Adele Cliff Is The 2020 UK Pun Champion for #UK Punday at Leicester Comedy Festival

Adele Cliff, aka Thor God of Punder, has been crowned the 2020 UK Pun Champion. The first woman to win the award since the competition was launched in 2015.

Adele is a London based stand up comedian who's performed across the UK and US, written for BBC Radio 4 and is the only person to have been in Dave's Funniest Jokes of the Edinburgh Fringe four times consecutively (since 2016).Adele saw off the competition with these barnstorming puns:

Puns

• I don't like to brag but I can control a kayak brilliantly. Canoe?
• A Thesauras is great. Three's no other word for it
• I keep white chocolate down my top...the milky bras are on me!
• I'm a bit worried that I contracted malaria at a cocktail party last night. I came home covered in mojito bites
• I went to an ice hockey match and asked one of the players for a souvenir, but things were underway and he couldn't give a puck
• I always love animals, but my ex has been trying to get me back by sending wild animals...I wish he would stop badgering me
• Who would have thought the UK Pun championships would have me discussing my pussy on stage?!

Runner up was Philip Simon, aka The Pun Hit Wonder

#UKPunDay is Britain's first and only national day celebrating puns, and was founded by Leicester Comedy Festival following the cult success of The UK Pun Championships.The culmination of the day takes place at Leicester Comedy Festival with a rap-battle style pun-off staged in a boxing ring in which budding contestants from around the UK compete for the title of UK Pun Champion 2020. Topics are picked randomly on the night and competitors then take it in turns to pun about that particular topic. Audiences vote for their favourite pun (by way of woops & cheers) and the winner goes through to the next round. After a full evening of pun based comedy, which is billed as a "celebration of Puns", two finalists then fight it out until a winner is crowned.

Past winners include Colin Leggo (2019), Robert Thomas (2018), Lovdev Barparga (2017), Masai Graham (2016) and Leo Kearse (2015).

Today's competing punsters who went home without the crown were:

• Chris Norton Walker
• Richard Woolford
• Richard Pulsford
• Kat Molinari
• Steve Thomson
• Philip Simon
• Iain MacDonald