Edinburgh Fringe 2018: Jobcentre joke by comedian Adam Rowe voted funniest at festival

Comedian Adam Rowe wins the Dave Joke of the Fringe 2018 award.
UKTV Dave/Martina Salvi
Jacob Jarvis20 August 2018

A gag highlighting an unfortunate issue for anyone sacked from working at a Jobcentre has been declared the best joke at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Comedian Adam Rowe came up with the quip: "Working at the Jobcentre has to be a tense job – knowing that if you get fired, you still have to come in the next day."

The former bartender, who began his stand-up career in 2010, said the line came to him off the cuff while he was performing in Liverpool.

Mr Rowe, who was previously named as Liverpool's Comedian of the Year, even went so far as to call the award-winning joke “a brain fart”.

He said: "I actually wrote it when I was on stage when I was hosting a gig in Liverpool.

"It was a bit of crowd work that stayed with me. I was doing the usual compeering thing, asking people what they do for a living.

The top 10 jokes from the Fringe

1. "Working at the JobCentre has to be a tense job - knowing that if you get fired, you still have to come in the next day" - Adam Rowe

2. "I had a job drilling holes for water - it was well boring" - Leo Kearse

3. "I took out a loan to pay for an exorcism. If I don't pay it back, I'm going to get repossessed" - Olaf Falafel

4. "In my last relationship, I hated being treated like a piece of meat. She was a vegan and refused to touch me" - Daniel Audritt

5. "What do colour blind people do when they are told to eat their greens?" - Flo and Joan

6. "I've got a new job collecting all the jumpers left in the park at the weekends, but it's not easy. They keep moving the goalposts" - Darren Walsh

7. "Trump said he'd build a wall but he hasn't even picked up a brick. He's just another middle-aged man failing on a DIY project" - Justin Moorhouse

8= "I lost a friend after we had an argument about the Tardis. I thought it was a little thing, but it seemed much bigger once we got into it" - Adele Cliff

8= "Why are they calling it Brexit and not The Great British Break Off?" - Alex Edelman

10. "I think love is like central heating. You turn it on before guests arrive and pretend it's like this all the time" - Laura Lexx

"A guy said he worked in the Jobcentre and I said the joke that has now won the award.

"Because it got such a nice reaction on the night I thought I had to do something with it as a line.

"I didn't expect to be winning an award for what was essentially a brain fart."

Mr Rowe's gag was the 11th winner of the annual award for Dave's Funniest Joke Of The Fringe.

A staggering 2,000 comedy fans voted in the poll.

Jokes were listed anonymously to avoid bias towards well-known comedians.

On winning the award, Mr Rowe told the Press Association: "I thought my agent was lying. He rang me and told me I couldn't tell anyone for a week which has been almost impossible.

"I'm massively taken aback by it, I've never seen myself as being in the running for things like this.

"It's a massive honour and a genuinely huge surprise."

Previous winners of the award include Tim Vine, Stewart Francis and Zoe Lyons.

Maths student Ken Cheng won last year's prize with the line: "I'm not a fan of the new pound coin, but then again, I hate all change."

Dave channel director Luke Hales said: "This year, the news agenda and every day British idiosyncrasies have provided some wonderful opportunities for comedians to use their creative and comic genius in giving us all a giggle.

"As ever, we have enjoyed some quite brilliant one-liners and are delighted to crown Adam Rowe as the recipient of this year's Dave's Funniest Joke of the Fringe Award."

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