British Comedy Guide

BCG Pro Talent Awards Writing 2024 winners

Tuesday 26th November 2024, 5:00pm

Helen Price

Winners of the 2024 BCG Pro Talent Awards for Writing have been revealed.

The contest aims to identify up-and-coming comedy writing talent, with 2024's challenge seeing entrants being asked to write two sketches on any topics, or a sketch and 10 standalone one-liners.

Judges picked Helen Price as the overall winner, granting her the £350 prize.

Helen is a comedy writer and former BBC political journalist from Wales. On radio, she has written for The Skewer, Breaking The News and What Just Happened?. She is the creator and writer of the Everything is News podcast, a comedy series which satirises popular political podcasts like The Rest is Politics. The show reached #5 in the UK podcast charts and was reviewed in The Times as "Hilarious... Pitch perfect." She is currently working on Series 2.

She says: "I'm so thrilled to have won among such talented and funny competition! Huge shout out to BCG for everything they do to support comedy writers - the resources have been a big help to me in beginning my comedy writing career."

The judging panel consisted of comedy writer Claire Wetton (Horrible Histories), actor and writer Jessica Ransom (Doc Martin) and comedian and writer Michael Spicer (No Room). All scripts were judged 'blind' of names and other personal details.

The panel picked Chris Ballard, Vicky Richards and Christopher Stanners as the runners-up.

Hattie Harrison

Meanwhile in the Starter category, Hattie Harrison was selected as the winner, picking up the £150 cash prize.

Hattie, who lives in Southborough, started writing comedy feverishly after the birth of her third child in 2015. What started as a blog evolved into screenwriting and she graduated from the NFTS after studying Writing and Producing Comedy in 2022. She won the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Award in 2021 with a children's sitcom and has written and produced a short film which was selected for screening at 8 film festivals worldwide. She has a number of spec scripts and has recently completed the Curtis Brown Drama Screenwriting course, developing her first drama. Humour remains at the heart of everything she writes and she is driven by a passion for irreverent comedy fuelled by characters rooted in emotional honesty.

She says: "I'm absolutely thrilled to have won the Starter category of the BCG Pro writing awards - thank you so much British Comedy Guide! According to my kids I am absolutely not funny so you better believe I've talked about this award a lot at home. They'll possibly have issues to do with that in the future but at least they'll know that I have at least two sketches that have been approved by some incredible judges. Thank you so much!"

There were also honourable mentions for Rachel E Thorn and Dan Payne in this category.

The BCG Pro Talent Awards comprise of three different skills-based competitions: Writing, Performance and Production. Find out more

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This article is provided for free as part of BCG Pro.

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