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National Comedy Awards

British comedy award in several categories

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ125737760 ↗
Source-derived summary

The National Comedy Awards (known as the British Comedy Awards from 1990 to 2014) was an annual awards ceremony in the United Kingdom, celebrating notable comedians and entertainment performances of the previous year.

The British Comedy Awards (1990–2014)

The awards were shown live on ITV in December from 1990 to 2006, after which the broadcast of the British Comedy Awards 2007 was suspended by ITV due to allegations of irregularities and deception in the awarding of the 2005 People's Choice Award and then ongoing related investigations about the 2007 British premium-rate phone-in scandal resulting in Ofcom's subsequently fining ITV a record £5.675 million for its misuse of premium-rate telephone lines.

After Michael Parkinson presented the inaugural ceremony at the London Palladium in December 1990, the majority of subsequent shows were presented by Jonathan Ross, staged at London Studios, and produced by Michael Hurll Television (MHTV), whose parent company is Unique Communications Group. Ross did not present the 2008 awards, in light of The Russell Brand Show prank calls and was replaced for that year by Angus Deayton.

The 2007 show occurred on 6 December 2007, but was not televised due to the 2005 controversy and subsequent investigations. The following years ceremony was shown live on 6 December 2008. Compliance for the show was the responsibility of the ITV Compliance Unit of ITV Network Limited (consisting of members from ITV plc, STV Group, UTV Media, and Channel Television Ltd).

In June 2010, it was announced that awards were to be broadcast on Channel 4 for three years, which was later extended for one more year. Shortly afterwards, the 2010 ceremony was postponed until it finally aired in January 2011. In June 2015 Channel 4 announced they would be dropping the ceremony.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “National Comedy Awards” is british comedy award in several categories. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through National, Comedy and Awards, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1990, 2014, 2006, 2007—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2022. For this dossier, National, Comedy and Awards is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british comedy award in several categories” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q125737760. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1990, 2014, 2006 and 2007.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “National Comedy Awards” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.