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The Guardian
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The best joke award has gone. Is the Edinburgh fringe taking all the pun out of comedy?
So long, pun of the year. The best joke of the fringe award – the lighthearted, groan-inducing staple of the Edinburgh festival – has been scrapped after 17 years. The award's retirement may not prompt national mourning, but it does bring to an end a curious fringe tradition – one that delivered easy headlines as well as endless debate. Launched in 2008, the award set out to distil the spirit of the festival into a single one-liner. Longlisted by a panel of critics and then voted on by the public, it aimed to showcase the sharpest bite-size humour from that year's fringe. Still, the announcement was never without controversy. In 2023, when Lorna Rose Treen took the title with the joke 'I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah', she was met with a wave of online criticism (the Sun claimed her win had 'killed comedy'). Last year, an article in the Herald deemed the award Edinburgh's 'most heated controversy'. The backlash feels somewhat overblown for an award that was simply a celebration of something meant to make people laugh. Comedy is inherently subjective, and everyone is never going to like exactly the same thing. But we all like a good (or at least eye-roll-worthy) joke. Just look at how much time we dedicate to reading the ones from Christmas crackers; it's not necessarily about their quality, but the shared joy they bring. On this level, the award made sense. Digestible punchlines are entertaining – we can steal them for ourselves, repeat them in our social circles and hopefully elicit some hearty snorts. And at one of the world's biggest comedy festivals, it's hardly surprising that people would want to crown the year's most crowd-pleasing quip. Still, the idea that the art of live comedy can be condensed into a single line is undeniably flawed. How many times have you been told a 'funny story' and found yourself unmoved? The act of relaying humour is a difficult task. For standup in particular, a joke can't be separated from its setting. While the fringe's best joke list tended to be pun-heavy, jokes don't always land in isolation. They live in a comedian's energy, the crowd's mood and the rhythm of the moment. Stripped of this context and presented simply as written words in a list, even the most dynamic line can fall flat. Perhaps that's why the list often felt underwhelming: it ignored the bigger picture. There's no mention of physical comedy, timing or tone, which are crucial ingredients to bringing humour to life onstage. The shows that made me laugh hardest across the festival, as both a critic and, more recently, as a judge on the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, rarely got a look in from the best joke award list. Last year's winner for best newcomer, Joe Kent-Walters, transformed himself into Frankie Monroe, a Rotherham working men's club MC, complete with corpse-like, Sudocrem-white face paint and leering movements. Did his hour consist of neat, packable humour? Absolutely not, but it was genuine, full-body comedy that stayed with me long after the show ended. Similarly, the year before, Julia Masli's show, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, became a word-of-mouth hit. Masli, a clown by training, took on the role of an agony aunt of few words. There was nothing close to a standard joke in her act; instead, it lived on the curiously trusting relationship she built with the audience. There were plenty of confessions and practical solutions, but no linguistic wit. It was all the funnier for it. It is unlikely that anyone reading the best joke award lists from years gone by would have let out a guffaw. But that doesn't take away from the fact that the award was a welcome addition to the general merriment of the fringe – so much so that the unofficial ISH Comedy Awards have announced that they'd be running their own best joke award this year. The punchline can live on. That, at least, should be a cause for celebration. Anya Ryan is a freelance journalist. She was a member of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards judging panel in 2023 and 2024
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Have you heard the one about the scrapped Edinburgh joke award?
The award for 'best joke' at the Edinburgh fringe is dead and permission to laugh at its funeral is granted. No arrests will be made, no fines issued. The annual list of allegedly the funniest gags to be heard across hundreds of shows staged at the month-long festival has been sent to the comedy scrapheap, with the organiser/culprit, UKTV-owned channel U&Dave, releasing a straight-man statement citing an 'opportunity to reflect' on how it supports grassroots comedy talent. To be fair, U&Dave – known as Dave before UKTV slapped a 'U&' on its channels to make them sound like a family of deodorants – does do its bit to spotlight comedy talent, which used to be something bigger broadcasters took more of an interest in before their nerves failed. What UKTV didn't say was that its pun-heavy rundown of handpicked one-liners had the risible effect of reducing hours of intelligent, precision-timed, carefully honed comedy sets into a creaking, groaning slab of rage bait. READ MORE Take, for example, last year's winning effort by English comedian Mark Simmons: 'I was going to sail around the globe in the world's smallest ship but I bottled it.' Most wordplay is reverse-engineered, but it's not great when the steel beams of a joke are so fully exposed, is it? Still, the British public voted this the best joke of the fringe from a selection offered to them by a panel of critics and comedians doubling as U&Dave collaborators. Voters might have been less wrong if they had instead plumped for Arthur Smith's third-placed absurdity, 'I sailed through my driving test. That's why I failed it.' But I'm falling into the trap now. I'm engaging. It never mattered what came out top. As long as it struggled to bear the weight of the 'funniest joke' accolade, it did its job as cheap filler content that reliably provoked stiff breakfast-host laughter or, more usually, a sceptical sigh. As it goes, I have a