Edinburgh Comedy Award Winners Quiz

Answer: Hugh Laurie

Hugh Laurie was born in 1959 in Oxford, but attended the rival Cambridge University from 1977-1981. In addition to being President of the famed Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, he also competed for Cambridge in the, perhaps more famous, Boat Race. His UK TV credits include 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie', 'Blackadder' and 'Jeeves and Wooster' while in the U.S. he starred as Gregory House in the critically acclaimed 'House, M.D.' (hence the picture clue).

The Footlights show at the 1981 Edinburgh Festival Fringe was a comic piece called 'The Cellar Tapes', which also starred Laurie's future comedy partner Stephen Fry; the actress Emma Thompson; the comedy actors Tony Slattery and Paul Shearer; and their fellow Cambridge student, Penny Dwyer.

The incorrect options are all other famous acting 'Hugh's, but of them only Hugh Dennis ever performed with the Cambridge Footlights.

Answer: Sean Hughes

Sean Hughes won the 1990 Edinburgh Comedy Award (then known as the Perrier Comedy Award) for his eponymous show 'A One Night Stand With Sean Hughes'. This success launched his career as a stand-up comedian and he had several successful touring shows, including 'The Right Side of Wrong'. However, he is probably best known for his six-year stint on 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks' from 1996 to 2002 and his more serious acting roles, such as Pat Stanaway on the long-running soap opera 'Coronation Street' (a hint towards a former 'Corrie' actor was provided in the picture clue) and drama 'The Last Detective'.

Phill Jupitus, Bill Bailey and Noel Fielding have all also held the role of team captain on 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks'.

Answer: Frank Skinner

Despite his long list of other roles and achievements in entertainment, Frank Skinner (whose real name is Christopher Graham Collins) has also had a successful career as a stand-up comedian, both on television and with live performances on tour. His acting credits include a number of comedy shows for which he was also the main writer, such as 'Shane', as well as straight roles, such as his appearance alongside Peter Capaldi on 'Doctor Who'. He hosted his own eponymous chat show for the BBC in the 1990s and had considerable success with comedy partner David Baddiel, with whom he co-wrote and performed on the 1996 number one song 'Three Lions' (along with well-known band the Lightning Seeds). The song was the anthem to the England football team's ultimately unsuccessful attempt to win the Euro '96 tournament.

Jack Dee, Eddie Izzard and Lily Savage were among the defeated nominees for the Edinburgh Comedy Award in the year that Skinner won the prize.

Answer: Steve Coogan

Steve Coogan's first foray into television comedy came as a voice artist on 'Spitting Image', caricaturing British politicians of the 1980s. He won the 1992 Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with fellow comedian John Thomson ('The Fast Show', 'Cold Feet') for their show 'In Character with John Thomson'. However, he is probably best known for one particular character - an inept television presenter named Alan Partridge (the picture clue is a photo of Perdix perdix, a.k.a. the grey partridge). Coogan has appeared as Alan Partridge in shows such as 'I'm Alan Partridge', 'Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge' and 'Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge' over a period of more than 25 years.

Coogan has also appeared in a range of comedy films, including as Octavius in the 'Night at the Museum' series, as the voice of Silas Ramsbottom in 'Despicable Me 2' and in 'Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa'. His 2013 film 'Philomena' showed his wider ability away from comedy as it was based on the true story of an Irish woman's search for the son she was forced to give up for adoption in the 1950s.

The incorrect options all appeared with Coogan in the 2006 film 'Night at the Museum'.

Answer: Jenny Eclair

Jenny Eclair became the first woman to independently win an Edinburgh Comedy/Perrier Award with her 1995 show 'Prozac & Tantrums'. Since her victory, her career has included numerous television appearances as well as stand-up comedy, radio programmes and authoring both novels and non-fiction works.

From 2004 to 2007 she co-wrote and appeared on the comedy show 'Grumpy Old Women' - a spin-off of the show 'Grumpy Old Men' - that featured notable older female celebrities discussing the irritants of modern life. The programme expanded into a stage show as well as a national and international tour. Eclair has also appeared as a panellist on the popular daytime programme 'Loose Women' as well as a whole variety of celebrity reality shows, which have seen her survive the jungle on 'I'm a Celebrity...' (she finished third), show off her cookery skills on 'Celebrity MasterChef' (she lost to actress Emma Kennedy) and do a five-metre forward pike dive into a swimming pool on 'Splash!' (she was the first contestant to be eliminated).

The picture clue shows an éclair, the incorrect options all involve the names of other types of French pastry.

