And he's scooped Sydney Comedy Fest award

Joe Lycett is to present Sunday Brunch – hot on the heels of winning an award for best international act at the Sydney Comedy Festival.

The comic is to stand in for Simon Rimmer just for next week’s episode of the Channel 4 cooking-and-chat show.

Rimmer joked: ‘I've been suspended’ after co-host Tim Lovejoy announced on today’s programme: ‘Joe Lycett is presenting this show next week because Simon, you're bunking off next week aren't you?’

Lycett made an appearance as a guest on the show back in November.

Previous stand-in presenters have included Johnny Vegas,who has done it three times, Jason Byrne and  Katherine Ryan.

Last night, Lycett was named Best Of The Fest (International) at the Sydney festival. He tweeted that he was ‘honoured’ with the accolade, joking: ‘And to think I did both shows whilst on MDMA!!’

Best local act went to political comic Tom Ballard, who said on Twitter: ‘This is very nice. Cheers to everyone who made it along’.

Ballard will now take the award-winning show, Problematic, to the Edinburgh Fringe in August.

Also at the festival, Aaron Chen was named best newcomer and Urzila Carlson took the  Director's Choice award.

Published: 21 May 2017