Edinburgh Comedy Awards Announce Tomorrow’s Stars

The Edinburgh Comedy Awards have announced their 2024 winners, with three comedians set to follow in the footsteps of past victors including Steve Coogan and The League of Gentlemen.

Amy Gledhill was awarded Best Comedy Show for Make Me Look Fit on the Poster, Joe Kent-Walters received the Best Newcomer Award, and the Victoria Wood Award was given to Rob Copland for his show Gimme (One with Everything).

Kent-Walters won his award for his show Joe Kent-Walters is Frankie Monroe: LIVE!!, in which he plays the MC of a working men’s club. In his round-up of this year’s Fringe, which will be published in The Independent tomorrow, critic Tim Bano described Kent-Walters’s show as “brilliantly assured”.

In a statement, Nica Burns, director of the ECA, said: “Like many of the greats, everyone who has seen him this year will boast in future years that they saw Joe Kent-Walters’s show the year that he won Best Newcomer.”

She added that Gledhill “blends writing that echoes the genius of Victoria Wood combined with the magical physicality of Julie Walters”.

Nana Hughes, who chaired the judging panel, described Copland as a comedian who “in only his second full year at the festival has established himself as a cult favourite and created a legion of fans for his eccentricity and bravery”.

The Edinburgh Comedy Awards are recognised as “the Oscars of Comedy”, and are famed for spotlighting comic talent at the very beginnings of their careers. Industry stars who have previously won awards at the show include Frank Skinner, Sarah Millican, Lee Evans, Al Murray, Eddie Izzard, and Tim Minchin.