Australian Tumbleweed Awards – Worst Comedy Results

Daryl Somers, Triple J comedian Sam Simmons and animated series Beached Az were just some of the winners in the 2009 Tumbleweed Awards, announced earlier this week. Unfortunately for the winners: the Tumbleweed Awards are an internet-based award for the worst in Australian comedy over the previous year, with categories that include Worst Entertainment Program, Worst Actor, Worst Stand-Up, Worst Radio Comedy and Most Useless Panel Show Guest.

Voted on by the general public, the results read largely as a vote against Daryl Somers and the return of Hey Hey it’s Saturday. Somers and / or Hey Hey took home five awards, including Least Hoped-For Return, Worst Overall Comedy, Worst Entertainment Personality and The Lifetime Achievement Award for Crap Comedy (Somers’ second).

This year’s awards were marked by controversy as Julia Morris actively campaigned via Twitter and an appearance on The 7pm Project for her book “Don’t You Know Who I Used To Be?” to win the Worst Book Or Item of Spin-Off Merchandise. Unfortunately for Morris, it seems the hoped-for wave of public interest failed to materialise, and the best she could manage was to tie for the award with Wil Anderson’s collection of comedy writing “Friendly Fire”.

The other tied result was for Most Irritating or Pointless Cameo, which was split between Tony Martin’s various appearances in 2009 and Steve Vizard’s work on The Jesters. While Vizard’s win was a vote against him appearing in anything, Martin’s vote was more an expression of disappointment from the voters that he didn’t have his own regular comedy outlet since Triple M’s controversial axing of Get This in 2007.

Beached Az, a series of short animated segments about a beached whale with a New Zealand accent, was another big winner with three awards (Worst Newcomer, Worst New Comedy, Worst Sitcom), while perennial Tumbleweed award winner Dave Hughes remained popular with the voters, taking home Worst DVD (for Dave Hughes is Handy) and Most Unnecessarily Over Exposed Comedian, while The 7pm Project (which features Hughes) won Worst Game or Panel Show.

Hughes was beaten for Worst Stand-Up by Wil Anderson.

Kyle Sandilands also won two awards (Worst Radio Comedy, Worst Radio Personality), while The Chaser took home three, for Most Over-Rated Comedy, Most Hysterical Tabloid Hate Campaign (for the controversy over the “Make a Realistic Wish Foundation” sketch that saw them taken off air for two weeks), and The “Triple M Re-Allocating Resources” Memorial Award For Biggest Managerial Cock-Up, though that award technically belongs to the ABC for taking The Chaser off air in the face of tabloid pressure.

In the Tumbleweed Awards two positive categories, John Safran’s Race Relations won Best New Comedy, and Tony Martin’s book “A Nest of Occasionals” won Best Comedy, defeating John Clarke and Brian Dawe’s segments on the 7.30 Report and Shaun Micallef’s comedy CD His Generation.

Designed to acknowledge the worst in Australian comedy, the Tumbleweed Awards have been awarded yearly since 2007. For a full list of results an accompanying commentary, visit the Official Website.