The Edinburgh Comedy Awards nominees came out this week. Not one of the thirteen acts across Best Show and Best Newcomer is Scottish.
I wasn’t going to say anything. Awards are awards. There are always hundreds if not thousands of people who deserve one and don’t get one, and every act on that list is brilliant. I’m genuinely happy for all of them.
Then I read what the awards said about it.
WHAT WAS ACTUALLY SAID
Speaking to The Scotsman, awards director Nica Burns said Scottish comedians had been “pipped at the post” this year, adding: “There are a small number of Scots, if you count up how many performers there are.”
Incoming executive director Emma Brünjes said she could see “a bright future with some of the work that’s being done with two brilliant comedy clubs now running year round in Edinburgh”.
That second line is the one that got me. Because year-round comedy in Edinburgh or in Scotland is not new by any means.
If the people running the Oscars of comedy think Scotland only recently got a comedy scene, that tells you something. Not about malice but about distance.
SO WE COUNTED. ALL 46 YEARS OF IT.
I took the awards’ own published history of every winner and nominee since 1981, added this year’s shortlists, and went through all 400 nominations one by one to work out where each act is actually from.
Here’s what’s there.
Three Scottish acts have ever won. That’s it. Three, in 46 years.
Beyond the winners, another ten nominations have gone to Scottish acts, and they come from just seven of them. Larry Dean accounts for three on his own.
Thirteen nominations out of 400. That’s 3.3%. Under four per cent, in the country that hosts the thing.
THE COMPARISON THAT SHOULD STING
Scotland has eleven acts in the awards’ entire history.
Australia has twenty-eight. The United States has thirty-four. Ireland, with a smaller population than Scotland, has sixteen.
An act is more than three times more likely to have flown in from America to be nominated at Scotland’s comedy award than to have come from anywhere in Scotland.
I want to be clear that I don’t think there’s a conspiracy. Nobody is sitting in that judging room plotting against us. The panel watched more than 550 shows this year across 1,400 viewings. That’s a serious amount of work done.
But a result this consistent, for this long, isn’t bad luck. Bad luck doesn’t run for 46 years.
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PANEL. IT’S ABOUT WHAT THE PANEL CAN SEE.
If I go to watch two different comedy shows, one I’ve wandered in to off the street and the other is an act that I’m already familiar with and know their last few shows were great, which do you think I’m more likely to enjoy?
Of course a lot of the magic of the Fringe is stumbling in to some absolute gold. But when you know that you already like an act, are you more likely to value their show?
How many of the panel are already familiar with the acts who live near them?
On top of that, I do think that Scottish acts often sell tickets at the Fringe because they gig here all year and already have an audience. They often don’t need the big PR campaign because they fill rooms on their own name.
Not to mention that Scotland is a working class country. Whether acts NEED the PR campaign or not, a lot can’t afford that cost.
But is the PR campaign how you get seen by the people who hand out awards?
Add to that a decision-making layer, the panels, the agents, the commissioners, the bookers, that lives and works several hundred miles away, and you get exactly the result the numbers show.
WHAT SHOULD BE HAPPENING INSTEAD
The biggest arts festival in the world takes place in Scotland’s capital every August. Logically, that should make Scottish comedians over-represented in this industry, not under-represented. Any comedy fan should be able to turn on the telly and think, it’s odd how many Scottish comedians are on everything.
That is not the case, and the gap between those two things is the whole argument.
ONE LAST THING
The awards said they’re sure Scots will appear on the list in coming years.
I hope so. Ten years since the last Scottish win, and the whole scene here watches that list come out every August, because one name on it would make the whole country feel like it was possible.
But “we’re sure it’ll happen eventually” has been the answer for 46 years. At some point that stops being optimism and starts being the policy.
