Funniest Jokes of the Fringe 2025: Here are the 19 best jokes told in Edinburgh this year

These are the jokes that have had audiences rolling in the aisles this August.

Comedian Andrew Maxwell famously once called the Edinburgh Festival Fringe ‘exams for clowns’, and each year it’s the comics with the best jokes who get the ‘A’ grades.

The Edinburgh Comedy Award (formerly the Perrier Award) is handed out each year to the top clown in the class, and in 2008 it was joined by The Funniest Joke of the Fringe Award.

Presented by television channel Dave, each year a shortlist of 10-15 jokes was drawn up by some of the leading comedy critics and comedians in the UK.

Designed to celebrate “the art of joke writing” and making people laugh, the general public then voted for the eventual winner.

Last month it was announced that ‘U&Dave’s Funniest Joke Of The Fringe’ would be scrapped from the 2025 Fringe, with the TV station behind the gong saying it is “resting”.

But both the ISH Comedy Awards and the new ‘(Some Guy Called) Dave Joke of the Fringe’ have stepped into the vacuum to find the finest wisecracks in the Capital’s comedy clubs, lecture hall and pub basements.

Here are the 19 deemed good enough to be shortlisted.