How long did the award run in which the Best Newcomer at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe was also a notable finalist?
BBC New Comedy Award The BBC New Comedy Award first appeared in 1995 and were considered to be one of the top UK comedy newcomer awards until they were axed in 2006. It was announced in the summer of 2006 that they were being replaced by a nationwide talent hunt that places its emphasis on sketch writing and filmed performance. During their decade long life span the finals of this event have boasted many well known names that have continued to work in comedy to great acclaim - amongst the winners of the award are: Julian Barratt (1995), Marcus Brigstocke (1996), Paul Foot (1997), Josie Long (1999), Alan Carr (2001), Nina Conti (2002), and Rhod Gilbert (2003). Other notable finalists include Peter Kay, Lee Mack, Russell Howard, Daniel Kitson, Justin Lee Collins, David O'Doherty, Shappi Khorsandi, Chris Addison and Sarah Millican.
Sam Stone Sam Stone is a British author of gothic, horror, fantasy, science fiction and more recently a playwright for film and stage. She is the commissioning editor of Telos Publishing imprint Telos Moonrise. Stone's debut novel "Gabriele Caccini" (authored as Paigan Stone) won the silver award for best horror novel 2007 with "ForeWord" in the USA. She was shortlisted for the August Derleth Award for Best Novel in the British Fantasy Awards for her second novel, "Futile Flame". This book was also a finalist in "ForeWord"'s Book of the Year Awards in 2009 and the third book in the series, "Demon Dance", was also a finalist for the 2010 Foreword magazine Awards and won the August Derleth Award for Best Novel in the British Fantasy Awards 2011. This made her the first female writer to win the Award since Tanith Lee did so in 1980. However, after the awards were announced, there was controversy over the voting and so Stone publicly returned the Award, not wishing to be associated with something which might have been awarded erroneously. The BFS then declared that the voting was valid, but then in a later statement announced that the Best Novel would be declared a 'No Award' for that year. Stone was not consulted in this decision. She also won the Best Short Story Award in the British Fantasy Awards in the same year.