“None of the comics give a toss about the Perrier anyway,” Boothby Graffoe, one of the favourites for this year’s prize, claimed last week.
Stewart Lee, one of Graffoe’s Avalon stablemates, said earlier in the year that he would be happy to organise a boycott of the award, which has hastened the fame of a string of big names down the years including Steve Coogan, Frank Skinner and even Theatre de Complicite. Lee argues: “Money should be put into sponsoring productions and venues, not on a prize that most people within the industry believe is meaningless anyway.”
The Stand Comedy Club, perhaps riding the current surge of Scottish nationalism, has said it will not hand out free tickets to Perrier judges for any of its shows, amid accusations of the Edinburgh Fringe being “colonised” by the London-based comedy industry.
Instead, Stand directors Jane Mackay and Tommy Sheppard are organising a nightly showcase called, provocatively, No Contest, in which five of Scotland’s most highly-rated emerging comics will share the bill without competing for anything. So the Perrier Award is facing a bit of a crisis of confidence among those whose talents it seeks to champion. The problem is this – when Perrier was founded, and for many years afterwards, it was the golden key to fame and stardom. A big pay cheque and a West End season helped confirm the winner’s place in posterity.

Now, there is such a farming of new comic talent at the Fringe each year, that you have to be pretty bad not to end up with a television contract, or at least the hint of one, or at the very least, a warm-up slot on The Jack Docherty Show.

This has undoubtedly diminished the value of the Perrier in the eyes of the comics, because instead of propelling one act along a fast track to stardom, the Perrier winner is likely to be simply one of 30 acts who will find fame through a decent run at Edinburgh.
A place on the Perrier shortlist is, these days, as important, as winning the gong.
But this is no consolation to acts such as Al Murray, twice shortlisted, but overlooked both times.
Johnny Vegas, the sensation of last year’s Fringe, failed to be named Best Newcomer on his debut – another travesty. And the award’s image took a further blow this week with the screening of the Channel 4 documentary, The Critics.

It showed an excerpt from a panel meeting, in which one of the judges blatantly championed the cause of a performer who happened to be a good friend.
The Perrier has not helped itself in other respects.
The Best Newcomer award is anomalous – as the Vegas situation showed – and has taken the gloss off the main prize. There is also the mystery surrounding the award’s rules regarding eligibility, and clarification is hindered by allowing the outgoing panel to move the goalposts each year.
So, come the following year, there is always confusion in the comedy fraternity regarding who is or is not eligible. All the above is harsh criticism of the Perrier administrators, who act with integrity and have done far more for modern British comedy than they have generally been given credit for.
But the Perrier badly needs to rediscover the confidence of the comics it judges.

Incidentally, if you ask the comics for their opinion, then Sean Lock is going to win it this year. But then everyone always says that and I don’t think he has ever been shortlisted.
Yet he is probably the best comic on view at this year’s Fringe (Paul Merton and Rory Bremner included).
That is what the Perrier panel has to overcome.