Helen Lederer receives 2024 Bath Plug Award
- Bath Comedy Festival's 2024 award to recognise outstanding services to comedy has gone to Helen Lederer
- She was awarded the prize "for so many achievements, not least for the amazing work creating the Comedy Women In Print competition"
Bath Comedy Festival has presented its annual Bath Plug Award, a prize it hands out to recognise outstanding services to comedy.
This year's award was presented to actor, comedian and author Helen Lederer.
She was presented with the gold plug on a ribbon during a special celebratory launch of her memoir Not That I'm Bitter, which took place at the festival's new venue Upstairs @ Bath Pizza Co.
Festival director Nick Steel said: "Every year, Bath Comedy gives a special award to someone, for all round services to comedy. We've been pals for over a decade and this has been a long time coming, but - for all the things we've heard about today, for championing women in comedy, having been one of the first women in stand-up comedy during the 80s; for so many achievements, not least for the amazing work creating CWIP [the annual Comedy Women In Print competition] - it gives me great pleasure to bestow the 2024 Bath Plug Award on Helen Lederer."
CWIP award recipient Becky Rogers happened to be in the audience. Addressing the house, she said: "Helen is my fairy godmother. In creating CWIP, she opened doors for me that I didn't know existed. She is incredibly modest about her achievements but in setting up Comedy Women in Print she really has changed the lives of so many witty women writers."