Bucks fizz - the Perrier Award - past winners

Published Friday 22 July 2005 at 12:55 by Jeremy Austin

Jeremy Austin talks to previous Perrier winners about the advantages, disadvantages and pressures of receiving the prestigious award

This might seem like a statement from the Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious but the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is not all about comedy and comedy is not all about winning the Perrier Award.

However, and this is a statement from the School of Bugger-All Research, talk to most of the general public about the world’s largest performing arts festival and, for most of them, comedy and Perrier would be the most recognisable aspects of it. The Perrier has become for comedy what the Olivier is for the theatre - a kitemark for quality entertainment of which the average bloke in the street has heard.

Is it so for the comedy performers attending the festival every year, however? Do all eligible performers dream of standing on stage holding that giant bottle of fizzy French water and thanking their agent, their partners and probably not God on the last Saturday night of the event?

Er, yes, I’d imagine they do. Why?

Because winning the Perrier pushes a performer’s career on a good three or four years. That’s three or four years not having to play in front of hen parties and Asbos in town centre clubs, three or four years of not having to convince television producers that they have heard of you. And it is also several thousand pounds in prize money, which will almost cover the cost of taking a show to Edinburgh in the first place.

But it can also be something of a curse for a performer. Being thrust into the limelight means a certain amount of upping of the game has to follow. All of a sudden, comedy is a serious business. There are big bucks involved and, as the uncle of Spiderman’s Peter Parker would have said had he been asked, “with big bucks comes big responsibility”. The pressure is on to come up with show ideas for those big television producers and create a new show as the returning hero at the next year’s festival.

This year Will Adamsdale has the privilege of returning to Edinburgh wearing the big watery crown. He has an enviable task ahead of him. Last year his show, Jackson’s Way - about an inappropriate motivational speaker - leapt from obscurity to rumours of a Best Newcomer nomination right on to the main list and the final prize. He is not a comic. He is an actor. Does he return with the same show or something different? I don’t know. He wouldn’t talk to us. “Too busy,” apparently.

Daniel Kitson won the prize three years ago. Arguably the most talented comedian of his generation, Kitson’s honest, confessional style has become a blueprint for the young comics following him. But he freely admits that winning the Perrier was the worst thing that could happen to him professionally.

He revels in creating an intimate atmosphere with an audience whom he makes feel are his friends. Becoming better known, he has said on stage, has attracted to his act people with whom he would not want to be associated.

While he returned in 2003 in a full blown thematic show at the now defunct Pod venue, last year he performed at the low-key Stand venue. It is the perfect place for him - small, intimate and resolutely opposed to the more commercial event that the fringe has become. He could have filled a venue four times the size.

This year he takes a step even further away from what winning the Perrier promises. Although he is doing stand-up at The Stand, his main focus will be his storytelling show at The Traverse, entitled Stories for the Wobbly Hearted. Some will not like it. Some will want jokes and laughs and will feel uncomfortable at his intelligent deconstruction of theatrical performance. I’ve seen previews and, although it would be unfair to write anything approaching a review at this still soft, pink and fleshy formative stage, I think it is a brave move that should be applauded.

The following year, 2003, was won by American Demetri Martin. He bucked the trend and returned in 2004 with a show - Spiralbound - even better than the one with which he had won the award the previous year.

He has some thoughts on what it means to win. And in a marked break from tradition, he shares them with us now:

“I don’t know if there is a curse of the Perrier. The biggest problem I have found with it is that when I am out and I ask for a Perrier I get teased by people who know I have that trophy. So, it seems like an award that discourages at least one new person a year from ordering that drink. If there were a drink called Perrier Newcomer, then I imagine this problem would be doubled every year.

“I think more people know about the Perrier in America than they did a few years ago, which is interesting. It seems to me that there is a growing appreciation in the States for comedy from the UK - with The Office, Ali G, Alan Partridge, etc. This is probably due, in part, to the fact that these days American episodic TV shows are crap. It’s embarrassing.

“So, maybe the curse of the Perrier - at least for an American comic - is that you are cursed with the knowledge that there is a place where comedy is in a better state than the state where you live - and that you have to ride in a plane for a while to get there and then it’s only for a month. Then you have to go home and try to figure out why so many more people actually go out to see live comedy in a country that has a fraction of the population of the country you live in. I guess that wouldn’t so much be the curse of the Perrier as it would be the curse of the Fringe or the curse of shitty American TV networks.

“So, I’m going to stick with my original answer. The curse pertains to ordering fizzy water. Of course, I’m answering this question before doing my show for this year’s festival. Maybe I will find a deeper, less water-oriented meaning of the curse after my previews. I guess that’s part of what makes Fringe forever interesting.”