Schaffer scoops best stunt award
By Angie Brown
BBC Scotland
August 28, 2009

Comedian Lewis Schaffer has won an award for the best publicity stunt at the Edinburgh Fringe.

The comic scooped the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award for persuading The List magazine he was sponsoring the Edinburgh Comedy Awards for £99.

He told the Glasgow publication the awards would now be called ‘The Lewies’ in his honour and his mother would be on the judging panel.

Otto Kuhnle won the Malcolm Hardee Award for best comic originality.

The award, which is awarded to a performer within a show, went to Kuhnle for his part in Abracadabra – German Humour Goes Global, which also stars Henning Wehn.

Schaffer beat off stiff competition from comedian Shed Simove, who was noticed for his “poo publicity” after he printed details of his show, Ideas Man, on every sheet of 1,000 toilet rolls, and Warren & Hanbury who climbed Arthur’s Seat naked to publicise their show, All To Bare at the Gilded Balloon. (more…)

From Mark Borkowski:

A good stunt certainly relies on taking risks… The aim is to engage people and make them laugh or exclaim with astonishment, whether they see the stunt or read about it in the papers. You’ve got to push a stunt as far as it will go without actually hurting people

Cunning stunts: Edinburgh Festival’s greatest PR moments
by Mark Borkowski
The Independent
9 August 2009

Edinburgh old-timer Mark Borkowski pays tribute to one of the festival’s finest art forms: the publicists’ tricks that propel certain performers centre stage

This is the year to celebrate the festival stunt – the quick and naughty publicist’s plaything, constructed to achieve mass media attention. Publicity stunts have always been a vital ingredient of the Edinburgh Festival mayhem. They bring a creative flourish and give the shows life outside the rarefied Scottish climate.

Some have suggested the stunt is an endangered species, but I believe it is an art form as relevant as any performance on view in August, so I have set up a Twithibition to celebrate great stunts of the past. Each one has been captured in poster form by the design god David Hillman, based around photographs by Geraint Lewis and located at the home of the original stunt.

Click here to launch Mark Borkowski’s Top 10 Stunts. (more…)