Comedy prizes handed out

Three comedy acts have picked up awards this weekend.

Double act Max And Ivan won the best comedy show award at the Buxton Fringe in Derbyshire for their new show Con Artists – ahead of fellow nominees Lights! Camera! Improvise! and The TinaMarinas: Being Gorgeous.

At the same two-and-a-half-week festival, musical comic Helen Arney scooped best individual comedy show for Voice Of An Angle, which she describes as a mix of ‘songs, science and silliness’.

She saw off competition from fellow nominees Andrew O'Neill, Ed Eales-White, Joe Fairbrother, Juliet Meyers and Rob Heeney.

Meanwhile, relative newcomer Sam Savage has won the £1,000 Funny’s Funny award for female comedians, ahead of more than 250 other acts.

A support worker for people with learning disabilities, she took up stand-up three years ago after taking a comedy course run by tutor Jill Edwards in Brighton.

‘I’ve always loved comedy,’ she said. ‘I had some spare money,  so I booked myself on a comedy course. I had no intention of being a comic, but then found that I loved it’

Runners-up were both Americans: Texan Jojo Georgiou and Florida-born Sarah Cassidy who have both been performing since 2009

Published: 23 Jul 2012