Kate Smurthwaite gets three Malcolm Hardee nods for a free show

An act at this year’s Fringe bought a domain that sounds almost exactly like the UK’s biggest comedy news site, then posted a six-star review of himself on it. He has now been shortlisted for an award by the actual comedy news site. Chortle’s own write-up of the 2026 Malcolm Hardee shortlist lists him without visible flinching. The citation reads: Nate Kitch for buying the website domain name Chortles.co.uk to give himself a six-star review. Six stars, on a scale that stops at five, on a website one letter off the real one.

The shortlist landed on 26 August. It covers three categories: comic originality, the Cunning Stunt award for publicity, and Act That Should Make A Million Quid. Kate Smurthwaite is on all three of them. The reason is simple and slightly deranged: she has spent August writing a brand new full-length stand-up show almost every day of the festival. Chortle noted the triple nomination at the top of its story. Beyond The Joke ran the shortlist the same day. Its description: “The increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards, started in memory of one of comedy’s most outrageous comedy pioneers, has announced its shortlist.”

Twenty shows, 23 hours each, and a ban on AI

The rules Smurthwaite set herself back in May, as Chortle reported them: 20 different shows, one on every day of the festival except Tuesdays. She gets 23 hours to write each one. Each show needs at least 50 minutes on stage, a maximum of three minutes of old material, and no AI writing. Topics come from the previous day’s audience. Or by email, to an address she keeps open between 7.30pm and 8.30pm on show days. Her own live listing says 21 shows written in 24 hours each, so the arithmetic depends which page you read. Honestly, by day 19 I’d have lost count too.

She was clear-eyed about it in May. “I honestly have no idea how far through the month I’ll get. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and I’m 50 now,” she told Chortle, adding a working-writer’s estimate that would make most acts wince: “I think I can write about five to seven minutes of comedy material in an hour.” At that rate a 50-minute show is seven to ten hours of writing, every day, before you’ve eaten, flyered or slept.

The money underneath all this is worth spelling out. The show runs 8 to 30 August at 7.40pm at the Banshee Labyrinth, and it’s on PBH’s Free Fringe, which spells its model out plainly on the homepage: “Free entry but artist may ask for donation at end.” No ticket, no box office split, a bucket and whatever the room feels like. The most-nominated act on this year’s Hardee shortlist is working a paid-in-donations slot in a stone-walled pub venue down Niddry Street, in a year when UK comedians reported average earnings of £21,143. The Fringe listing also pins the run at strictly 18+ with a minimum of 50 minutes, a duration she has signed up to hit 20-odd nights running.

What does the Malcolm Hardee Award pay?

Nothing, as far as any published listing shows. The Edinburgh Fringe Society’s own comedy awards page runs through the money attached to the big ones: “The prize is £10,000” for the Edinburgh Comedy Award’s best comedy show and “The prize is £5,000” for best newcomer. It lists cash beside plenty of the smaller ones too, including NextUp’s £500 and its inflatable trophy and the £1,000 for the Cheeziest Joke of the Fringe. Against the Hardee entry there’s a description of the three categories and a line about how nominees are found: “There is no application process… judges will be scouring the festival automatically on the look out for nominees.” No figure. Compare that with the ISH Edinburgh Comedy Awards, whose entry on the same page says every penny of sponsorship goes out as prizes to artists.

The awards were, as Chortle puts it, “Originally started by comedy connoisseur John Fleming, the awards are now supported by British Comedy Guide, with the blessing of Malcolm Hardee’s family.” Beyond The Joke lists Bo Burnham, Trevor Noah and Phil Ellis among past winners, which is a better hit rate than several awards that do hand over a cheque. Judge Kate Copstick, quoted in both write-ups, went with the register you’d expect:

The shortlist this year is home to everything from a Thermos Museum with no thermos to Uxbridge’s third hardest man turned game show host. The Hardee legacy lives on. Oy oy.

Fellow judge Bruce Dessau added that Hardee “was a comedy legend who carved out his own path”. The shortlisted acts, he said, “may or may not have heard of him but they undoubtedly channel his maverick spirit, whether they realise it or not.” The panel also includes Claire Smith, broadcaster Ian Wolf and performer Mark Dean Quinn.

A blue plaque commemorating a blue plaque

The Cunning Stunt list is the one I’d pin above a promoter’s desk. Dru Cripps is nominated “for putting up a blue memorial plaque commemorating where he won the Cunning Stunt award last year”, which is either the laziest or the most efficient publicity campaign in Scotland. Zoe Wohlfeld got in “for staging a funeral for Greyfriars Bobby”, a dog who died in 1872 and has been buried in tourist money ever since. Thermos Museum Books made the list for a magazine-style flyer, Smurthwaite for the daily shows, and Kitch for the domain.

It’s the only Fringe award I can think of that treats getting noticed as a craft rather than an embarrassment, which matters when 1,401 comedy shows are competing for the same drifting punter on Cowgate. A free show with no ticket data behind it can’t even prove it sold out, so a plaque, a flyer and a fake review site are the marketing budget. Kate Dolan, meanwhile, is on the million-quid shortlist and also won best show at the Comedians’ Choice Awards ceremony on 26 August for Trout. She told the room: “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, I wasn’t even this happy on my wedding day.”

When the Malcolm Hardee winners are announced

Neither the Chortle nor the Beyond The Joke shortlist story gives a date or a venue for the winners being named, which is very much in keeping with an award that has no application form. The festival itself runs 7 to 31 August 2026, so the window is small. Smurthwaite’s run at the Banshee Labyrinth finishes on 30 August, the day before the Fringe closes and, as we found earlier this month, the day after the official artist accommodation turfs people out.

If she has made every date, that’s 1,000 minutes of stand-up at the advertised minimum, written inside the month, none of it recycled past three minutes, all of it given away for whatever’s in the bucket by the door at the Banshee. The email inbox opens again at 7.30pm for tomorrow’s subject. Someone is going to suggest bin collections.