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Sam Simmons
Sam Simmons’s Spaghetti for Breakfast has been named best comedy show
Sam Simmons’s Spaghetti for Breakfast has been named best comedy show

Sam Simmons wins the Foster's Edinburgh comedy award 2015

This article is more than 8 years old

Australian standup takes prize for best comedy show at the fringe, while Sofie Hagen is named best newcomer and Karen Koren gets panel prize

The results are in, and it’s in-yer-face Aussie absurdist Sam Simmons who bags the most prestigious prize in comedy, the Edinburgh comedy award. Congratulations to Simmons, a true comic original whose work over the last decade deserves all the laurels that come his way. The newcomer award – recent winners include Sarah Millican, Josie Long and Tim Minchin – was won by London-based Danish comic Sofie Hagen, whose show Bubblewrap recounts her mental health problems and her Westlife obsession when a teenager.

The all-things-to-all-comers award, otherwise known as the panel prize, went to outgoing Gilded Balloon head honcho Karen Koren, who will be passing on the venue to her daughter Katy after 30 years as one of the fringe’s leading impresarios.

I won’t pretend it’s a thrilling outcome. It felt to me since the not-so-shortlist was announced on Wednesday as if comedy was holding its breath for the anointing of a new superstar. Would it be Nish Kumar, Joseph Morpurgo or Kieran Hodgson, all of whom staked very strong claims, and the last of whose shows was, to my mind, an instant if modest classic. And then I saw Sarah Kendall and Trygve Wakenshaw’s sets, each of which in its own way did something new and surprising with comedy, both in and beyond the context of the artist’s own work.

Sofie Hagen, best newcomer for her show Bubblewrap. Photograph: Karla Howlett

Against that backdrop, it’s hard to get too excited about Simmons’ win for Spaghetti for Breakfast (which also won the Barry award in Melbourne), in that – as when Rich Hall and Phil Nichol won, way back when – he’s already a big-hitting act. And, contrary to awards supremo Nica Burns’ comment today that Simmons “has grown substantially since his earlier nominations”, I’m not sure he’s doing much we haven’t seen him do before. Yes, there’s some blissfully funny stuff here, as the moustachioed oddball grills us on whether we like Laurence Fishburne, and embarks on a weird phone relationship with the telemarketing guy from Ferrero Rocher.

But it didn’t – for me at least – attain the bizarre profundity of his award-nominated 2011 show Meanwhile, memories of which I cherish. Perhaps – and despite Simmons’ climactic rant about hating mainstream comedy – the panel liked the more relatable nature of Spaghetti for Breakfast, which is structured around a series of “things that shit me”, some of which wouldn’t look out of place in a Michael McIntyre set. (Although the way that Simmons performs them would be very out of place indeed.)

It is, then – after the pleasant surprise of a shortlist that made most of the right calls – a return to Foster’s award habit, in that the most electrifying, unexpected shows in town (Liam Williams last year; Pappy’s in 2012; Bo Burnham in 2010) go unrewarded. The panel also resisted the call (heard repeatedly around town) for Richard Gadd’s Waiting for Gaddot – the cruellest omission from the nominees list – to be given the panel prize. That at least would have accorded with recent tradition, which gifts that gong to strong-brew, uncategorisable work that’s too hot for the main award to handle.

Sofie Hagen’s newcomer award strikes me as less contentious. Had Tom Parry or The Story Beast won – both shows I enjoyed – I’d have felt that the spirit of the award was in danger of dilution. (Both the acts are new, but the performers are fringe veterans.) That looks to me like a loophole that needs tightening if not closing. But Hagen’s an appealing winner. Her act is more conventional but also more fully formed than her closest rivals, the sketch troupe Daphne. She’s got an easy charm, and – judging by Bubblewrap – an ability to combine delicate subject matter with big, accessible laughs, which bodes very well for her future. I can’t wait to see what she – and indeed, most of the excellent acts on these two shortlists – come up with next.

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