Answer: Mark Gatiss

'The League of Gentlemen' consisted of Mark Gatiss, Jeremy Dyson, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. Following their victory at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe their eponymous comedy sketch show based in the fictional town of Royston Vasey gained a slot on BBC Radio in 1997 and then transferred to television, running for three series between 1999 and 2002. There was also a film, 'The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse', in 2005. All four members of the group co-wrote and performed in the shows.

Away from the world of comedy and 'The League of Gentlemen', Gatiss has also appeared in various sci-fi and fantasy shows such as 'The Quatermass Experiment', 'Doctor Who' (for which he has also written several episodes) and 'Game of Thrones'. Most notably though he co-wrote 'Sherlock' - a modern day adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Sherlock Holmes' stories (an illustration of which is shown in the picture clue) - starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. Gatiss also appeared in it as Sherlock's elder brother, Mycroft Holmes.

The incorrect options were among the unsuccessful nominees for the 1997 Edinburgh Comedy Award.

Answer: Al Murray

Al Murray is particularly known for his stand-up comedy routines and has appeared at some of Britain's biggest comedy venues, including the London Palladium and major arenas such as London's O2 (formerly known as the Millennium Dome). His notable tours include the 'Beautiful British Tour' of 2009 and 'The Only Way is Epic' of 2012. His television work has included several shows featuring his prize-winning character, the Pub Landlord (a xenophobic, Europe-hating, Union Jack-waving patriot) as well as comedic sketch shows like 'Al Murray's Multiple Personality Disorder' and more serious history programmes such as 'Al Murray's Road to Berlin' about the Second World War.

In the UK's 2015 General Election, Al Murray stood for the parliamentary seat of South Thanet and campaigned in the guise of the Pub Landlord. His well-known opponent for the seat was the UKIP leader Nigel Farage, but in the end both of them were defeated by the Conservative Party candidate. Farage scored almost 16,000 more votes than Murray, but Murray did at least manage to defeat the candidate who stood for the "Al-Zebabist Nation of Ooog".

The incorrect options were some of Murray's fellow unsuccessful nominees between 1996 and 1998.

Answer: Rich Hall

Stand-up comedian Rich Hall was born in Virginia in 1954, but became a household name in the UK off the back of his success at the 2000 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. His winning routine involved the character of Otis Lee Crenshaw, a downtrodden country musician from Tennessee; Hall has since incorporated Crenshaw into his stand-up tours as well as releasing albums and a book in that guise. Hall has also regularly appeared on a range of British comedy panel shows, including the satirical news show 'Have I Got News For You'; 'QI' with Stephen Fry; and music quiz 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks'.

Hall's early career in the U.S. involved stints writing and appearing on the 'David Letterman Show' and the sketch show 'Fridays' (hence the picture clue) as well as 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Not Necessarily the News'. While working on the latter show he coined the term "sniglet" for new words created to refer to particular actions or events. The incorrect options all appeared with Hall on series 10 of 'Saturday Night Live' in 1984/85.

Answer: Richard Ayoade

Garth Marenghi is a fictional character created by Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness, who met while performing with the Cambridge Footlights. 'Garth Marenghi's Netherhead' was actually the pair's second show to be nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award, after their first show, 'Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight', was beaten to the prize by Rich Hall in 2000. Following these successes, a further edition, 'Garth Marenghi's Darkplace' was broadcast on TV by Channel 4 in 2004. In these shows, Matthew Holness played Marenghi (a horror writer) and Ayoade played Dean Learner (Marenghi's publisher).

Away from his collaboration with Holness, Richard Ayoade is also known for his roles in 'The Mighty Boosh' and 'The IT Crowd' (as hinted at in the picture clue).

The incorrect options are all former presenters of the TV game show 'The Crystal Maze', a role taken on by Ayoade in 2017.

Answer: Sam Simmons

Simmons won the 2015 Edinburgh Comedy Award with his show entitled 'Spaghetti for Breakfast'. His victory was a case of "third time lucky" as it followed two previous unsuccessful nominations in 2011 (when he lost out to Adam Riches) and 2014 (when he was defeated by John Kearns). However, Simmons was not a new name in comedy having won the Moosehead Award for Australian comedians (affiliated with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival) in 2003.

Simmons' UK TV work includes shows such as 'Room 101' and '8 Out of 10 Cats', but his first TV show, 'The Urban Monkey with Murray Foote', was broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2009. It was a mockumentary in which Simmons played a comedic animal conservationist.

The picture clue shows an "urban monkey" - although in this case it is one of the famous Barbary macaques of Gibraltar rather than an Australian primate. The incorrect options are three of the defeated nominees for the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2015.