Dave's Funniest Joke of the Fringe 2009

The Dave Award for the Funniest Joke of the Fringe is open to both established and up-and-coming comedians and pays homage to the wealth of talent on offer at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe whilst shining a spotlight on the individual jokes, not just the performances. This is the second outing for our lovely little trophy after Zoe Lyons won our inaugural award last year.

This year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe features 34,265 performances of 2,098 shows in 265 venues with comedy making up 35% of the programme. That's a lot of gags to sift through so we enlisted the help of a stellar panel of judges, made up of nine of the UK's leading comedy critics. They scoured venues at the world-famous Fringe festival over a two-week period to find their three favourite and three worst jokes. These were then put up for the public vote.

To reach this stage, the judges sat through an average of 60 different comedy performances adding up to 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 27 shortlisted jokes in each category were put up for the public vote from Monday 17th August with more than 3,000 comedy fans choosing their funniest.

And the winner is...

With nearly 18 per cent of the overall votes, comedian Dan Antopolski, 36, who's best known for his surreal stand-up, takes top spot and walks away with the hand-crafted Dave trophy and a cash prize for his witty one-liner: Hedgehogs. Why can't they just share the hedge?

The winning joke, taken from his current show 'Silent But Deadly', marks a triumphant return to this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe after he was previously nominated for the Perrier Award in both 2000 and 2001. Dan has proved to be a firm favourite with both the panel of judges and the public as another of his jokes also makes it into the top ten funniest jokes from the Fringe (below).

Of his win, Dan Antopolski says: "I'm delighted to get the prize. Although I have won things before at the fringe, this definitely means the most to me and that it should unite my loves of hedgehogs, comedy and Dave makes this prize very special."


The Top 10 funniest jokes from the Fringe Festival



1) Dan Antopolski – "Hedgehogs - why can't they just share the hedge?"

2) Paddy Lennox – "I was watching the London Marathon and saw one runner dressed as a chicken and another runner dressed as an egg. I thought: 'This could be interesting.'"

3) Sarah Millican – "I had my boobs measured and bought a new bra. Now I call them Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes because they're up where they belong."

4) Zoe Lyons – "I went on a girl's night out recently. The invitation said 'dress to kill.' I went as Rose West."

5) Jack Whitehall - "I'm sure wherever my dad is, he's looking down on us. He's not dead. Just very condescending."

6) Adam Hills – "Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. You know you're going to get it, but it's going to be rough."

7) Marcus Brigstocke – "To the people who've got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn't invent it!"

8) Rhod Gilbert – "A spa hotel? It's like a normal hotel, only in reception there's a picture of a pebble".

9) Dan Antopolski – "I've been reading the news about there being a civil war in Madagascar. Well, I've seen it six times and there isn't."

10) Simon Brodkin (as Lee Nelson) – "I started so many fights at my school - I had that attention-deficit disorder. So I didn't finish a lot of them."


Some of the jokes which just missed out on making the top ten include:


Tom Wrigglesworth - "I'm on the cusp of getting married. Well, I'm engaged to be harassed."

Edward Aczel - "Machiavelli said, 'It is better to be feared than to be loved, if you cannot be both.' Something to bear in mind when you embark on internet dating."

Adam Hills - "Watching the global financial crisis unfold is rather like watching my dad being molested by a clown. I know it's going to affect me, I am just not entirely sure how."

Phil Nichol - "A lot of people say I'm egocentric – but enough about them."



Some of the worst jokes told at this year's Fringe include:


Stephen Carlin – "There are so many 'failed train' announcements at stations these days. It's not rolling stock, it's laughing stock."

Celia Pacquola – "My mind is like a cement mixer. It's grey, thick and always moving."

Rhys Darby – "I don't believe in guns. Literally; I don't believe they exist."

Frank Woodley – "I phoned the swine flu hotline and all I got was crackling."

Anna and Katy - "I dated a woman from the Chinese State Circus. One time I took her upstairs for a 69. She said, 'I'm not cooking at this time of night.'"

Alex Maple – "Michael Jackson only invented the moonwalk so he could sneak up on children."

Phil Nichol – "She's got a face like a rare Chinese vase – minging."

Denise Van Outen – "A brunette, a red-head and a blonde break out of Holloway Prison. They hide in a barn from the police and get into some sacks. The police come in and feel the sack with the brunette in it - she goes 'miaow'! They go on to feel the sack with the red-head in it - she goes 'woof!' Finally they feel the sack with the blonde in it. The Blonde shouts: potatoes!"

Alistair McGowan - "I've just split up from my girlfriend, which is shame, because it was a long-standing arrangement. Perhaps if we'd sat down a bit more..."