Edinburgh Fringe
Elf Lyons & Ian Lockwood win Comedians' Choice Awards
- Best Show: Elf Lyons: Horses
- Newcomer: Ian Lockwood
- Best Person: Free Festival director Alex Petty
Elf Lyons: Horses has been voted Best Show by her peers at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
The Comedians' Choice Awards, founded in 2014, also saw Ian Lockwood pick up the inaugural Best Newcomer prize.
Best Person - intended to recognise anyone working in any capacity at the annual festival - was awarded for a second time to Alex Petty (below), co-founder and director of the Laughing Horse Free Festival, in its 20th anniversary year.
Organised by British Comedy Guide and presented in association with Angel Comedy and The Museum of Comedy, the awards this year offered a prize fund for the first time for its two main winners. When voting, comics were asked to provide details on their accommodation costs. The results reveal that performers are paying an average of £62 a night for a room, and the average length of stay is 15 nights. Therefore the winners of the Best Show and Best Newcomer Awards receive a cash prize of £930 each to help with their accommodation costs. Best Person Award winner Alex Petty receives a massage voucher.
Elf Lyons said: "It is the greatest honour when other artists see your work, and support one another's work. I feel like I've won the Fringe!"
Ian Lockwood said: "Everyone I've met at the Fringe has been incredibly kind and welcoming. I've never won anything in my entire life and to receive this from my peers is incredibly touching."
Barry Ferns (co-founder of Angel Comedy), who hosted the ceremony, said: "On this, the 10th year of the Comedians' Choice Awards, it feels fitting that for one winner it was their first Fringe and the other winner it was their 14th - in some ways it shows that it's a very long game and I'm sure all of the performers that were nominated will, at some point, go on to win an award somewhere. Tonight, it was Elf and Ian."
The nominees for Best Show were Chelsea Birkby: This is Life; Cheeky Cheeky, Furiozo: Man Looking for Trouble; Jordan Brookes: Fontanelle; Mike Rice: Nasty Character; Natalie Palamides: WEER; Phil Ellis: Come On and Take The Rest of Me; Rob Copland: Gimme (One With Everything); Sarah Keyworth: My Eyes Are Up Here and Sid Singh: American Coloniser.
The Newcomer shortlist featured Abby Wambaugh, Caitriona Dowden, Cobin Millage, Hannah Platt, Joe Kent-Walters, Jin Hao Li, Nate Kitch and Paulina Lenoir.
More information about the awards can be found on the Comedians' Choice Awards website
Elf Lyons: Horses is at Pleasance Courtyard at 9:20pm. Ian Lockwood: The Farewell Tour is at Udderbelly, George Square at 10:20pm. Both are performing nightly until 26th August.