
Award-winning TV channel Dave, the home of witty banter, has announced the winner of the sixth annual Dave Award for the Funniest Joke of the Fringe.
In its quest to find the most hilarious jokes, Dave enlisted the help of an expert panel of judges, consisting of ten of the UKs foremost comedy critics. They scoured venues at the world-famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival over a week-long period to nominate their three favourite one-liners. The 30 shortlisted gags were then put to the public vote, with 2,570 comedy fans selecting those that made them laugh the loudest.
And the winner is...
With nearly a quarter of the overall votes (24%), comedian Rob Auton takes the top spot and walks away with the hand-crafted Dave trophy and cash prize for his sharp one-liner:
I heard a rumour that Cadbury is bringing out an oriental chocolate bar. Could be a Chinese Wispa.
Rob Auton
Daves Top 10 Funniest Jokes from the Fringe Festival 2013
Rob Auton - ?I heard a rumour that Cadbury is bringing out an oriental chocolate bar. Could be a Chinese Wispa.?
Alex Horne - ?I used to work in a shoe-recycling shop. It was sole-destroying.?
Alfie Moore - ?Im in a same-sex marriage? the sex is always the same.?
Tim Vine - ?My friend told me he was going to a fancy dress party as an Italian island. I said to him ?Don?t be Sicily.??
Gary Delaney - ?I can give you the cause of anaphylactic shock in a nutshell.?
Phil Wang - ?The Pope is a lot like Doctor Who. He never dies, just keeps being replaced by white men.?
Marcus Brigstocke - ?You know you are fat when you hug a child and it gets lost.?
Liam Williams - ?The universe implodes. No matter.?
Bobby Mair - ?I was adopted at birth and have never met my mum. That makes it very difficult to enjoy any lapdance.?
Chris Coltrane - ?The good thing about lending someone your time machine is that you basically get it back immediately.?
The winning joke this year is from Rob Auton, a new young comedian and poet who first started performing stand-up in 2008 on an impulse, standing on a wall, at a fireworks party. The 30 year old from York first performed at the Fringe in 2012 with ?The Yellow Show?, and has only just quit his day job selling paint brushes in Soho to chase his dream of becoming a full-time performer. Auton?s main show this year at the Fringe is ?The Sky Show? but the winning joke has come from one of his sideline gigs at ?Comedy After Lunch? with Zapp and Dembina at the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Of his win, Rob Auton said: I am honoured to receive this award and just pleased that a joke that tackles the serious issue of the invention of a new chocolate bar can be laughed at by the people of Britain.?
Honorable mentions ? Those that just missed out on the top spots:
Glenn Wool ? ?Ho Chi Minh City? I say: cant you just let Saigon be Saigon??
Pajama Men (Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez) ? ?My father was a seismologist. He could never get a steady job.?
Nick Helm ? ?Im very arrogant about my balls. Im egotestical.?
Top of the Flops ? Some of the worst one-liners voted for include:
Simon Lilley - ?I thought ex-pats were people who used to be called Pat.?
Geoff Norcott - ?My wife said to me recently, ?Do you fancy going gay clubbing?? I said, ?No, it sounds violent?.?
Tim Vine - ?I once did a gig in a zoo. I got babooned off.?
Ben Van Der Velde - ?Swastika in Geordie means something that used to be a sticker.?
Nikhil Tiwali - ?What do you call a pink flower that comes back from the dead? A re-in-carnation.?
Pat Cahill - ?90 per cent of baking injuries are stress-related. There are people up and down the country having mental bake-downs.?
In order to compile the shortlist, each of the judges sat through an average of 60 different comedy performances and sifted through more than 3,600 minutes of material. This meant they each had a potential pool of around 7,200* different jokes to choose from.
The Dave award, which is open to both established and up-and-coming comedians, pays homage to the wealth of talent on offer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival whilst shining a spotlight on the individual jokes, not just the performances.
Steve North, General Manager of Dave commented: ?Now celebrating its sixth year, Daves Funniest Joke of The Fringe continues to highlight the best one-liners coming out of the Fringe. This years Top 10 is quick, sharp, witty and clever, and Rob is a very worthy winner.?
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is widely acknowledged to be the biggest arts festival in the world and takes place every August for three weeks in Scotland?s capital city. Starting in 1947, it was seen as a post-war initiative to reunite Europe through culture, and was so successful that it inspired more performers than there was room for.
For an exclusive interview with winner Rob Auton, download The Dave Weekly podcast from iTunes now. You can also follow Dave on Twitter at @join_dave, Facebook at facebook.com/davewittybanter and via the website at joindave.co.uk.
This year marks the sixth anniversary of Daves Funniest Joke of the Fringe. To review the previous? winners and highlights, and vote for your favourite overall, visit
Daves Facebook page.
For more information contact Toby Leston at Taylor Herring PR on 0208 206 5151 or email: toby.leston@taylorherring.com
Notes to editors
*Calculated as 60 different comedy performances with an average running time of 60 mins per show totalling over 3,600 minutes of material, with the average comedian telling 2 jokes per minute = 7,200 jokes per judge.
The 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival takes place 2nd - 26th August 2013.
The Dave Panel is made up of Ben Williams (Comedy Editor, Time Out), Julian Hall (Author, The Rough Guide to Comedy; Comedy Critic, The Independent), Dominic Maxwell (Theatre & Comedy Editor, The Times), Mark Monahan (Comedy Reviewer, Daily Telegraph), Sharon Lougher (Comedy Rev
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
04/12/2025
SBS launches Future Frames initiative to support emerging First Nations video ed...
