The comedian whose joke was voted the funniest at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has said it isn’t the best one in his show and it isn’t the sort of gag he most enjoys.
Mark Simmons took this year’s award for his gag with: “I was going to sail around the globe in the world’s smallest ship but I bottled it”.
Simmons, a Mock The Week panellist, told Sky News: “I don’t think it’s my best joke in my show, but I think it is probably the best one written down so that, you know, so everyone can understand it.
“Personally, I like jokes where you kind of take them down a path and then you suddenly reveal… a nice twist and it surprises everyone and they ignite big laughs.
“Whereas with some of my jokes, there’s clever wordplay and you get kind of a nice little laugh as you go but it’s good in a show to have a variety.”
It was a vintage year for him, as another of his jokes appeared on the shortlist of 10, nominated by a panel including leading comedy critics and comedians, who watched hundreds of shows, then voted on by 2,000 people.
The gag runs: “I love the Olympics. My friend and I invented a new type of relay baton: well, he came up with the idea, I ran with it.”
Simmons, who was appearing at the Scottish capital’s festival for the 10th time, said “in Edinburgh there’s a lot of comedy about hard-hitting topics at the moment, which is brilliant. But sometimes I think people just want to come and relax, forget about their troubles and just enjoy an hour of really silly jokes. So that’s where I come in. There aren’t many shows like mine where it’s just all one-liners”.
The comedian, who was named the UK Comics’ Comic of 2022, said he never thinks about the competition he’s just won, calling it “just a nice bit of fun at the festival”.
And his creative process, he said, is driven by the need to deliver a different show each year.
He said: “I write so many jokes every year because I have to come up with a new hour. So I go around, I spot wordplay, then I sit down and I craft the jokes and I go to a new material night where you try everything, and that’s where you find out whether it works or not, because they let you know very quickly.
“Sometimes it can take a joke three years to get right, but when it does, it’s amazing.”
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So, how does he cope when a joke falls flat and the room is filled with the comedian’s worst enemy, silence?
“If it happens, it can sometimes just be everyone in the room’s in a bad mood or something. So I actually kind of find it quite funny now when I’m on stage and I tell a joke I’ve told a hundred times and everyone’s laughed, and then they’re not laughing. Only people that have done it will know what that’s like. I don’t find it a big problem now.”