British Comedy Guide would like to point out it is well known within the industry for always maintaining objective and well-balanced coverage when reporting on all things comedy, and never allowing bias to creep into any articles published...

At the Edinburgh Festival today in a game of football, a heroic team of critics totally thrashed the shambolic, rag-tag mess that was the comedian's team.

The comics, lead by Mark Watson (pictured), couldn't deal with the speed, agility and skill demonstrated by the well-organised critics, who smashed ball after ball into the back of their net. In response, the comedians only managed to score a measly three goals (lucky ones at that), resulting in a brilliant 7-3 victory for the knowledgeable and faultless journalists.

The goals came from Edinburgh Evening News's awesome Gary Flockhart, who actually scored a superb hat-trick; The Sun's sharp-shooter Tommy Holgate, who slammed two into the net and could easily have scored more; and there was one each for skillful Fest magazine duo Edd McCracken and Ben Judge. Meanwhile on the other side apparently Daniel Sloss, Humphrey Ker and Chris Martin scored... but none of those goals make a difference to the end result, so we won't dwell on them.

Amnesty International was on hand to referee the game... which was useful, because to spectators it looked as if the comedians hadn't understood all the rules of the game and had skipped the chapter in the FIFA rule book on how you should aim for the ball not legs when tackling.

On lifting the trophy, the masterful captain of the critics team Peter Geoghegan wisely and graciously said: "We were always the better side on the day. My boys had trained harder, ran faster, kicked it further, and we'd put something in their half-time Lucozade. Credit to the comedians - they played a good game. But we won and we can now lord it over them for a whole year. It's good that we had Amnesty here ensuring fair play or they might've turned nasty at the end."

Mark Watson admitted the comedian's team had been completely trounced, saying: "Losing to the critics is a bitter blow, to be honest. We thought our flair would carry us through. But we'll be back stronger next year and maybe we'll have to try bribing the ref with a donation to Amnesty."

Both teams played in shirts bearing the slogan "Free the UAE 5", a reference to Amnesty International's Edinburgh Festival campaign to free five online activists detained in the United Arab Emirates and charged with "insulting officials" after calling for democracy and criticising the government. Amnesty International's Steve Ballinger said of the match: "It was a great game and hopefully we helped ensure that nobody's rights were abused during the match."

For the record, here is the full list of comedians who failed to stop the mighty goal-scoring power of the critics team and are now presumably hanging their heads in shame: Mark Watson (captain), Tim Key, Daniel Sloss, Jimeoin, Carl Donnelly, Paul Sinha, Keith Farnan, Aiden Bishop, Eric Lampeart, Joel Dommett, Tom Rosenthal, Humphrey Ker, Joe Bor, Kai Humphries, Mark Smith, Matt Richardson, Nathan Caton, Rob Beckett, Steve Hall and Chris Martin.