ON the face of it, it doesn’t seem like a laughing matter, but a joke about being fired has been named the funniest of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Adam Rowe won the 11th annual award for Dave’s Funniest Joke Of The Fringe with the line: “Working at the JobCentre has to be a tense job – knowing that if you get fired, you still have to come in the next day.”
The gag from the rising star’s show Undeniable won with 41 per cent of a public vote on a shortlist of gags picked by comedy critics.
Rowe, a former bartender, began doing stand-up in 2010 and has previously been crowned Liverpool Comedian of the Year.
On winning the award, the comedian, who is set to take his Fringe show on a UK tour this year, said: “I thought my agent was lying. He rang me and told me I couldn’t tell anyone for a week, which has been almost impossible.
“I’m massively taken aback by it, I’ve never seen myself as being in the running for things like this. It’s a massive honour and a genuinely huge surprise.”
Explaining how he came up with the punchline, Rowe said: “I wrote it when I was on stage when I was hosting a gig in Liverpool.
“It was a bit of crowd work that stayed with me. I was doing the usual compering thing, asking people what they do for a living.
“A guy said he worked in the Jobcentre and I said the joke that has now won the award. Because it got such a nice reaction on the night I thought I had to do something with it as a line.
“I didn’t expect to be winning an award for what was essentially a brain fart.”
Previous winners of the honour include Tim Vine, Stewart Francis and Zoe Lyons.
Maths student Ken Cheng won last year’s prize with his effort: “I’m not a fan of the new pound coin, but then again, I hate all change.”
The award, which was voted on by 2,000 people, lists jokes anonymously to avoid any bias towards well-known comedians.
Dave channel director Luke Hales said: “This year, the news agenda and everyday British idiosyncrasies have provided some wonderful opportunities for comedians to use their creative and comic genius in giving us all a giggle.
“As ever, we have enjoyed some quite brilliant one-liners and are delighted to crown Adam Rowe as the recipient of this year’s Dave’s Funniest Joke of the Fringe Award.”
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