My Part In Mark Simmons Winning Joke of the Fringe

Now that the Edinburgh Festival is over the story can be told...

I first spotted Mark Simmons in a comedy competition around a decade ago. It could have been the So You Think You’re Funny? final At the Edinburgh Fringe or the Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year, where he was runner-up in 2013. I thought straight away that he had a way with words and a gift for a winning one-liner. So it was no surprise that this year he finally won the U&Dave Joke of the Fringe prize.

The joke that topped the poll was “I was going to sail around the globe in the world’s smallest ship but I bottled it.” When the award was announced in the last week of the Fringe the joke went viral. In its own way it sailed around the comedy globe. And a little smile of satisfaction danced across my face every time I heard it. As I played a small but central part in the victory.

Firstly I should emphasise that this is all above board. No rules were breached. I don’t think I could breach them if I wanted to as the winner is chosen in the following way. A group of elite comedy critics nominates their favourite jokes in the first week - they need to be short and snappy and family friendly so that they can be printed in newspapers and read out on the news. 

The jokes are then put to a public vote and my involvement ends. I have no idea who the public are who get to vote so there’s no way I could nobble the result or rig it even if I was that way inclined. And it was the public that decided that Simmons’ joke – nominated by me – was the winner. In fact it was a clear winner. It was chosen as the best joke by 40% of those surveyed.

Simmons was very pleased to win – he has previously been placed second, sixth and ninth in the contest. And pleasing for me too. I’ve picked a few of the jokes chosen as winners over the years. And it might seem like a laugh but the decision on what to nominate is not always easy. This year after seeing Mark’s show I was torn between the winning joke and another of his zingers: ““My mum has just celebrated her fiftieth wedding anniversary. I can't believe she's been married that many times.”

But the globe joke won my heart. Maybe because it passed the crucial test of still being funny even on hearing it a second time. A week before the Edinburgh Fringe I’d seen Simmons do a set at the Latitude Festival and I liked the joke a lot then. I was hoping he would do it again at the Fringe so I could nominate it. He did and the rest is comedy history.

I wasn’t shocked when Simmons won because I thought it was a brilliant joke. However, what did shock me was that I’d played golf with his promoter Richard on the Saturday afternoon before the announcement and we had discussed the possibility of Mark winning. At the time his promoter gave me the straight-faced impression that he had no idea whatsoever of the result. Little did I know that they had already done the photoshoot and taken the picture below. I’m never going to play poker with Richard, that’s for sure.

You can see Simmons chatting to one of his hardcore fans at Latitude in the picture above on this page (©brucedessau) . Maybe they were one of the public panel who voted for it.

Read all of beyond the joke’s Edinburgh Fringe reviews here.

And you can catch Simmons in action on his Quip of the Mark tour, though I can’t guarantee he will still be doing the winning joke. Dates are here.