‘Let’s Make This Interesting’: The Funniest Jokes at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

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Street entertainers perform on the Royal Mile to promote their shows during in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on August 24, 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland. This 65th Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest arts festivals in the world

There’s one thing we can safely say about these comedians: they’ll be here all week.

Nick Helm has won the award for the best joke of the Edinburgh Fringe. The annual comedy event has been a brilliant breeding ground for turning promising comics into established stars (the actor and comedian Steve Coogan definitely benefited from the boost to his profile appearing Edinburgh provided in the 1990’s).

But while the eventual award for best show is what all the acts truly aspire to, there’s some serious pride in place when it comes to being heralded as having the funniest one-liner. Digital TV channel Dave assembled a panel of 10 comedy critics who have spent the past two weeks scouring venues across the city. Their top 30 funnies were then put to a vote of 3,000 comedy fans. The winning gag? “I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

Helm doesn’t suffer from a lack of confidence either (which is good considering his profession) and said, “I knew my joke was the funniest joke of all the other jokes in 2011. Thank you to Dave and all the people that voted for proving me right.”

(LIST: Top 10 Late-Night Jokes)

Helm beat last year’s winner, the infinitely better known comedian Tim Vine, who still came a credible second in 2011 with this zinger: “Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels.”

Because we’re kind (or cruel, depending on your point of view), here are the remaining entries in the top 10. (via BBC)

3. Hannibal Buress: “People say ‘I’m taking it one day at a time’. You know what? So is everybody. That’s how time works.”

4. Tim Key: “Drive-Thru McDonalds was more expensive than I thought… once you’ve hired the car…”

5. Matt Kirshen: “I was playing chess with my friend and he said, ‘Let’s make this interesting’. So we stopped playing chess.”

6. Sarah Millican: “My mother told me, you don’t have to put anything in your mouth you don’t want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards.”

7. Alan Sharp: “I was in a band which we called The Prevention, because we hoped people would say we were better than The Cure.”

8. Mark Watson: “Someone asked me recently – what would I rather give up, food or sex. Neither! I’m not falling for that one again, wife.”

9. Andrew Lawrence: “I admire these phone hackers. I think they have a lot of patience. I can’t even be bothered to check my OWN voicemails.”

10. DeAnne Smith: “My friend died doing what he loved … Heroin.”

Glen Levy is an Executive Producer at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @glenjl. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.