The first four finalists in this year’s Chortle Student Comedy Awards were named last night.

Rio Bauer and Conor Neville, Adam Todd and Matilda Wnek, got through at the Manchester semi final, held at XS Malarkey.

They now perform at the final at the Edinburgh Fringe on August 12 (Tickets) – and also get the chance to play the Latitude festival in Suffolk in July. The second semi-final is being held at the Boat Show on the Tattershall Castle, Central London, tonight. (Tickets).

This year’s competition is being run with ALCATEL ONE TOUCH and Universal Pictures (UK).

England, Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland are all represented by the first four semi-finalists.

Bauer, a 20-year-old from Co Tyrone, is studying TV & radio production at the University of Salford, and had only done a small handful of gigs before entering the competition.

Neville is a 25-year-old journalism student at Dublin City University; the deadpan Todd, 21, studies is primary education at the university of Edinburgh, and Wnek is a 21-year-old English undergraduate at Cambridge,