Award gave busker 'freedom to go out on a limb'

Canterbury busker Sam Wills' profile is rising in Britain, but it all started with The Press People's Choice Award in 2008.

Wills featured in two showcase performances in London last year.

He is preparing for his first theatre show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August and has signed with an agent.

The $5000 award at the World Buskers Festival in Christchurch two years ago was Wills' breakthrough.

He used the prizemoney to fund his show, The Boy With Tape on His Face, at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2008, which led to a booking at the Adelaide Fringe Festival last year.

The show was the hot item in Adelaide, gaining two five-star reviews, and led to Wills signing with a British agent. It won Adelaide's award for best established comedian and was nominated for the people's choice award.

"It was completely sold out and we had to do midnight shows. People were desperate to get tickets," Wills said.

The show involves Wills taping his mouth and doing "silly things" such as mimes of cult films using members of the audience as puppets.

Wills said he would not have been able to launch his career without the Christchurch prizemoney. "That is what funded the Melbourne show. Without that it would have been a lot harder," he said.

"It gave us the financial freedom to go out on a limb and do something we would not otherwise have been able to do."

British agent Lee Martin, of Gag Reflex, gained Wills a slot in the BBC Presents and Time Out Presents showcases at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London late last year.

Wills is in Christchurch to watch some acts and see his parents, who live in New Brighton.

He will fly to Dubai today to perform for two weeks in the city's fringe festival. Next year he hopes to take his successful Tape show to Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

He wants to bring the show to Christchurch because his mum has never seen it all.

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- © Fairfax NZ News