Humphrey Ker won the award for Foster’s Best Newcomer for Dymock Watson: Nazi Smasher!.  Based in 1943, in the show Agent Dymock Watson of the Special Operations Executive, an elite unite of special forces commandos, was parachuted into Romania on an extremely dangerous secret mission. In 2011 his grandson Humphrey Ker gives his story hilarious life.

It was his debut solo show in Edinburgh after being part of sketch group and Fringe favourites The Penny Dreadfuls.

Humphrey told us: “It’s pretty awesome, pretty awesome it turns out. It’s been such a fun year, I had no real pretentions of thinking I could get something like this, and then slowly but surely I was like ‘Oh, other people lame old war movie jokes funny as well. Okay!’

“Over the course of the festival people said lots of nice things, and you start getting caught up in it a bit and you think ‘What if? What if?’ But I could believe it when [Russell Kane] read my name out, it was extraordinary.”

On doing his first solo show at the Fringe he said: “It’s been nice, it’s been lovely. This is my tenth year of the festival in a row, which is pretty weird for a Best Newcomer, but it’s the first time in years that I’ve found it as exciting as the first couple of years I was up here.

“With The Penny Dreadfuls we were very spoil, and we were in a big old venue, and everyone came and we had press all the time. It was lovely, and we got a bit blasé and fourth of fifth album of a band about it, like ‘Hey guys, we’re going to put some sitars on this, so strap in.’

“It was nice to go back to ‘How many people do we have in today! Is there anyone important? Who was that guy in the front row? Why is he looking at me like that? Is he someone or …’ Just getting carried away, and if we had a good show being over the moon, and when it was a bad one crawling off stage and being like ‘Whyyyyy?’ That’s nice, it’s exciting and reminds you of why it’s really fun to do the festival.”

The winners of the 31st Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards were announced yesterday at a ceremony at the Dovecot Studio, Edinburgh. Adam Riches won the main prize (interview here) while Max and Ivan won the panel prize for their one-off comedy-wrestling spectacular (interview here).

The Awards were presented by last year’s Best Comedy Show winner Russell Kane and West End musical star and 2002 nominee, Omid Djalili.

Nica Burns, producer of the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards, said: “Humphrey Ker’s show wowed the judges with a beautifully written, witty show performed with consummate skill.”