Ents24 are a ticketing company and, for a few years, they ran an annual Hardest Working Comedian award. As far as I can tell the awards petered out because of lockdown and seem to have been abandoned.
Below I’ve pulled out the list of winners for the 3 years that Jimmy Charted (2015 – 15th, 2017 – 5th, 2019 – 3rd). As he tours all year round every year…why did he only chart every 2nd year?
Anyone that’s ever looked at any of my statistics on here (see Stats link, above) may have noticed that I give some background (too much, some might say) on how I gathered the data, who I may have left out, any quirks that I had to allow for – basically justifying how I came to the final results. Trying to show that I am not showing favour to Mr C.
But awards like this don’t tell you that and the data analyst side of my personality wants to know.
Firstly, I don’t want to seem like I’m dissing the winners (or anyone else on the list) as I’ve looked at a few current tours and these people are gigging virtually every night (clearly its addictive). What’s bugging me is:
- In the 2017 list 4 of the top 5 sell their tickets through Ents24 (Jimmy is with Ticketmaster). Were there more Ents24 artists in the lists because the data is the easiest to get at?
- How did they get the data from, for example, Ticketmaster? Did they just hand their numbers over to a competitor?
- Looking at a few of the awards for other years – there are LOTS of comedians that come and go. Did that genuinely happen or were they trying to be fair?
- There are 1000’s of comedians in the UK and gathering tour data for them all must be time consuming. Did they ask management to make submissions?
- The Chortle story points out that the chart is “based on the highest number of performances for comedians at different venues across the year – so doesn’t take in to account long runs in one venue or club nights where the site does not list specific line-ups – let alone any other work”. Why? If someone was at Vegas for a 3-month residency you wouldn’t count that as ONE, which is what this seems to suggest.
Anyhooooooooo. Afraid I’m slightly sceptical as to the data collection methods. I know. I’ve got a problem with “over attention to detail”.
However, I’m just listening to a Jim Jefferies podcast (here) and he’s talking about the recent Golden Globes (congrats to Nikki Glaser) and he’s talking about the Comedy and Podcast awards (on the Globes) and how he thinks the voting / judging system for those awards is flawed. So not just me, then.
2015 Awards
Chortle posted the 2015 top 20 list – here.
1. Patrick Monahan
2. Milton Jones
3. Gary Delaney
4. Stewart Francis
5. Katherine Ryan
6. Andy Parsons
7. Jeremy Hardy
8. James Acaster
9. Alan Carr
10. Joe Lycett
11. Nish Kumar
12. Nathan Caton
13. Josh Widdicombe
14. Hal Cruttenden
15. Jimmy Carr (Funny Business tour)
16. Sara Pascoe
17. Rob Beckett
18. Lee Nelson
19. Carl Donnelly
20. Richard Herring
2017 Awards
Chortle posted the 2017 top 20 list – here.
1. Gary Delaney
2. Patrick Monahan
3. Andy Parsons
4. Justin Moorhouse
5. Jimmy Carr (Best of Ultimate Gold Greatest Hits tour)
6. Joel Dommett
7. Omid Djalili
8. Tom Allen
9. Lee Nelson
10. Jon Richardson
11. Phill Jupitus
12. Jarred Christmas
13. Richard Herring
14. Tom Stade
15. Mark Thomas
16. Sara Pascoe
17. Abi Roberts
18. Rich Hall
19. John Hastings
20. Mike Gunn
2019 Awards
Ents24 posted the 2019 top 20 list – here.
- Lee Ridley (Lost Voice Guy)
- Ivo Graham
- Jimmy Carr (Ultimate old / Terribly Funny tours)
- Daliso Chaponda
- Stewart Francis
- Gary Delaney
- Russel Kane
- James Acaster
- Scott Bennett
- Ed Gamble
- Sindhu Vee
- Mark Watson
- Laura Lexx
- Glenn Moore
- Justin Moorhouse
- Suzi Ruffell
- Robert White
- Josh Widdicombe
- Ben Elton
- Stephen Bailey
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