One of the most prestigious awards for new stand-ups - the Chortle Student Comedy Award - has just found its winner.
Kwame Asante, a 21-year-old UCL medical student, won the final heat (and £2,500 prize money) this week at the Edinburgh Fringe.
We're sure that a glittering professional career in comedy now awaits him. But as the Editor of Chortle, Steve Bennett, writes, stand-up is a competitive world - and you have to be good to survive. Here's what he had to say about the award, its heats, and the plethora of young comics trying to make it big:
"There are a few words any visitor to the Edinburgh Fringe has learned to be wary of when choosing which of the thousands of shows will be worthy of their time and money. Top of the list must be ‘undergraduate’, conjuring up images of horrifically twee sketches or puerile, derivative stand-up.
It’s not an entirely unwarranted reputation. I've seen hundreds of student comics this year, as I was criss-crossing the country for heats of the Chortle Student Comedy Award, and not all have been good. But they have been plentiful.
These days, comedy is seen as a viable career choice in a way it wasn’t a decade ago, so more people go into it, regardless of talent. I suppose our competition could be partly to blame - the promise of a £2,500 cheque to the winner, courtesy of sponsors The Sims 3, proving quite the incentive.
Plus the barriers to entering the world of stand-up are tumbling. In the early days of stand-up, an aspiring comic wouldn’t know where to begin. Now, they can sign up for courses and workshops, then join a vast open-mic network of similarly inexperienced practitioners performing ill-attended gigs in pub rooms. Whether any of this makes them funny, or simply fosters a safe environment where the untalented can remain so, is a moot point.
Our quest found many of these; most eliminated at the audition phase (along with some more promising acts who more narrowly missed the cut) before facing real audiences in student venues around the country.
Being poor-quality versions of famous comics is a common mistake – especially when you’re trying to emulate the likes of Frankie Boyle or Ricky Gervais. Even they can divide a room, and they know what they are doing; in clumsy hands, supposedly dark comedy simply becomes vile.
Another is just to talk with no sense of punchlines. The comedians you see on telly might look like they are just having a chat, but they’ve not, and anyone wanting to go into comedy should have studied their routines more closely to see where they laughs come.
But while we have witnessed greater numbers at the bottom of the talent pyramid, the increased competition has led to stronger acts at the top. You have to be good to survive.
This week, at the Edinburgh Fringe, we held our final – which proved the highest echelon of student comics are a mighty impressive bunch, with an eclectic range of styles from beautiful musical whimsy to a man who drags a wheelie bin on to the stage. Any one of them could have slipped into a comedy club bill, and no audience would have been any the wiser that they weren’t pros.
All could have that career in comedy, no more so than our victor, 21-year-old UCL medicine undergraduate Kwame Asante, a charismatic, charming comedian with a quirky, self-deprecating outlook on life. But don’t take my word for it. Watch him in action above."