Matt Richardson wins Student Award vote

Matt Richardson, a 18-year-old publishing student from Didcot in Oxfordshire has become the last finalist in the Chortle Student Comedy Award, after winning the People's Choice place.

He had performed just five gigs at the time of entering the competition in January, and says he has ‘no major message… I’m just trying to make people laugh with feel good stories of exploits and observations of the world’.

The first year publishing student at Oxford Brookes university now joins eight other student stand-ups at the final, to be held in the George Square Theatre, Edinburgh, on August 17.

They are:

• Matthew Winning: A 24-year-old University of Strathclyde economics PhD student who boasts 'more jokes about Robert Mugabe than the average comedian'.

• Matt Rees: A 19-year-old Glamorgan psychology undergraduate, very new to stand-up.

• Ed Patrick: A 27-year-old medical student at Aberdeen university, returning to comedy after making the 2007 final of these awards.

• Emerald Paston: A 19-year-old Cambridge philosophy student with a guitar-based act.

• Nicholas Cooke: A 22-year-old University of East London film and video student 'telling stories of my misadventures as a self-hating student living in a house of boxed wine drinking 'cool' people who have parties I am not invited to'.

• Max Dickins: A 21-year-old studying philosophy and politics at Leeds who also made the finals of last year's competition.

• Ian Smith: Our third returning finalist, a 20-year-old media and communications student at Goldsmiths University Of London.

• Phil Wang: A 19-year-old Cambridge engineering undergraduate who mixes deadpan one-liners with ukulele playing.

Tickets for the final will go on sale when the Edinburgh Fringe box office opens in June.

Here is Matt in the Manchester semi-final:

Published: 29 Apr 2010