By John Fleming
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Taking the Malcolm Hardee Awards decision

At lunchtime on Friday, we decided who was going to win the Malcolm Hardee Awards. We decided with the easiest first.

It was fairly obvious that Stewart Lee should win the Cunning Stunt Award for best Fringe publicity stunt of the year as his e-mail of complaint about the Foster's poll to find the 'Best Ever' Perrier winner in the last 30 years had the side effect of publicising the Japanese group the Frank Chickens who weren't appearing at the Fringe and had not appeared there for 25 years. That would have been good enough to win on its own, but the fact the Frank Chickens actually then did appear at the Fringe as a result of the publicity was the cream on the cake.

Twenty-year-old American stand-up Bo Burnham was a shoo-in for the 'Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid' Award after his British PR made it clear earlier in the week that Bo did not want to be considered for the award because “making money is not what he’s driven by at all and (we) don’t think he’d be at all comfortable with receiving this award". This encouraged us to further nominate Bo for the main Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality on the basis that any modern day stand-up comic not interested in money would indeed be entirely original. Again there was a secondary level factor at work here, when it then transpired that Bo had never been told by his own PR that he was not interested in money and, Bo claimed, not only was he perfectly happy to be nominated for the award but he was actually aware of and, he claimed, a fan of the late, great Malcolm Hardee. This appeared to have come about because Bo had read a lot about Andy Kaufman and anti-establishment "anti-comedy". Good to know Malcolm's infamy has spread to another generation on another continent.

Deciding who would win the main Malcolm Hardee Award for comic originality was a big problem because of the two front-runners; a discussion then ensued about the risk of appearing to only give the Award to seriously weird or perceived-as-weird acts. But, then, as the award IS for comic originality and it IS in Malcolm's name, "unusual" is perhaps not something to be avoided. The award went to Robert White.

Next year... hold onto your hats...

- by John Fleming

Any opinions expressed above do not represent the view of Whatsonstage.com nor any of its staff or contributors beyond the bylined author.

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	The Malcolm Hardee Awards presentation + Arthur Smith's tour of Edinburgh - 29th Aug 2010 blog
	Comic Originality - not being interested in money - 25th Aug 2010 blog
	Of The Blue Lady, academic comedy and Shaggers - 25th Aug 2010 blog
	Surreal reports and Malcolm Hardee Awards mistranslations - 24th Aug 2010 blog
	MALCOLM HARDEE AWARDS 2010 - shortlist announced at the Edinburgh Fringe - 23rd Aug 2010 blog
	The banger-up-the-bum - Still offensive after a quarter of a century - 22nd Aug 2010 blog
	The Spirit of the Fringe is dead, dying or thriving - 20th Aug 2010 blog
	Cunning Stunts, Chainsaw-Jugglers and 8-Month-Old Babies - 18th Aug 2010 blog
	What Sells Tickets? - 18th Aug 2010 blog
	Lewis Schaffer (never call him just Lewis) at some time or other - 16th Aug 2010 blog
	More...