Daliso Chaponda joins judging panel for Wodehouse book contest
- The Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2021 - the competition celebrating witty books - is open for entries
- Stand-up comedian and book lover Daliso Chaponda will act as one of the judges for 2021
- He joins the existing judging line-up, which also features comedians Pippa Evans and Sindhu Vee
Stand-up comedian Daliso Chaponda has joined the judging panel for the 2021 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.
The competition, the UK's longest running prize for comic fiction, recognises the best comedic novels of the past 12 months released by book publishers.
Named after author PG Wodehouse, the prize seeks to find the books that "best evoke the Wodehouse spirit of witty characters and perfectly-timed comic phrase."
Winners over the past 21 years have included Helen Fielding, Ian McEwan, Terry Pratchett and Nina Stibbe.
The organisers confirm: "The 2021 prize welcomes a new judge to the panel, Daliso Chaponda, who shot to fame as a finalist on Britain's Got Talent back in 2017, and has since hosted his own show on BBC Radio 4, Citizen Of Nowhere and toured his stand-up around the world."
Chaponda is a known lover of books. In a British Comedy Guide interview last week, he named Waterstones as his favourite shop, saying "I'm a book devourer and it feeds my habit. Big fat fantasy books or humour are my addictions."
He will join long standing judges David Campbell (publisher, Everyman's Library), Justin Albert (Vice President of Hay Festival and Director of National Trust Wales), and James Naughtie (broadcaster and author) on the panel, alongside comedians Pippa Evans and Sindhu Vee, who have acted as judges for the last few year.
Books published between 1st June 2020 and 31st May 2021 are eligible for this year's prize. Publishing companies have been contacted directly about nominating their books, and have until 5th March to make their submissions to the competition.
The judges will pick "the six wittiest books of the year" to form their shortlist, which will be revealed in May. 2021's winner will then be announced in early June. The winner will be awarded with a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année, the complete set of the Everyman's Library P.G. Wodehouse collection and - as is tradition - a pig will be named after the winning book.