Meet The Winner Of This Year's BBC Radio New Comedy Award

Last week, we revealed the winner of the BBC Radio New Comedy Award live on Steve Wright in the Afternoon.

All six of our finalists performed on Radio 2 from London's Comedy Store and you, the listening public, voted for Yuriko Kotani as your favourite up-and-coming comic.

Steve and the team have spent this week profiling the performers who made it, from over 700 entrants, to the final:

Russ, from Barrow-In-Furness, has been performing stand-up for a little over two years. He first got into comedy after being continually pestered by his mates.

Russ hopes that the BBC Radio New Comedy Award will help him on his way to making a living from comedy. After all - some of our previous winners haven't done too badly.

Athena Kugblenu works as a project manager in London, and has already enjoyed performing stand-up around the country.

Although she says she's been inspired by many of the previous winners of the BBC Radio New Comedy Award, Athena says the funniest person she knows is her mum - which begs the question as to why Mrs Kugblenu hasn't entered the award as well!

Michael is a character comedian from Co. Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. He describes himself as a 'wannbe comedian and astronaut'.

For the last three years, and under the guise of the character Daniel Duffy, he's enjoyed scooping a number of awards for his comedy performances.

Ken from Cambridge is a part-time comedian and full-time, professional poker player, although he describes making the final as a 'game changer'.

Before entering the BBC Radio New Comedy Award he wrote and performed for the Cambridge Footlights and made a name for himself on YouTube with character Mark Liu, whilst he's also taken his stand-up performances to Edinburgh.

Andy, from County Durham, has been performing stand-up for nearly five years, and is a veteran of 977 gigs. He's even shared the same billing as Jimmy Carr!

Outside of comedy Andy is a yoga enthusiast. He's also went to drama school with The One Show's Matt Baker, and claims to have once served green beans to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Yuriko, who is originally from Japan, decided to try performing comedy because it was the last thing she could imagine herself doing. A lot of her comedy is based upon the difference between the country of her birth and her adopted nation.

After only a year of performing, Yuriko was runner up in the Edinburgh Festival's So You Think You're Funny competition, before being named as our BBC Radio New Comedy Award Winner for 2015.