There is still a week to go in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival but we already have a winner for the 11th annual award for Dave’s Funniest Joke Of The Fringe.

Comedian Adam Rowe won with the line: "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 joke was from Rowe's show Undeniable and won with 41% of a public vote on a shortlist of gags picked by comedy critics.

On winning the award, 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."

Talking about the joke, Rowe 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 compering thing, asking people what they do for a living.

"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!"

Former bartender Rowe began doing stand-up in 2010 and has previously been crowned Liverpool Comedian of the Year.

On winning the award, 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."

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."

 

Other jokes in the top ten were:

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 & 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

9) 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