I'm grouchy today.

Check out this review by Helen Razer in the online version of The Age, or as we here have come to call it, The Dead Horse.

The show she reviews is called I Know What You Did Last Monday. I haven't seen the show and I don't know any of the people in it, but what Helen Razer hysterically raves about here is that these are first time performers who have misjudged what comedy is and who look nervous and unsure of themselves.

So the only newspaper allowed to report on the comedy festival has kicked the teeth out of some twelve year olds in the playground. Meanwhile, if you'd like to read eight hundred boring quotes about the nature of comedy, go your hardest. Also, lots of four star reviews of a bunch of comedians from America and Australians with their own TV shows.

Where is the analysis of the pumped up misogynists I've seen at this festival doing rape jokes and poof jokes and being laughed at because they're confident and they got four stars in The Dead Horse and the audience doesn't want to feel uncool...?

At the comedy festival, they announced the nominations for a couple of awards the other night.

The two awards they announced were The Barry Award and The Golden Gibbo. The Barry is the official comedy festival award for best show.

This is the funniest thing in the festival. It's positively Kafkaesque. Check it out: the award for best show in the comedy festival is judged by a group of people who do not go to all the shows in the comedy festival.

That's how it works. Say you're doing a show in the festival, and all you want is a positive review. If you get a positive review, you get what's called "a vibe". If you've got "a vibe", then the judges for the Barry Award get along to your show and decide whether or not to nominate you for an award.

Isn't that hilarious? Imagine pretending that's a merit-based decision. "I'm the teacher who will be teaching this class, but only the popular kids will actually be graded".

So anyway, you ready for a shock? Not one woman nominated for The Barry Award. Huge surprise - you could have knocked me over with a cock joke.

The Golden Gibbo is great, recognises really different stuff.

It would be nice, though, if the mainstream award, The Barry, recognised (say) Judith Lucy, whose apparently brilliant and brave show about working in commercial radio, I Failed, is selling out every night. Popular, mainstream, funny... but not shortlisted.

If all this was a play, it would appear dreadfully over-written, really repetitive, and not very funny at all. What a shame.