Laughing all the way to the bank

Published on Wednesday 3 June 2009 22:04

IMPRESARIO Nica Burns is to put on her greatest show yet – by dipping into her own pocket and pulling out £100,000 for the Edinburgh Comedy Awards.

The event, which has found itself without a main sponsor for the first time in nearly three decades, is going it alone after 25 years of association with Perrier and the expiry of a three-year deal with Intelligent Finance.

Veteran producer Ms Burns stepped forward yesterday as the saviour of the UK's most prestigious comedy awards, which she has helped to shape since falling in love with Edinburgh as a jobbing actress in the 1980s.

However, hers is not the only showcase that has struggled to find backers during the economic downturn: organisers of Fringe Sunday have cancelled this year's free event after failing to secure 70,000.

Meanwhile, the author Ian Rankin and actress Una McLean are recruiting "friends" to back the Jazz Festival, which has been without a headline sponsor for two years and ran a deficit last year.

Ms Burns who co-owns a clutch of West End theatres, has announced that the winner of the best comedy show will be invited to perform at the Just for Laughs comedy festivals in Montreal, Toronto and Chicago.

The 12,000 prize – shared among the winner, best newcomer and panel's choice – remains intact. Winners since the event began in 1981 have included Frank Skinner, Eddie Izzard, Jenny Eclair and Al Murray.

The 2009 Comedy Awards have been slightly scaled down, with winners to be announced at a lunchtime ceremony, not a lavish midnight bash as in previous years. But Ms Burns insisted this was to ensure maximum media coverage and not to mitigate the damage to her pocket.

She refused to say exactly how much she was parting with, but said it "may be in the region of" 100,000, and said she intended to claw this back in the next few years by staging a big musical. "I am cash-flowing it, in effect, and doing it gladly. The Edinburgh Comedy Awards have been my lifelong passion," she said.

Promoters have speculated that Canadian promoter Just for Laughs is also putting in funding. But Gilbert Rozen, Just For Laughs founder, told The Scotsman: "We are just giving the gigs as a prize. I offered Nica funding to help, but she wouldn't take it. I suggested getting all the promoters to put money in a pot, but she said there wasn't time."

A spokeswoman for the charity Art and Business Scotland, which hones sponsorship proposals between companies and cultural events, said big companies often thought it "looks bad" to sponsor arts events if they were laying off staff.

The director, Barclay Price, said: "Companies defer their marketing budget during the economic downturn."