IT is the comedy format that has created some of the biggest stars of stage and screen - but now it seems the sketch show is going out of fashion.

For years the sketch show has been the staple of television comedy - and many of the acts have emerged from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Acts such as The League of Gentlemen, Flight of the Conchords and the Cambridge Footlights team all first shot to prominence by learnign their craft at the festival.

But Nica Burns, director of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, says the sketch format is largely absent at the festival this year.

Cost and the need for arduous preparation are among factors working against the traditional sketch show, she said.

She said: "It is the 20th anniversary of The League of Gentlemen winning in 1997, and I remember it so clearly because they were so dark, and they went on almost immediately to their TV show [in 1999].

"I think it is really hard to get a sketch show together, and it is more expensive.

"If you look at the history of the Fringe, these shows are people that do these shows met at college - The League of Gentlemen met at Bretton Hall [a drama school in Yorkshire].

"The economies of putting these shows on are great, its a lot more work than a solo show, a lot more time to write it.

"There are some very practical considerations why there are not many sketch shows."

The League of Gentlemen - Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith - went on to star in a successful comedy series on BBC Two, and the famed Cambridge Footlights winners, in 1981, featured Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery, and Emma Thompson, among others, who all became stars in various fields over the next 20 years.