mark Simmons and Danny Ward

The winners received a magnificent tiny trophy, well in each case really half a trophy!

It was revealed at the Ceremony that the idea for these awards and the driving force for making them happen came from comedian Nathan Cassidy, who said in a speech at the end of the ceremony that he wanted his name kept out of it until the end in case people thought it was a gimmick.  Nathan said, 'this was never going to be a gimmick, much as my friends wanted me to use the ceremony to announce myself as the winner of all 3 prizes!  It was a genuine attempt to see whether you could run an Awards similar to the Edinburgh Comedy Awards but with volunteers, and I think we pulled it off.'  

Nathan went on to thank the team of judges headed up by comedian and Producer Sarah Bowles, the press and the venues for their incredible support with complimentary tickets that made running an awards for free possible.

Nathan said 'The Edinburgh Comedy Awards has always been very special to me from a young kid, it was always so exciting and I thought an Edinburgh without the awards would be something less.  And then the Awards obviously got their sponsorship but we got so much support for this idea that we thought we’d do it anyway, and very happy that we did.  And getting that support from Nica Burns too I thought we must be doing something right.

And the main reason I’m happy we did is that it was community coming together for something good and different - comedians, producers, critics on the panel being supportive of artists, releasing the long lists in the middle of the Fringe to give comedians a boost, the way we talked about awards on our website – that a lot in awards is luck and the beauty of comedy is you don’t need awards to tell you whether your show is exceptional or not. And of course giving recognition to the stand out thing at the Fringe this year - the show for Gareth Richards - we're gutted we couldn’t secure sponsorship this year so we could give 5k to the fund but I hope everyone supports the Just Giving Page.'  (which is here https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/danny-ward-1)

Nathan ended his speech by talking about mental health at the Fringe. He said 'We don’t have to do things at the Fringe the way they’ve always been done.  I think we need to talk to comedians more and ask them what do they want, how do we want things to be run so hundreds of great and very funny acts who are never talked about in these ceremonies don’t come out of Edinburgh financially and emotionally broken – yes it's not the war in Ukraine but the Edinburgh Fringe is hard mentally and there are a few people including Rafaela Nunes in the room today who runs a not for profit organisation for creatives threadup.co.uk who have tried to get discussions going with Edfringe about mental health and very little tangible happens, every year. 

This is one of the things we wanted to show in running the awards the way we have – you can do anything very differently to how they have been done before if we come together and support each other.  And again don't get me wrong there is so much that is wonderful about the Fringe, so many great people, people working hard…  but please talk to us, the comedians, and we will have a view on how some things could be differently here, we have shown with the ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards you don’t always have to do things the same way.'

Nathan ended his speech by telling the story of someone that was long listed coming up to him in the middle of the Fringe and saying 'I am completely thrilled with this, people like me never get on any lists, and I can use this forever.’  And Nathan concluded, 'That's one of the many beautiful moments I'll remember from this, the reactions from comedians who never get on lists and deserve recognition - and that's one of the reasons why the ISH will be back next year... maybe!'