This morning, a month after this year’s cut-down-by-Covid Edinburgh Fringe finished, the 2021 Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award winner was announced. Yes, a month after it finished.
The late Malcolm Hardee outside his childhood home
Alas no attempt was made to link the fact that the Award and the dead-but-impossible-to-forget comic Malcolm Hardee himself are both late.
Normally, there are three Malcolm Hardee Awards but, with no Fringe last year, with Covid still stalking the land and with staggeringly fewer shows at the Fringe this year, it’s a miracle there was any award at all.
As for the lesser Fringe awards… There were no Edinburgh Comedy (aka Perrier) Awards at all this year. And the eponymous TV channel did not attempt to award any prize for ‘DAVE’s Best Joke of the Fringe 2021’.
Fittingly, then, the winner of the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award this year was Will Mars, who announced his own ‘(Some Guy Called) DAVE Joke of the Fringe 2021’.
A cunning stunt indeed.
The TV channel’s annual prize is awarded after multiple allegedly top comedy industry professionals assiduously scout for jokes to nominate a shortlist and the final winner is decided by an allegedly carefully supervised public vote.
This year, Will Mars just got together a few gags from people’s shows and then wandered up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh trying to find anyone called Dave who would pick a winner from the bunch.
Surprisingly, finding someone called Dave turned out to be almost as difficult as picking a winner.
The chosen winning joke was Masai Graham’s:
“I thought the word ‘Caesarean’ began with the letter ‘S’ but, when I looked in the dictionary, it was in the ‘C’ section.”
The shortlist of other jokes – inexplicably Caesar-centric – which Will had got together included:
Adele Cliff: “The Roman emperor’s wife hates playing hide and seek because wherever she goes Julius Caesar.”
Ben Clover: “Getting a caesarian is dangerous in Russia. If they open you up and find a little girl, they open her up to see if there’s another.”
Ivor Dembina: “My therapist told me, ‘A problem shared, is a hundred quid’.”
Sameer Katz: “I think Chewbacca is French because he understands English but refuses to speak it.”
Leo Kearse: “Marvin Gaye used to keep a sheep in my vineyard. He’d herd it through the grapevine.”
Will Mars’ own: “My grandparents were married for forty years, but everything took longer back then.”
Tom Mayhew: “Me and my ex were into role play. I’d pretend to be James Bond and she’d pretend she still loved me.”
Rich Pulsford: “I don’t know what you call a small spillage from a pen but I have an inkling.”
The trophy for the one-off 2021 Award itself was designed and crafted by mad inventor John Ward, who has designed and made all the previous trophies.
But you can’t just knock-off a Malcolm Hardee Award in a minute or two. Oh no. Oh my dear me, no. Quality counts.
You need raw materials and then you have to decide what the fuck to do with them…
Once you have ’em, you have to shape ’em and craft ’em…
Then, if you’re talented like John Ward, you have to tart ’em up into a final trophy…
John Ward (he’s the one on the right) with the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award 2021
John Ward told me: “It’s basically Malcolm’s bonce, with real imitation hair, plus the specs mounted on an ‘H’ shaped base for Hardee.
“I used a BAFTA type theme but tried to take the piss out of it with the silver (on the right) symbolising the bland year and half it’s been with Covid and the golden ray of laughter (on the left) is pure (if that’s a suitable word) Malcolm with a hearty grin.”
“With real imitation hair?” I asked. “From where?”
“From a fabric shop I patronise for such things…”
“Such things?” I asked.
“I use it to make wigs and I buy it by the yard as you never know when you might run out of the hairy stuff…” replied John.
Here is a reminder of John Ward.
Here is Will Mars’ typically non-promotional speech accepting the 2021 Cunning Stunt Award…
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 