It's not often that comedy is glamorous, but it is always a lot of fun and last night we had a lot of fun in the back stage press room for the British Comedy Awards.
While Funny Women founder Lynne Parker was out front with the stars watching the awards ceremony, for which she was one of the judges, we noshed on mini burgers, pizzas and macaroni cheese and sloshed down fizz as we awaited the winners and presenters to come and answer our (possibly increasingly slurred) questions. Paul Whitehouse who won the Writer's Guild of Great Britain Award, reliably informed us we had the better nibbles. So there you go.
Lynne gave us the downlow on how the awards ceremony went for those lucky enough to be there! "It was an honour to be on the jury this year and good to see some great funny women getting well deserved recognition.
"As ever the ceremony had its fair share of controversy – notably the drubbing that certain industry luminaries got from Johnny Vegas, all the worse for substituting his usual cuppa with a few bevvies! This all adds to the fun of a live broadcast whether you were in the room or watching at home on the telly.
"My favourite moments were when Paul Whitehouse was accompanied to the stage to collect his award with his ‘signer’ with a nod to the debacle at Mandela’s memorial ceremony this week and, of course, Ron Burgundy accepting an award on behalf of Will Ferrell. Priceless!"
We spotted lots of our favourite comedy people, Eddie Izzard, Rebecca Front, Roisin Conoty, Will Ferrell (yes! Will Ferrell, as Ron Burgundy) and Greg Davies. We had the very funny Cerys Nelmes on the red (or rather blue and glittery) carpet getting the scoop on all sorts of comedy gossip. Keep a look out on Funny Women TV next week to see Cerys teaching the reinstated King of Comedy Jack Whitehall to talk like a Bristolian, possibly blag a job – or at least inspire a new character with 'The League of Gentlemen's' Reece Shearsmith, Jeremy Dyson and Steve Pemberton and talk balls with 'Getting On' stars Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan.
Our roving reporter Vicky Ferran also managed to nab some coveted interviews – the first of which is embedded below. We even had a chat with Johnny Vegas after THAT speech! Listen out for what he had to say about his favourite funny woman…
The evening was a great success for funny women in general, with Miranda Hart winning Best Comedy Actress for the second time since 2011, Nina Conti winning Best Female Television Comic award for her performance in Live at the Apollo. The NHS hospital based sitcom 'Getting On' written by and starring Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan won Best Sitcom, beating off competition from 'Peep Show', 'Count Arthur Strong' and 'Bad Education'.
We chatted to Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan, who proved how 'down with the kids' they are and told us about their favourite female comedians. You can listen to this here!
Pictured: Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine & Jo Scanlan as seen in Getting On.
