With eight rising comedy stars

Mark Watson is to host the final of this year’s Chortle Student Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The comic – famed for his marathon shows at the festival as well as TV shows such as We Need Answers and Mock The Week – will compere the showcase in Pleasance One on August 13.

He will introduce eight of the best student comedians, selected after an intensive nationwide hunt that attracted well over 300 entrants.

This year’s competition, powered by The Sims 3, has a £2,500 top prize and will be judged by some of the most influential people from the industry side of stand-up, so providing the finalists with a vital leg-up the comedy career ladder.

Watson will be in Edinburgh for his own show The Information, which is on at Assembly George square at 7.40pm daily, while he is also spearheading his own ‘Edinborolympics’ - pitting comics of different nationalities against each other in a variety of challenges not recognised by the official Olympics committee.

The final of the Chortle Student Comedy Award is on at 10.30pm on the 13th and will also feature a performance by 2011 winner Adam Hess. Click here for tickets.

The full list of finalists is:

Adam Mitchell: An Edinburgh university history student from Chester who describes his style as ‘silly stuff, told in a deadpan fashion’. He will be celebrating his 22nd birthday on the day of the final.

Dalia Malek: A PhD law student at King's College London. Malek had never performed a stand-up gig before entering the Chortle award, her only experience being though a comedy course. Originally from California, she performs ‘a deadpan delivery of exaggerated, vulgar observations’.

David Elms: Elms, who studies linguistics, was a semi-finalist in the Chortle Student Comedy Award last year, when he was also named Edinburgh University Stand-up of the year. A member of improv team The Improverts, his solo set comprises a mix of musical comedy and one-liners.

Hari Sriskantha: The third Edinburgh University student to make it to the final, Sriskantha, 24, has a set that combines his physics background with the common tropes of stand-up.

Johnny F Monotone: The creation of York student Sebastian Bloomfield, who has been performing on the circuit in the north of England for the past four years. He says his influences include Andy Kaufman, Jack Dee and Dylan Moran.

Johnny Pelham: Originally from Bradford, Pelham’s routine is based on his appearance and on his experiences of being a white middle-class kid at a predominantly Asian working-class school. He is now studying politics and sociology at Newcastle University.

Kwame Asante: A third-year medicine student at UCL, originally from Beckenham in Kent, Asante was runner-up in the Loaded LAFTAs Search for a Star competition last year, and a finalist in the Leicester Square New Comedian of the Year the year before that.

Pierre Novellie: South-African born Novellie has a ‘surreal and observational set’ and vows: ‘I will be going into the world of stand-up after graduating no matter what.’ The 21-year-old is in his third year of studying Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge.

Published: 2 Jul 2012