04/12/2025
Coronal mass ejections caused by eruptions on the surface of the sun can have fa...
04/12/2025
Gracenote Content Connect enables media ecosystem to precisely align ad campaigns and programming based on rich content signals
NEW YORK - December 4, 2025 - N...
04/12/2025
Lightware, a global specialist in AV connectivity, is looking back on a year defined by new advancements, strong collaboration and continued growth. Across the ...
04/12/2025
Riedel Communications today announced a new partnership with Haivision, a leading global provider of mission-critical, real-time video networking and visual col...
04/12/2025
Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) and Normann Engineering today announced a major milestone in their strategic collaboration, celebrating 20 successful broadband deployme...
04/12/2025
Creative software developer Foundry today announced Mari 7.5, the latest iteration of its artist-friendly paint toolset that can handle large, detailed assets w...
04/12/2025
Professional Wireless Systems (PWS), a leading provider of wireless audio solutions and RF management, was on site at Dreamforce 2025 in San Francisco providing...
04/12/2025
LTN's purpose-built IP video network brings all-movie diginet to over 100 stations and streaming platforms in just three months while eliminating satellite ...
04/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced a strategic partnership with ThinkAnalytics, the global leader in AI-powered data a...
04/12/2025
The HELM, a global expert in cinematic live broadcast and high-end production workflows, has signed a partnership agreement with Keslow Camera, one of North Ame...
04/12/2025
At ISE 2026, LiveU will showcase its expanded IP-video EcoSystem, enabling broadcasters, sports, production companies and pro-AV professionals to share their st...
04/12/2025
Since the beginning of commercial television, advertising has been a key part of broadcasting. Over the years, the technology for inserting ads into programs ha...
04/12/2025
MUNICH and MILAN Warner Bros. Discovery said HBO Max is expanding into Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein on Jan. 13, 2026, and ...
04/12/2025
SAN FRANCISCO AudioShake has launched its first streaming-capable software development kits (SDKs) designed specifically for real-time music detection and copyr...
04/12/2025
NASHVILLE The mobile and REMI production company TNDV has announced that it headed south into Mexico to live-produce the three-day 2025 Zane Grey Championship P...
04/12/2025
BURBANK, Calif. Hollywood Professionals Association Executive Director Phil Kubel has stepped down from the organization to pursue new opportunities, the group ...
04/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission said it has closed 2,048 inactive proceedings, the largest number of dormant dockets ever terminated in a singl...
04/12/2025
A new tech blog from Netflix highlights the importance of the AV1 open video codec, which now powers about 30% of the platform's streaming and discusses a v...
04/12/2025
Thursday 4 December 2025
Sky set to co-produce the story behind the world's most famous whale
Image Credit - Free Willy Keiko Foundation
Sky will co-pro...
04/12/2025
Thursday 4 December 2025
Sky Original documentary Murder at the Post Office to ...
04/12/2025
Back to All News
Hugo Silva, Leonor Watling, Esther Acebo and Gorka Otxoa Star ...
04/12/2025
Back to All News
Step Inside the World of Troll 2: VFX Breakdown Featuring Dire...
04/12/2025
OBJECT MATRIX
OverviewObject Matrix
OM Cloud
Quattro
SWARMOverviewSwarmSingle Node Swarm
Ngenea
Pixstor
Swarm Support
Object Matrix Support
Pixstor & N...
04/12/2025
FOX Advertising Announces Plans for 2026 Upfront Presentation Annual Presentation for Advertisers to Take Place Monday, May 11 at New Location, the Historic N...
04/12/2025
Developers, researchers, hobbyists and students can take a byte out of holiday s...
04/12/2025
The ninth series of Dancing with the Stars returns to screens in early
2026 and will be proudly sponsored by Hyundai
Filling our Sunday evenings with glitz an...
04/12/2025
GeForce NOW is decking the digital halls with 30 new games to keep spirits high all month long.
Join the fun with Hogwarts Legacy, the LEGO Harry Potter Collec...
04/12/2025
Scientists find cancer weak spot in backup DNA repair system New findings from Scripps Research reveal how certain tumors survive DNA damage and point to a stra...
03/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Composition Builder 2025 Boilerplate
More Details: The Composition Builder 2025 application for macOS enables TV stations and Live Event broadcast...
03/12/2025
ToolsOnAr just:live pro 2025 Boilerplate
More Details: just:live pro 2025 is a Single Channel Live Production Playout solution for video and static or real-t...
03/12/2025
ToolsOnAr just:play pro 2025 Boilerplate
More Details: just:play pro 2025 is a Single Channel automated 24/7 Master Control playout solution with SD, HD and ...
03/12/2025
ToolsOnAr live:cut 2025 Boilerplate
More Details: live:cut is an option to just:in mac pro 2025 and enables multicamera production workflows for up to 16 cam...
03/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Just In Mac Lite NDI 2025 Boilerplate
More Details: The Just In Mac Lite NDI application is a streamlined media capture solution designed specific...
03/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Just In Mac Lite 2025 Boilerplate
More Details: The Just In Mac Lite application is a streamlined media capture solution designed specifically for...
03/12/2025
ToolsOnAir just:in mac pro 2025 Boilerplate
More Details: just:in mac pro is a macOS-based client-server multichannel capture solution to record SDI, HDMI, N...