Welsh comedian Anna Thomas has won this year’s BBC New Comedy Award, beating strong competition from her fellow finalists Lily Phillips, Celya AB, Molly McGuinness, William Thompson and Liam Farrelly in a show compered by Guz Khan and judged by Mawaan Rizwan, Sophie Duker and Lauren Pattison.
Thomas said on her win: “I didn’t think I’d have won it. It was such a strong line-up and going last, I saw how well everyone did. And I was like, ‘You know it’s just nice to be out, isn’t it?’
“It was such a lush experience from the get-go, meeting so many different comedians from all across the UK … I’ve definitely been inspired.”
Thomas highlighted that as a working-class woman she hadn’t seen comedy as a career, “I didn’t see a lot of people doing anything creative as jobs, like comedy, writing, anything like that. So it was hard to envision it.
“I think it’s so important to have that diversity so other people can watch themselves on the screen and then that will inspire even more diversity and more creativity and more exciting things in comedy.”
Thomas wins £1,000 and a paid commission to write and perform in a 30-minute audio pilot, mentored by a BBC comedy commissioner.
