After winning last year’s Squawker Award, comedian Ingrid Dahle showed the trophy to everyone she met.

“I showed it to a tree surgeon who knocked on the door and half of Brighton must have seen it already,” she told The Guide last year, a few weeks after collecting the trophy in the newcomer award organised by Brighton Comedy Festival and Jill Edwards.

A year on and things have barely changed.

“I have put it in the kitchen,” she confirms ahead of the competition’s return next Monday.

“When other mums come round, coffee mums on a midweek morning, I casually slip it into conversation: ‘Er, have you seen I won this Squawker Award thing…”

The aim is to fill a cabinet with gongs. For now, though, the Squawker prize will have to sit beside her children’s football trophies.

In the year since winning the competition, Dahle has signed a management deal with Claire Stephens Management, started her own comedy night (Comedy Canoe every Wednesday at The Temple Bar, with Jade Adams next up), and is getting paid gigs in London.

“It’s gone up and up and up, but at the time I wasn’t expecting it. I hadn’t been going for long enough, so it took me time to gather myself.

“People said, ‘When you win an award that is when you are hot, do loads and loads of shows,’ but I had to take it in and get used to it.

“Now I am ready to do it properly, and go for it 100%. It has given me such a kick start. It has definitely changed my career.”

It’s not gone to her head. She’s spent the past three weeks in Edinburgh dressed as a fried egg on the Royal Mile.

“I went up with Paul Jones to do Dahle And Jones On A Plate. We both decided that if we were leaving a partner at home with the kids we had to make the most of it.”

Jones, who pens one-liners, and Dahle, who is more surreal and silly, mixing observational skits with physical comedy, have been friends since they did a stand-up course together at Komedia.

Dahle believes their three-week run at The Dram House in Edinburgh in the Free Fringe had a hundred people a night watching, thanks to the fact they both made the Squawker Award 2012 final.

The Norwegian, who first moved to Brighton to study English ten years ago, stayed in the city when she met her now husband.

They met on an escalator in TK Maxx.

“I was walking down one side and he said I was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. Now we’ve got two kids.”

Motherhood and mirth

She was a stay-at-home mum when she decided to try comedy.

“I was just excited there was such a thing called a comedy course. I thought, ‘That sounds more fun than Zumba, this will be a laugh’. Now here I am and I’ve got the Squawker Award.”

She grew up near Stavanger Fjord and watched lots of British television. She loved French And Saunders and Monty Python, and, in general, she thinks Norwegians have a similar sense of humour to Brits. It’s not made her journey so far an easy ride though.

“It’s harder to be a Norwegian comic in that you don’t always understand things other comedians are talking about, how people grew up, things they are calling back up.

“But at the same time I have the advantage of being an outsider and observing English culture. I use it in my stand-up, and people enjoy hearing how outsiders see their culture. They can laugh at themselves.”

Over the noise of children becoming bored, she gives two nuggets of advice for this year’s contestants: to be themselves, because the judges want originality, and to be honest.

Dahle is certainly both.

“During the day I’m a mum,” she says. “In the evening I take off my trousers and make people laugh.”

  • Last year’s Squawker Award finalists will headline and compere the 2013 heats at Komedia, Gardner Street, Brighton, on September 2, 9, 17, 24 and October 1, with the final on October 16. Ingrid Dahle will headline the final. Doors 7.30pm, tickets £6. Call 01273 647101. The 2013 Squawker Award winner will perform at Brighton Comedy Festival’s finale, Best Of The Fest.