Most Disappointing Comedian(s)

But it's not all grey skies at the Australian Tumbleweed Awards. Sometimes there's the tiniest glimpse of a ray of sunshine, only for it to be cruelly covered up again a second later. And so it is that we come to the following award, for those who briefly held out a glimmer of hope - and then went back to churning out the same old same old.

MOST DISAPPOINTING COMEDIAN(S)
Charlie Pickering - 42.11%
"These noms are a bit behind the times, aren't they? Who was expecting quality from Rove McManus? The Chaser had a few gems back in the day, but I'm long accustomed to their present level of quality. Not very familiar with Pickering, wasn't expecting anything there."
- samadriel
"I remain haunted by his extremely sub-par stint on Triple J drive in the early '00's (as the half who got sacked of Mel & Charlie), followed by an extremely shite stand-up show I saw in 2005."
- 13 schoolyards
"Pickering comes across as someone who wants to make people laugh with reasonably intelligent comedy. Mind you, I used to say exactly the same things about The Chaser."
- Bean Is A Carrot
NOMINEES
The Chaser team - 36.84%
Rove McManus - 21.05%

Last year's winner:
Mick Molloy

Okay, The Mansion was not good. And those who remember Charlie Pickering's stand-up routine about inventing a new kind of belt know that from there the only way was up - or out. So perhaps hosting a chemistry-free daytime chat show that wandered into prime time is a good move for him. It does make it a little difficult to take him seriously as a comedian from here on in, though. There aren't an awful lot a lot of people buying tickets for James Reyne's stand-up show, after all. Though I hear tickets to Larry Emdur's Comedy Festival spectacular are selling fast.

Every year since CNNNN ended there's been reason to hope when The Chaser hit our screens. In the first year of The Chaser's War on Everything, it was that they'd do something as good as CNNNN. In the second year of The Chaser's War on Everything, it was that they'd figured out what went wrong with the first year, got the pranks out of their system and learnt how to pace themselves. In the third year, it was that they were only going to do ten episodes and with Howard gone the pranks might finally die their natural death. This black eye? Oh, we just walked into a door, that's all. Don't blame them, they're going to change, we know it. They don't mean to treat us this way.

For the host of a high-profile national talk show, Rove McManus sure did like giving air time to comedians. Let Ryan Shelton do whatever he liked for five minutes every few weeks? Sure. Give Judith Lucy a slot? Why not. But it never once came together into a show that was anything more than the sum of its parts. You'd watch a segment or two of Rove, never the whole thing - and eventually, for a lot of people, sitting through a bunch of duds to find the gold just felt like a waste of valuable YouTube time.

 Most Disappointing ComedyThe 'Pissing On Their Legacy' Award