He said that deciding to return the festival was like pregnancy, quipping: “You go through a lot of pain and
then the child is born and enough time passes and you forget about the pain and decide that you fancy
having another one, but straight after you’re like ‘I’m never doing that again’.”
Tim Vine, Stewart Francis and Zoe Lyons have all previously won the prestigious award. Adam Rowe won
last year’s award 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 award lists jokes anonymously to avoid bias towards well-known comedians.
The top 10 jokes from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2019
- “I keep randomly shouting out ‘Broccoli’ and ‘Cauliflower’ – I think I might have Florets” – Olaf Falafel
- “Someone stole my antidepressants. Whoever they are, I hope they’re happy” – Richard Stott
- “What’s driving Brexit? From here it looks like it’s probably the Duke of Edinburgh” – Milton Jones
- “A cowboy asked me if I could help him round up 18 cows. I said, ‘Yes, of course. That’s 20 cows” – Jake
Lambert - ”A thesaurus is great. There’s no other word for it” – Ross Smith
- “Sleep is my favourite thing in the world. It’s the reason I get up in the morning” – Ross Smith
- “I accidentally booked myself onto an escapology course; I’m really struggling to get out of it” – Adele
Cliff - “After learning six hours of basic semaphore, I was flagging” – Richard Pulsford
- “To be or not to be a horse rider, that is equestrian” – Mark Simmons
- “I’ve got an Eton-themed Advent calendar, where all the doors are opened for me by my dad’s contacts”
- Ivo Graham