EACH YEAR, the public are able to vote on the funniest joke at the Fringe from a shortlist drawn up by comedy critics and presented by TV channel Dave.
The recipient of this year’s award was comedian Lorna Rose Treen, who drew 44% of the vote for her pun: “I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah.”
The joke appeared in Treen’s comedy show Skin Pigeon, in which the comic plays a multitude of different characters.
Treen’s show marks her debut at the Fringe, and has become the first woman since 2008 to win the award, when Zoe Lyons took the title.
Treen has acknowledged the corniness of the pun, saying: “Are you kidding? I can’t wait to tell my mum!
“It is already such a wonderful joy to be debuting at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, and this is a lovely thing on top. A huge thank you for awarding my stupid joke with this title!”
Following Dave’s announcement of the joke that won their “coveted” award though, social media users have been left unimpressed, even describing the gong as “Britain’s most poisoned chalice”.
One user said: “Britain’s most poisoned chalice. Would rather learn that one of my family members was the cat bin lady than they’d won the coveted Best Joke of the Edinburgh Fringe award.”
Another user wrote: “The funniest joke at the Edinburgh Fringe award is once again making me wonder if a single funny joke was told up there this year.”
A third added: “This is the first year that I’ve thought the funniest Edinburgh Fringe joke is absolutely poor, Christmas cracker poor. I’m not even going to repeat it or link to it.”
Another replied: “Congratulations to the price of a beer in a pop-up bar for once again being the funniest joke at the Edinburgh Fringe.”
A fifth commented: “‘I started to date a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah’. That apparently was the best joke at the Edinburgh Fringe.”
However, not all of the feedback was entirely negative, with one user saying: “The reaction to the winner of the Edinburgh Fringe funniest joke has been really weird.
“Not sure why people are getting so wound up over it. Seen the winner being called all kinds of names – not sure why?”
Another attempted to justify the joke’s cheesiness: “I haven’t seen Lorna Rose Treen’s show but I know she’s a character comedian, and I saw a tweet saying that the zookeeper joke is a purposefully bad/nonsensical joke in character which does make sense.
“But also: wasn’t this confusion entirely predictable once that joke was picked?”
The winner of the 2022 award, Masai Graham, was a runner-up in this year’s vote, with the quip: “I thought I’d start off with a joke about The Titanic – just to break the ice.”
