Banmoco News As It Happens

The Edinburgh Fringe award for best publicity stunt has been won by comedian Lewis Schaffer.

He received the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award for convincing The List magazine that he had become the sponsor of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for just £99. He added that the awards were being renamed in his honour, to ‘The Lewies’ – and that his mother would be joining the judges’ panel.

The Malcolm Hardee Award for best comic originality was won by Otto Kuhnle.

Kuhnle received the award for his performance in the show “Abracadabra – German Humour Goes Global”, which also featured Henning Wehn.

Malcolm Hardee Awards co-producer, John Fleming, commented: “We chose Lewis Schaffer for his extraordinary publicity in which he pretended he was the Edinburgh Comedy Awards new sponsor. It worked on many levels and he managed to work it into the script of his show this year.”

Fleming went on to say: “What impressed me was when he was forced to issue a retraction for the false press release he managed to include full details of his own show twice, which is the zenith of publicity stunts. So by apologising he managed to increase his publicity as well.”

Kate Copstick, the co-producer of the Malcolm Hardee Awards, said: “Otto won because he is a comic genius who due to the particular nature of his genius runs the risk of otherwise going unrewarded.”

She added: “Lederhosen, a leaf blower and Siemens’ vacuum cleaner attachment are not a direct route to an Edinburgh comedy award but Malcolm’s award celebrates the originality and idiosyncrasy in comedy.”

Thanks to news.bbc.co.uk for the above quotes, for more information on this article please visit their website.