high appreciation of the shameless pun, though almost-puns are tough to swallow. This week I learned that former Undertones frontman Feargal Sharkey has a policy on these. When the singer turned environmental campaigner was spotted struggling with his earpiece on BBC Breakfast, a viewer, referencing lyrics to solo hit A Good Heart, commented that 'a good earpiece [these days] is hard to find'. Sharkey cheerily outlined his normal penance for 'the bad-pun lobby', proposing a £20 donation to his chosen charity. [ From the archive: 37 mostly appalling jokes to make you groan – and maybe even grin Opens in new window ] This was all in good spirit, and didn't muddy Sharkey's advocacy on UK water reform. The problem with the Joke of the Fringe wheeze, by contrast, is that it wound up misrepresenting the essence of the festival. It wasn't U&Dave's fault, but the list's reproducible nature meant it attracted more attention than the genuinely prestigious Edinburgh Comedy Award and, in the process, reaffirmed the views of people predisposed to believe that stand-up comedy is a bit rubbish, a touch childish; the product of a Vitamin D-deprived cohort yet to get a real job. Never mind that at festivals such as the fringe, you will discover some of the cleverest, most magnetic people delivering 50-minute masterclasses in stitch-inducing storytelling, their styles ranging from the surreal to the polemical, their words as judiciously selected as poets'. Other gag lists will now fill the void. But this media fodder, rather than promoting the craft of joke writing, risks contributing to the minimisation of stand-up and reinforcing the dismissal of comedy as something other than art. It all becomes part of the same attitude that saw comedians here in the Republic barred from applying for the Government's Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme. They're not artists, you see. Well, the State says so. Humour is subjective, as proved last week by reactions to the Coldplay kiss-cam couple. Some people thought the pile-on a clear nadir for surveillance society and media tabloidisation, with unfunny pitchfork-culture vibes thrown in. Others found it hilarious, for some reason. I didn't laugh, obviously, but reading a recent edition of satirical magazine Private Eye, I was struck by the acuteness of a cartoon capturing Westminster's hypocrisies and moral failure on Israel and Gaza. This was in light of the UK government's move to proscribe the organisation Palestine Action . 'Unacceptable' Palestine action, it read, was to spray military planes with paint, while 'acceptable' Palestine action was to shoot Palestinians queuing for food. A retired teacher called Jon Farley was also taken with it, so much so that he stuck a blown-up printout of it on a placard and brought it to a silent demo in Leeds. Alas, this got him arrested , as police officers didn't recognise it as political satire. Maybe they were more pun fans. Or maybe some truths, pinpointed by satirists, are just too dark to countenance. Either way, arresting people for 'carrying a joke', as editor Ian Hislop put it, suggests a U&Dave-style 'opportunity to reflect' is urgently required.
Yahoo
19-07-2025
- Yahoo
Soccer player's kick goes awry and hits unexpected target
In Los Angeles, California, an amateur soccer player scored a direct hit on July 12: a powerful shot went over the fence, and the ball hit a passing police car – his friend couldn't resist a playing a joke on him as a result.
Daily Mail
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Chelsea confirm Sam Kerr transfer - leaving football fans stunned
Chelsea have announced that Liverpool have completed the signing of Sam Kerr. In a tweet from the club's official X account, Chelsea announced that the Reds had finalised a permanent deal for Kerr. Luckily for Blues fans however, the tweet announcing the deal is not referring to Matildas captain who has plied her trade in west London since joining the club from the Chicago Red Stars in 2020. Instead, the post referred to Kerr's Scottish namesake, who completed a permanent move to Merseyside from German giants Bayern Munich after initially joining the club on loan in January. While the club admitted their joke just minutes later by sharing a screenshot of the new Liverpool signing accompanied with the caption, 'Ohhhhhh you thought…' many fans were still taken in by the ruse. One fan wrote: 'Stop it Admin, my heart stopped for a few secs' The club made the announcement in a post on their official social media channels on Friday The club then revealed that they were actually reporting on an entirely different Sam Kerr joining Liverpool from Bayern Munich Another agreed: 'Okay that was a stressful couple seconds not gonna lie!' A third joked: 'This is July!!! We are not in April anymore!!' Chelsea's Kerr the entirety of last season on the sidelines as she continues to recover from an ACL injury that has ruled her out since January of 2024. Kerr was recently spotted alongside her fiancee, former West Ham star Kristie Mewis. The pair have been dating since 2020 and welcomed a son, Jagger, in May of this year. The Scottish Kerr meanwhile made 11 Women's Super League appearances after joining Liverpool in January. The midfielder also scored her first goal for the club as the Reds defeated West Ham at the Chigwell Construction Stadium.
The Independent
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Shane Gillis shocks ESPYs crowd with joke on Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump
Shane Gillis made a jab at Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein during his opening monologue at the 2025 ESPYs on Wednesday (16 July). The comedian kicked off his hosting duties at the sporting awards with a scathing reference to the Department of Justice 's recent statement that there was 'no evidence' of a Jeffrey Epstein client list. He told a joke about the White House 's newly announced UFC fights on its ground, before stating: 'There was supposed to be an Epstein joke here but it must have got deleted.' 'Must have probably deleted itself. Probably never existed actually. Let's move on as a country and ignore that,' he said, appearing to reference Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this year saying that the file was 'on her desk'.
