Stanier storms it!
David Stanier
Manchester stand-up David Stanier was named the Hilarity Bites New Act of the Year last night following one of the closest finals in the competition’s five year history.
Six acts competed on the night, each performing approximately ten minutes of material before three judges and a packed audience at the Darlington Arts Centre. But the result was almost too close to call between the eventual winner Stanier and Scottish acts Chris Grady and Scott Gibson.
In the end the decision was taken to let the audience have the casting vote – as the judges were unable to split the acts – and Stanier proved most popular amongst punters.
Speaking to Giggle Beats following the announcement, he said: “Oof! I’m very super happy to have won. OOF! It sounded like it was a close call and not surprisingly so; Chris and Scott could easily have pipped me to the post. It must have been like when they take a photo of horses’ noses at a horse race.
“Everyone else did ever so well too, and the audience were lovely and kind, so thank you very much to everybody involved and everybody in the world ever.”
In taking the title of Hilarity Bites New Act of the Year, Stanier follows in the footsteps of last year’s champion Matt Winning, as well as previous winners Andy Fury, Andrew Ryan and Sam Gore.
Hilarity Bites promoter Neil Jollie added: “In the five years that we’ve been running this competition that was honestly the closest run final that we’ve had, and the standard was unbelievably high.
“Over the course of the heats we’ve had 48 acts take part in the competition, and in the end the six that made the final have all got what it takes to get themselves noticed on the comedy circuit. There’s a real mix of styles, and some really good writing, but the thing that impressed me most was the confidence and stage presence of all of the acts.”
He continued: “In the end the judges were completely torn over who should win, and the audience vote was also very close, but we’ve got a fantastic winner in David Stanier and, for the first time in the competition’s history, we shared second place between two acts that I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more of.”
Watch Stanier in action here:
