Award-winning TV channel Dave, the home of witty banter, has announced the winner of the sixth annual Dave Award for the Funniest Joke of the Fringe.
In its quest to find the most hilarious jokes, Dave enlisted the help of an expert panel of judges, consisting of ten of the UK's foremost comedy critics. They scoured venues at the world-famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival over a week-long period to nominate their three favourite one-liners. The 30 shortlisted gags were then put to the public vote, with 2,570 comedy fans selecting those that made them laugh the loudest.
And the winner is...
With nearly a quarter of the overall votes (24%), comedian Rob Auton takes the top spot and walks away with the hand-crafted Dave trophy and cash prize for his sharp one-liner:
I heard a rumour that Cadbury is bringing out an oriental chocolate bar. Could be a Chinese Wispa.
Rob Auton
Dave's Top 10 Funniest Jokes from the Fringe Festival 2013
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Rob Auton - ?I heard a rumour that Cadbury is bringing out an oriental chocolate bar. Could be a Chinese Wispa.?
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Alex Horne - ?I used to work in a shoe-recycling shop. It was sole-destroying.?
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Alfie Moore - ?I'm in a same-sex marriage? the sex is always the same.?
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Tim Vine - ?My friend told me he was going to a fancy dress party as an Italian island. I said to him ?Don?t be Sicily.??
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Gary Delaney - ?I can give you the cause of anaphylactic shock in a nutshell.?
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Phil Wang - ?The Pope is a lot like Doctor Who. He never dies, just keeps being replaced by white men.?
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Marcus Brigstocke - ?You know you are fat when you hug a child and it gets lost.?
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Liam Williams - ?The universe implodes. No matter.?
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Bobby Mair - ?I was adopted at birth and have never met my mum. That makes it very difficult to enjoy any lapdance.?
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Chris Coltrane - ?The good thing about lending someone your time machine is that you basically get it back immediately.?
The winning joke this year is from Rob Auton, a new young comedian and poet who first started performing stand-up in 2008 on an impulse, standing on a wall, at a fireworks party. The 30 year old from York first performed at the Fringe in 2012 with ?The Yellow Show?, and has only just quit his day job selling paint brushes in Soho to chase his dream of becoming a full-time performer. Auton?s main show this year at the Fringe is ?The Sky Show? but the winning joke has come from one of his sideline gigs at ?Comedy After Lunch? with Zapp and Dembina at the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Of his win, Rob Auton said: "I am honoured to receive this award and just pleased that a joke that tackles the serious issue of the invention of a new chocolate bar can be laughed at by the people of Britain.?
Honorable mentions ? Those that just missed out on the top spots:
Glenn Wool ? ?Ho Chi Minh City? I say: can't you just let Saigon be Saigon??
Pajama Men (Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez) ? ?My father was a seismologist. He could never get a steady job.?
Nick Helm ? ?I'm very arrogant about my balls. I'm egotestical.?
Top of the Flops ? Some of the worst one-liners voted for include:
Simon Lilley - ?I thought ex-pats were people who used to be called Pat.?
Geoff Norcott - ?My wife said to me recently, ?Do you fancy going gay clubbing?? I said, ?No, it sounds violent?.?
Tim Vine - ?I once did a gig in a zoo. I got babooned off.?
Ben Van Der Velde - ?Swastika in Geordie means something that used to be a sticker.?
Nikhil Tiwali - ?What do you call a pink flower that comes back from the dead? A re-in-carnation.?
Pat Cahill - ?90 per cent of baking injuries are stress-related. There are people up and down the country having mental bake-downs.?
In order to compile the shortlist, each of the judges sat through an average of 60 different comedy performances and sifted through more than 3,600 minutes of material. This meant they each had a potential pool of around 7,200* different jokes to choose from.
The Dave award, which is open to both established and up-and-coming comedians, pays homage to the wealth of talent on offer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival whilst shining a spotlight on the individual jokes, not just the performances.
Steve North, General Manager of Dave commented: ?Now celebrating its sixth year, Dave's Funniest Joke of The Fringe continues to highlight the best one-liners coming out of the Fringe. This year's Top 10 is quick, sharp, witty and clever, and Rob is a very worthy winner.?
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is widely acknowledged to be the biggest arts festival in the world and takes place every August for three weeks in Scotland?s capital city. Starting in 1947, it was seen as a post-war initiative to reunite Europe through culture, and was so successful that it inspired more performers than there was room for.
For an exclusive interview with winner Rob Auton, download The Dave Weekly podcast from iTunes now. You can also follow Dave on Twitter at @join_dave, Facebook at facebook.com/davewittybanter and via the website at joindave.co.uk.
This year marks the sixth anniversary of Dave's Funniest Joke of the Fringe. To review the previous? winners and highlights, and vote for your favourite overall, visit
Dave's Facebook page.
For more information contact Toby Leston at Taylor Herring PR on 0208 206 5151 or email: toby.leston@taylorherring.com
Notes to editors
*Calculated as 60 different comedy performances with an average running time of 60 mins per show totalling over 3,600 minutes of material, with the average comedian telling 2 jokes per minute = 7,200 jokes per judge.
The 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival takes place 2nd - 26th August 2013.
The Dave Panel is made up of Ben Williams (Comedy Editor, Time Out), Julian Hall (Author, The Rough Guide to Comedy; Comedy Critic, The Independent), Dominic Maxwell (Theatre & Comedy Editor, The Times), Mark Monahan (Comedy Reviewer, Daily Telegraph), Sharon Lougher (Comedy Reviewer, Metro), Mark Wareham (Comedy Reviewer, Mail on Sunday), Mark Boosey (Editor, British Comedy Guide), Steven Bennett (Editor, Chortle.co.uk), Bruce Dessau (Comedy Critic, Evening Standard; Chair of the 2008 if.comedy awards panel), and Brian Donaldson (Comedy Critic, The Scotsman; Comedy Editor, The List)
The Dave panel each submitted their three ?best jokes? nominations. These were then put up for the public to vote with 2,570 people voting for their choice of the funniest one-liners.
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