The Best Joke at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe

The biggest annual arts festival in the world has been taking place in Edinburgh over the past month, as thousands of comedians, actors, dancers and singers gathered for the Edinburgh Fringe.

The event is held in Scotland's capital every year throughout the month of August and attracts some of the most famous acts from around the world. It has a mixture of stand-up comedy, sketch shows, dance acts, and theatre ranging from the contemporary to Ancient Greek Classics. The size of the festival is quite amazing- in 2009 there were 34,265 performances of 2,098 shows in 265 venues and almost 2 million tickets sold.

This Year's Winners

As this year's festival begins to wind down, various awards are being given out for stand out performances. One of the most coveted awards in comedy circles is the best joke of the festival. This year, the honour went to relatively unknown comedian Nick Helm (pictured above) with this joke:

"I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves."

If you think that is bad, then think again, as at the other end of the scale, Paul Daniels, an old, famous entertainer and magician, was awarded the ‘honour' of worst joke of the festival with this terrible effort:

"I said to a fella 'Is there a B&Q in Henley?' He said 'No, there's an H, an E, an N an L and a Y'."

Top Ten Jokes

The full list of the top ten jokes of the Edinburgh Fringe can be seen below:

1) Nick Helm: "I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves."

2) Tim Vine: "Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels."

3) Hannibal Buress: "People say 'I'm taking it one day at a time'. You know what? So is everybody. That's how time works."

4) Tim Key: "Drive-Thru McDonalds was more expensive than I thought... once you've hired the car..."

5) Matt Kirshen: "I was playing chess with my friend and he said, 'Let's make this interesting'. So we stopped playing chess."

6) Sarah Millican: "My mother told me, you don't have to put anything in your mouth you don't want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards."

7) Alan Sharp: "I was in a band which we called The Prevention, because we hoped people would say we were better than The Cure."

8) Mark Watson: "Someone asked me recently - what would I rather give up, food or sex. Neither! I'm not falling for that one again, wife."

9) Andrew Lawrence: "I admire these phone hackers. I think they have a lot of patience. I can't even be bothered to check my OWN voicemails."

10) DeAnne Smith: "My friend died doing what he loved ... Heroin."

Share with friends