1. The Fosters Edinburgh Comedy Awards, in all their previous guises, are the longest running comedy award having outlived at least 15 other awards including The Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award, The Time Out Comedy Awards and The BBC New Comedy Award.
2. Over the awards’ 30 year history there have been a total of 199 named nominated acts over the Best Comedy, Best Newcomer and the Panel Award.
3. Since 1981 our judges have made over 30,000 visits to comedy shows.
4. Panel judges have visited at least 6,000 different comedy shows since the awards started.
5. The longest panel meeting was 5 hours in 1991, the year Frank Skinner won.
6. 4 of our competition winner judges have gone on to perform comedy; including 2 women Lucy Porter and Meryl Rourke.
7. Among our very talented judges, who became better known in the world of comedy after their stint on the panel, were competition winners Hannah Chambers, who now manages acts including Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle, Shane Allen who is now Head of Comedy at Channel 4 and Hils Jago who founded Amused Moose.
8. There are at least 4 medically trained doctors among our winners and nominees that we know of. They are Hank Wangford, Mike Wozniak, Harry Hill and Paul Sinha.
9. 16 of our winners and nominees are in the select group who have played stadiums as headliners; they include Eddie Izzard and Russell Howard
10. 27 of our winners have had their name in the title of their own sitcom, chat show, character comedy show or sketch show such as Graham Norton, Rich Hall and The League of Gentlemen.
11. It's often remarked that there have only been 2 female winners of the Best Comedy award (or 5 if you include Emma Thompson of The Cambridge Footlights and Barb Jungr and Victoria Pile and 2 of the newcomer award, Sarah Millican and Josie Long), however, there have been 25 women among the nominated acts across all of the awards categories including Catherine Tate as part of Lee Mack's New Bits.
12. The most nominated act is Al Murray with 4 nominations (5 if you include his involvement with Harry Hill's Pub Internationale in 1994).
13. At least 2 of our winners and nominees have proved that music and comedy can hobnob at the very highest levels with Rich Hall once supporting Talking Heads and Arnold Brown supporting Frank Sinatra at Ibrox.
14. 2 award nominees were also footballers; Terry Alderton was Southend United's goalkeeper and John Bishop played semi-professional football for teams including Southport.
15. Musical comedy acts, including the likes of Bill Bailey and Flight of the Conchords, have won 11 nominations.
16. Double acts and multi-member sketch groups, including We Are Klang and Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, have won 46 nominations.
17. Character acts, such as Justin Edwards' Jeremy Lion and Laura Solon's Kopfraper's Syndrome, have won 18 nomination.
18. The youngest act to win the main award is Sean Hughes, aged 24 in 1990.
19. The oldest act to win the main award outright is Arnold Brown with Barb Jungr and Michael Park. Arnold was, aged 51 in 1986.
20. The youngest act to win the newcomer award was Arj Barker aged 23 years in 1997.
21. The oldest act to win the newcomer award is an honour shared by Tim Minchin when he won. aged 33. In 2005 and Sarah Millican was the same age when she won in 2008.
22. The oldest award winner/nominee was Peter Buckley Hill in 2009 when he won the panel prize for The Free Fringe, aged 61 years.
23. The youngest nominee was Jack Whitehall, nominated for best newcomer in 2009, aged 21.
24. 14 acts have graced both the main award and the newcomer list.
25. In the last decade 2 debut acts, Laura Solon and Will Adamsdale, have won Best Comedy.
26. 1974 is the most popular year for nominees to have been born in.
27. Only 3 shows with one word titles have won awards.
28. 29 acts have been nominated for more than one award.
29. Kevin Bridges is the first act to go from a newcomer nomination to ineligible within a year because he has increased the size of his venue from 50 in 2009 to 610 in 2010.

Compiled by Julian Hall.