S Poddar
Mark Simmons has won the Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s funniest joke award for his really quite small ship one-liner. A panel of 2,000 people chose the gag—”I was going to sail around the globe in the world’s smallest ship but I bottled it”—as the best among a shortlist selected by critics.
Simmons has been in the running for this award since he first started in doing comedy, over a decade ago, following a friend’s challenge to hit an open mic night. His comedy placed him previously at ninth, sixth, and second places at the top tens that were released indivudal but finally landed him at first place this year. He is delighted to join the ranks of some comedy legends who have previously won the award, such as Tim Vine, Stewart Francis, and Zoe Lyons. He was amazingly tickled pink over his win, quipping, “I needed some good news as I was just fired from my job marking exam papers. Can’t understand it, I always gave 110%.
His prize-winning joke was one of hundreds submitted by Simmons for his PHB’s Free Fringe show at the Liquid Room Annexe. It wasn’t the only one of his gags that impressed the panel. Another of Simmons’ jokes, inspired by the Olympics, also made it to the shortlist: “I love the Olympics. My friend and I invented a new type of relay baton. Well, he came up with the idea, I ran with it.”
As selected by these critics, who attended hundreds of shows at this festival this month of August, among other one-liners, some memorable ones made the shortlist.
It was Chelsea Birkby who gave this witty take on British etiquette and the highbrow versus lowbrow culture divide that tilted the scales in its favor with the judges: “British etiquette is confusing. Why is it highbrow to look at boobs in an art gallery but lowbrow when I get them out in Spoons? Another of the standout jokes came from Sophie Duker, who compared Labour leader Keir Starmer to an AI-generated image of a substitute teacher, while Arthur Smith also scored with a driving test misadventure: “I sailed through my driving test. That’s why I failed it.”.
According to Cherie Hall, channel director of U&Dave, the sponsor of the award, this year’s top 15 list was a brilliant mix of the humorous, saying, “This year’s top 15 list features a hilarious blend of jokes that are sure to keep us laughing until the next joke of the fringe.
Simmons’ show, More Jokes, is playing at the Liquid Rooms Annexe through Saturday, 24 August, and gives audiences a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see, live, his award-winning, sublime humor. For Simmons, it was the career-topping success that justified years of hard graft in honing his craft and glorious punchlines that long outlast the show. The Fringe has always been a platform through which comedians prove their mettle, and victory to Simmons this time through unanimously topical jokes shows something—timeless appeal to a well-crafted joke that lands just right.
As ever, the Edinburgh Fringe is a breeding ground for new comic talent, but it also boasts a good number of performances by well-established comedians. And, as ever, that benchmark for defining what is meant by a “funniest” joke continues to rise year on year. Simmons has achieved it this year, pushing that boundary, with a joke that is very clever, yet very simple, and shows he has not lost his time spent on the comedy circuit.
