New call from Scottish promoter

The Perrier Award should  be scrapped and replaced by a series of bursaries to help nurture amateur comedians, Scotland’s leading comedy promoter has said.

Tommy Sheppard, director of The Stand comedy clubs in Edinburgh and Glasgow, has always been one of the award’s most vociferous critics.

Now he has responded to a call from Perrier Award producer Nica Burns for ideas to revitalise them with a radical suggestion that would reward up-and-coming comedians rather than those already established on the circuit.
 
He said: ‘Comedy competitions are a spurious exercise at the best of times - with such a diverse range of comedic talent at a festival of this size it is ridiculous to claim one performer is funnier than the other.
 
‘Funniness is in the eyes and ears of the audience. One person’s Ricky Gervais is the other’s Jim Bowen.
 
‘As it stands the Perrier Award is a divisive and damaging exercise. It sets one performer against another and creates thousands of losers for every winner. It sours the comedy programme of the festival and stifles innovation and originality as performers search for lowest common denominators to appease competition judges
 
‘If Perrier genuinely wish to support the development of live comedy in Britain, they should scrap the award in its current form and replace it with a programme of support for talented new artists.
 
‘A much better approach would be to create a series of ten annual bursaries set at a level - say £15,000 - which would effectively allow new comics to give up the day job and turn professional.
 
‘The best way for any new performer to get better is to practice, yet so many talented people simply cannot afford to take the financial risk involved.
 
‘An approach like this would associate the brand with a series of new performers, and allow it to become synonymous with contemporary comedy in Britain. It would also mean that the company would be genuinely regarded as patrons of the arts rather than risk being seen as purveyors of a cheap marketing gimmick.

‘And if the Perrier Award doesn’t want to change it‚s only a matter of time before another sponsor steps in to become the commercial friend of British stand-up.’

The nominations for this year’s award will be announced on Wednesday, and the winner on Friday.

Meanwhile, judges have hit back at a newspaper article yesterday that suggested they would be  hard-pressed to come up with the secret longlist of 30 shows that would merit being considered as nominees.

The Sunday Telegraph quoted several of the Perrier panellists talking about the worst , most ‘soul-destroying’ shows of the hundreds on offer, with  the paper claiming political agendas were killing off the comedy.

However, Perrier hit back with a statement claiming  the journalist who wrote  the piece had such a flimsy grasp of comedy she hadn’t even heard of The Mighty Boosh or Dara O’Briain.

It said the judges comments were ‘misquoted and taken out of context'.

Panel chairman John Pidgeon said: “I was on the panel in 1999 when the Mighty Boosh and Ross Noble werenominated and I didn’t know that was a vintage year. This year is exciting because it is so wide open. There is no obvious front runner.”

While Channel 4’s Ruby Kuraishe, also on the panel, added: ‘We have had some good, some bad but many very funny shows. I’m looking forward to the discussion on Wednesday. It’s going to be a tough call.’

Published: 22 Aug 2005