Student named country’s funniest

Mar 16 2008 by Caroline Smith, Sunday Sun

WHAT do you get if you cross a beer-swilling, daytime-TV-watching 20-year- old with the humour and wit of a Northern lad?

The winner of the 2008 Funniest Student Competition.

Ric Wharton, of Chester- le-Street, County Durham, scooped the award after delivering what was described by a judge as “a faultless set”.

Ric, 20, who used to attend the Hermitage School, Chester-le-Street, is on one of the few dedicated comedy courses in the country at Southampton Solent University.

He said: “I love doing a degree in comedy. I wouldn’t have won the award without it.

“It’s so amazing, it seems really surreal giving interviews. I’ve never won anything in my life so my mum and dad are totally blown away by it all.”

Magners Paramount Comedy On Tap is the hottest comedy event on the student calendar, touring 15 universities nationwide with big-name stand-up acts.

They launched The Funniest Student Competition only last year, inviting students to enter by submitting a short clip of themselves doing stand-up, via the web.

Ric said: “All my friends from uni came to watch me. There were two bus loads of them, then we went back and they threw a party.”

The final was held at the world-famous Comedy store in London and was hosted by Irish funnyman Patrick Monahan.

Ric won a mentor for the year, in the form of Paramount TV’s Head of New Comedy, Kathleen Hutchinson, plus his own agent.