Every year the New Zealand Comedy Trust hands out a yellow towel to the most promising comedian in the country.
The Billy T Award is not only New Zealand’s most prestigious comedy award; it is also the only one.
Ewen Gilmour, the inaugural winner of the prize in 1997 and Guy Williams who scooped the award last year agree that the honour meant a lot for them.
“Let me tell you what makes the Billy T Award so prestigious, especially when I got it, it was the only award that we had,” Gilmour laughs.
“It’s just something to aspire to as a young comedian,” Williams adds.
The prize money that came with the award also gave Gilmour the chance to travel to the UK and see what the comedy scene was internationally.
“That helped me massively, I came back with skills I don’t know I would have gotten here,” he says.
This year’s panel of judges has hand-picked five nominees in the running for the 2013 Billy T Award.
