Comedy: Fresh Meat

The Brighton Comedy Festival ushers in a new set of Squawkers Awards heats

Starting next week, the first taste of the Brighton Comedy Festival arrives in the form of the Squawker Award heats. Exciting!
In case you’ve been living under a rock the last few years in October, the prestigious Squawker Awards is the lead in to the Brighton Comedy Festival, running four heats – one every Tuesday approaching the start of the festival proper – in the search for the comedy stars of the future.
With around eight newish acts in each heat, these are competitors that have already cut their comedy teeth on new act nights and are primed to break through to the next level. And they’re hungry to win the title and the top prize of stage time at the Brighton Dome’s Concert Hall.
The Squawker Award started relatively recently in 2012, with Ingrid Dahle the inaugural winner. Dahle went on to be a finalist in that year’s So You Think You’re Funny competition, and the accolades continue so that this year she was named the Leicester Square Comedy Festival’s runner-up to its respected Leicester Mercury Comedian of the year award.

Other Squawker finalists include Laura Lexx, Funmbi Omotayo, Sam Savage, Alasdair Beckett-King, Mark Silcox, and David Jordan. All of them making their marks on the national comedy scene, gigging on bills alongside such luminaries as Stewart Lee, Mark Steel, Joel Dommett and Francesca Martinez.
So this is the fresh batch. The new faces. The honed talent ready to go stellar. Having shorn away rough edges on the new act circuit for at least a year, playing across the South East in Brighton, London and beyond, it’s time to see the sparks fly – comedically speaking. Tickets to the heats are only £6, and take place in the lovely Komedia Studio. With the Squawkers Final a part of the Brighton Comedy Festival itself in Komedia’s main room later in October. It’s a very affordable way to keep your finger on the pulse of emerging quality comedy. And a plain enjoyable night out any Tuesday in the foreseeable future.
The Squawker Award heats, Komedia, 15, 22, 28 September, 6 October 8pm, £6, 01273 290131, www.komedia.co.uk/brighton, www.brightoncomedyfestival.com