The group were brought on stage by Stewart Lee during his Silver Stewbilee gig which celebrates his 25th year at the Fringe.
Comedy Gods you say? With Stewart Lee? Huh?
Last month when Festival sponsor Fosters announced its search to find the public’s ‘Comedy God’ Stewart Lee immediately responded to all recipients of the annoucement citing the idea as ‘the most shameful, inane thing I have seen in all the years I have been doing the fringe’.
During his ‘reply-all’ faux pas he made this passing comment: ‘Think about the logic of it for a moment. Who amongst those you are asking to vote has even heard of The Frank Chickens, who for all anyone under 30 knows may be the best act on the list?’
Little did he know that one small comment combined with the full force of the Internet would have led to a mass movement of voting for the Japanese ‘misfits’ which is on course to crown them Edinburgh’s all-time Comedy Gods.
BBC News writes that the Chickens have scored approximately 50% of the vote so far (that’s around 100,000 votes!) leaving such big name acts like Michael McIntyre, Lee Evans and Peter Kay in their wake.
Telling BBC Scotland, Lee said: ‘It should not be about attaching a brand to a high-profile celebrity.
‘I literally sent one e-mail when I was annoyed by the competition. I don’t have a twitter account or blog or anything like that.
‘Then it kicked off and hundreds of thousands of people have been voting for Frank Chickens as all time Comedy God.’
Lee also mentioned that he tried to apologise to the organisers:
‘The first thing I did was to try to get in touch with them to apologise, in case they had been pushed into something they did not want to be part of.
‘The interesting thing about communication these days is that when some big company blunders into something without really thinking about it there is the possibility now for the public to voice their annoyance, which never used to exist.
‘I think increasingly you are going to get large swathes of the public saying. Let’s just wreck this.’
One day this legendary tale will be known as Frank Chickens: A True Underdog Story.
Voting for the Fosters Edinburgh’s Comedy God competition closes next Wednesday. To vote for your Comedy God click here!
Copyright : Comedy Central UK