A joke about an unfaithful zookeeper has been named the funniest gag at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Comedian Lorna Rose Treen was voted the winner with her pun: “I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah.”
The Dave’s Funniest Joke of the Fringe is chosen by members of the public from a shortlist drawn up by judges.
The zookeeper one-liner was ranked among the best by 44% of those surveyed.
Lorna is the first female comedian to win the accolade since Zoe Lyons at the very first Fringe joke award in 2008.
She described herself as “blooming chuffed” at learning her joke was the winner.
“A huge thank you for awarding my stupid joke with this title!” she said.
A University of Edinburgh graduate and former BBC production trainee, Lorna has also spent time at clown school in Paris.
Top 10 jokes of the 2023 Fringe
- I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah – Lorna Rose Treen
- The most British thing I’ve ever heard? A lady who said ‘Well I’m sorry, but I don’t apologise.’ – Liz Guterbock
- Last year I had a great joke about inflation. But it’s hardly worth it now – Amos Gill
- When women gossip we get called bitchy; but when men do it’s called a podcast – Sikisa
- I thought I’d start off with a joke about The Titanic – just to break the ice – Masai Graham
- How do coeliac Germans greet each other? Gluten tag – Frank Lavender
- My friend got locked in a coffee place overnight. Now he only ever goes into Starbucks, not the rivals. He’s Costa-phobic – Roger Swift
- I entered the ‘How not to surrender’ competition and I won hands down – Bennett Arron
- Nationwide must have looked pretty silly when they opened their first branch – William Stone
- My grandma describes herself as being in her “twilight years” which I love because they’re great films – Daniel Foxx
Originally from the West Midlands, Lorna has won several comedy awards elsewhere, and been billed as “the greatest thing to come out of Redditch since the fishing tackle”, a reference to the town’s history of angling equipment manufacture.
Now based in London, her multi-character show Skin Pigeon is her Edinburgh Fringe debut. She told BBC News her joke is delivered by a “film noir character with a mouth full of cigarettes”.
“She’s basically turned up a bar at about 4am and she’s telling all these bar keepers – who are my audience – about her life, and that’s one of the things she says.”
The Joke of the Fringe Award is now in its 14th year, with last year’s winner Masai Graham a runner up in this year’s contest.
Previous winners also include Ken Cheng, Olaf Falafel, Tim Vine, Rob Auton, Stewart Francis, Zoe Lyons and Nick Helm.
- Funniest Fringe jokes from years gone by
A panel of comedy critics attend hundreds of shows, listening out for the best jokes before drawing up a shortlist of 10 favourites.
The jokes are then voted on anonymously by 2,000 members of the public who are asked to select their top three.
The Edinburgh Fringe is the world’s biggest performance art festival, taking place over three weeks every year in August.
This year’s event had 3,535 shows registered across 248 venues, close to the record number seen in 2019 before the Covid pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 festival.
Related Topics
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- Edinburgh
- Edinburgh Festival Fringe