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Rose Matafeo wins Edinburgh best comedy show award Rose Matafeo wins Edinburgh best comedy show award
(about 3 hours later)
The New Zealander Rose Matafeo has won the coveted best comedy show award at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. New Zealander Rose Matafeo has won the coveted best comedy show award at the Edinburgh fringe festival.
Her winning show, Horndog, which combined a standup routine with sketch material, ran at the Pleasance Courtyard and tackled sex and modern social mores. Steve Coogan, one of Matafeo’s comic heroes, presented her with the £10,000 prize at a ceremony in Edinburgh on Saturday.
She was presented with the £10,000 prize by Steve Coogan and John Robins at a ceremony on Saturday. “I just wanted to do a fun, daft show,” Matafeo said. “I make comedy for women like me, in their 20s and looking for fun, and the response to the show has been amazing. I think a lot of women were going: ‘yeah, that’s me’.
Described by the Guardian critic Brian Logan as “a blissfully funny and charismatic performer”, Matafeo had returned to Edinburgh from Auckland after a successful show last year. She was one of a large contingent of straight-talking female performers from Australia and New Zealand, including New South Wales’s Felicity Ward, who was also shortlisted for this year’s award. Last year, the Australian Hannah Gadsby shared the top prize with Robins. “They haven’t seen a lot of comedy like that before, and I think a lot have felt that comedy clubs were not very welcoming spaces for them. But I think that’s changing now.”
Matafeo also beat strong competition from two former nominees: Kieran Hodgson, who put together an unusual show about the roots of Brexit called ’75, was also nominated in 2015 and 2016; while Ahir Shah, whose 2018 set covered a visit to his deported Indian grandmother in the wake of the Windrush scandal, was nominated last year. The 26-year-old performer, of Samoan and Scottish-Croatian heritage, is only the fifth woman to take the title. Her fellow nominees were the award’s most diverse yet, with comics from Australia, America, Russia, India, Ireland and the UK in contention.
The 2018 award was given in memory of a previous winner, Sean Hughes, who died in October at the age of 51. Matafeo added: “Comedy is becoming more diverse – just look at the shortlists this year. There are some really great young female comics out there, and I am very proud about being a woman of colour.”
Speaking about the comedian’s legacy at the beginning of the festival, Nica Burns, the director of the Edinburgh comedy awards, quoted some of the many tributes to Hughes’s talent, including one from Coogan: “Sean paved the way for people like me. He was a year younger but he charmed the pants off everyone with a disarming, fresh approach to comedy. He bared his soul. All the women were in love with him and all the male comedians wanted to be him. He seemed natural and made more orthodox comedy seem tired.” The winning show, Horndog, is about a woman in her 20s looking for passionate relationships, rather than love.
This year’s best newcomer was Ciarán Dowd and the special panel prize of £5,000 went to Angela Barnes, who collected it on behalf of the Home Safe Collective. Matafeo talks about growing up as a geeky, film-obsessed teenager who had no luck with boys. When she did start dating she would become slightly obsessed – as she puts it, “go hard or go home”.
Nica Burns, the director of the awards, said Horndog is “an utterly original show, a totally hilarious spoof with a completely unexpected ending”.
Described by the Guardian critic Brian Logan as “a blissfully funny and charismatic performer”, Matafeo had returned to Edinburgh from Auckland after a successful show last year. She was one of a large contingent of straight-talking female performers from Australia and New Zealand, including New South Wales’s Felicity Ward, who was also shortlisted for this year’s award.
Last year Australian Hannah Gadsby shared the prize with John Robins, who attended Saturday’s ceremony.
The 2018 award was given in memory of Sean Hughes, who died last October at 51 and won the prize in 1990, when it was known as “the Perrier” and sponsored by the mineral water brand.
Reminiscing after the ceremony, Coogan, who won the prize in 1992 with John Thomson for a character comedy show, recalled how comics like he and Hughes loved the fringe in the 1990s.
“It was a very special time, and people like Sean, Eddie Izzard, Paul O’Grady, Jo Brand, Jack Dee have all gone on to do great things. It felt like a new chapter in comedy and the Edinburgh fringe was the focal point for it.”
This year’s best newcomer was Ciarán Dowd, and the special panel prize of £5,000 went to Angela Barnes, who collected it on behalf of the Home Safe Collective.
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