Winner of our new comic writer award announced

Aspiring writer Tony Wilkes has first won the P.G. Wodehouse New Comic Writer Award, run via Chortle.

His contribution, South Of The River, won him a weekend writing course worth £425 plus a bundle of Wodehouse books

The Glasgow-based data analyst said: 'I'm pleased and amazed to have won the competition - I don't generally write very often, but was inspired to enter the competition by seeing Robert Webb and Mark Heap's Jeeves & Wooster escapades in the West End last year.'

Head judge Nina Stibbe said of Wilkes's short story: 'It was immediately funny, charming and was wonderfully exciting. And, like much of the best comedy writing, it was both highly ridiculous and yet somehow plausible.'

Other writers who made the shortlist, from more than 120 entrants, but narrowly missed out on the title itself, were: John Britten, David Bussell, Jonathan Grant, Mikey Jackson, Sara McNamara, Scott Limbrick, Andrew Hunter Murray, Tom Regan and Mark Restuccia.

The competition, backed by Wodehouse's publishers Random House and the Wodehouse estate, was launched to mark the centenary of the publication of Something Fresh, the first of the author's novels set in Blandings Castle.

Featuring a valuable scarab unwittingly acquired from a dyspeptic American billionaire, plus imposters, engagements, broken engagements, elopements, mistaken identities, family spats and shots fired in the dead of night, the book was republished yesterday to mark the milestone.

Wilkes's prize is a weekend creative writing course from November 13-15 at Studio Farrows, run by Random House novelist Miranda Glover, with guest speaker Jem Roberts, Douglas Adams' official biographer and Wodehouse expert

He will also be reading the story, along with other selected entrants, as part of the Chortle Comedy Book Festival in Crouch End; at 12.30pm on Saturday November 7. Admission is free. Click here for more details of the festival.

Read his winning entry here.

Published: 24 Oct 2015