The Funny Women Comedy Industry Award has been created to recognise the unsung heroines working tirelessly behind the scenes in the comedy industry.
Whilst acknowledging that comedy is an incredibly hard profession for almost anyone to break into and make a living, this award celebrates the talent and tenacity of the women performers, writers and creators of Britain and Ireland, who have overcome the clearly disproportionate barriers to entry to succeed in this highly competitive field.
Now in its fifth year, they will join Sarah Bowles (2023), Amy Annette (Winner 2022), Sophie Duker (Winner 2021) and Christine Rose (Winner 2020) in our Hall of Fame and will take a share of the prize pot, kindly sponsored by BBC Studios Funny Parts. We are delighted to reveal our nominations.
Jessica Toomey
Queen of all things Northern Comedy, Jessica Toomey has worked in comedy since 2004 as the managing director and programmer for the multi-award-winning Frog and Bucket Comedy Club. She has gone on to set up comedy management agency, FAB Comedy, which represents some of the strongest UK talent, with a particularly high percentage of women on the roster.
Jessica’s passion for comedy is personified in her role as director of the annual Women in Comedy Festival, now in its 12th year, and as a director of the newly created Live Comedy Association.
Over a 20 plus year career Jessica has watched 1000’s of new acts compete on a Monday night, 1000’s of sets at the Frog, 100’s of one hour shows at the Women in Comedy festival, Edinburgh Fringe and on tour. She has also judged many awards including BBC New Comedy Awards, Funny Women Awards and So You Think Your Funny. She assists the Edinburgh Fringe Society in her role as Comedy Industry Associate and her knowledge of comedy from grassroots to the professional circuit is unsurpassed.
Gina Lyons, Kay Stonham and Alex Hardy
Creators of the Gobby Girls 11% Club sketch show at the Edinburgh Fringe, an hour of riotously funny sketches by women who do comedy, about why women shouldn’t do comedy.
The shows were produced and directed by award-winning scripted television producer Gina Lyons along with writer, performer and academic Kay Stonham, founder of Female Pilot Club and award-winning comedy writer, director and producer Alex Hardy, winner of our Comedy Writing Award in 2017.
Created from scratch by women-led, female comedy production powerhouses – Gobby Girl Productions, and Female Pilot Club (and a tiny bit of promotional support from us at Funny Women which doesn’t count!), the show successfully skewered the gender imbalance in comedy with sketches written and performed by a hand-picked team from the frontlines of TV and stand-up. It was an unmissable hour of female-led fun.
In autumn 2024, Gina set up Gobby Girls as a supportive WhatsApp community for female-identifying and non-binary voices in comedy, which quickly grew to 1,500 people.
Female Pilot Club was founded in 2019 in response to the stubbornly intractable problem of underrepresentation of female writers in British TV comedy and produces showcases of comedy pilot scripts written by women for audiences of industry members and comedy lovers.
The shows were performed by Claire Rafferty, Laura Evelyn, Noor Sobka, Alice Etches, Lauren Davidson, Verona Rose, Tonia Toseland and Bec Bartley.
The team of writers were Charlie Vero-Martin, Sam Lyden & Teresa Burns, Cheryl Duncan, Jenny de Jersey, Mary Flanigan, Jo Somner, Anne-Marie Draycott & Charity Trimm, Emma Keaveney-Roys & Lotte Allan, Sinead Hegarty, Jane Harvey & Rosie Sosic, Natalie Malla & Xara Higgs, Charlotte Audrey, Laura Evelyn and Bec Bartley.
Louisa Jackson
Louisa Jackson is the tech superwoman and founder of Craic™, the leading technology hub and marketplace for the comedy industry and fans; and Craic Health, pioneering comedy-on-prescription, and connecting the comedy industry with people who are lonely, isolated and vulnerable, via community-based comedy events and activities.
An award-winning innovative producer, Louisa has over two decades of expertise in app and website development, including the management, marketing, sales, distribution, aggregation, and creation of content and data.
Craic™ is building the defining infrastructure for the global comedy industry in the AI era—driving growth through data aggregation and licensing, creator-to-fan commerce, and pioneering healthtech, empowering everyone who creates, loves, and needs comedy.
Comedy-on-Prescription® (CoP) is the world-first programme making laughter measurable, accessible, and health-system ready. Craic Health is on the road to integration into NHS UK policy with future pilots planned for Medicare Australia. It has the backing of NHS leaders, MPs, peers and local authorities to embed comedy within preventative health and community wellbeing.
The winner of the Comedy Industry Award will be announced at the Stage Award final, hosted by Amy Gledhill with a headline sets from Rachel Parris & Kate Cheka (Winner 2023), on Thursday 25th September at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London. TICKETS HERE.
Vote for the Comedy Content Award HERE.
Finalists for the Stage Award HERE.
Top 3 for the Comedy Shorts Award HERE.
Top 3 for the Comedy Writing Award HERE.
