Comic comes clean about his Edinbugrh Fringe accolade

It has been 14 years since Nick Helm won the Dave award for the best joke of the Edinburgh Fringe.

And now it can be revealed that he actually got the gag from his father.

The comic came clean about the origins of the joke – ‘I needed a password, eight characters long, so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ – on Radio X this morrning.

He told presenter Toby Tarrant: ‘I’d say he gave me the slab of marble, and I used my skills as a comedian to chisel it down into an award-winning sculpture!"

‘My dad wrote a very long, rambling email with that joke in it, and I edited the email and I said, "It's not like that, dad, it's like this."

‘And it was like this three-paragraph story that ended with the punchline, and I rewrote it for him.’

‘I had 60 one-liners in all of my previews, and I'd whittle them down, and the ones that didn't get laughs, I'd cut them out, and then I whittled it down, and it was one out of six, because I only need six jokes for my shows. I do six jokes.

‘I never really thought that much of it. And then it got picked out, and then it won an award.’

Tarrant was sitting in for Chris Moyles Show on his 6.30am to 10am weekday show on Radio X  and on Global Player.

Published: 24 Apr 2025