A bundle of cash for writing jokes? Don't make me laugh

It's true, comedy is the new accountancy, says Veronica Lee, and if you want to roll about in riches you should head up to Edinburgh this month and try your luck on the stand-up circuit

Mrs Worthington may still be well advised to keep her daughter off the stage, but nowadays she should push her offspring into the safe and lucrative world of comedy instead. If the growing number of awards, the profusion of clubs and the amount of lucrative broadcasting work available are anything to go by, comedy is the new accountancy.

Where once a stand-up comic would have to slog around the circuit and get paid in free beer and curled-up sandwiches, comedians can now work in several media and even be paid a regular salary for writing gags on TV and radio. The live comedy circuit has mushroomed while TV has formed an insatiable appetite for comedic talent both in front of and behind the camera.

The advent of multichannel TV is the cause of the comedy revolution, says William Burdett-Coutts, artistic director of Edinburgh's Assembly Rooms one of the city's top venues for comedy during the Festival Fringe. "I put it down to when Channel 4 started and created a new interest in comedy. And now with so many satellite and cable channels there are hours and hours of airtime to be filled. There is a fairly constant demand for new faces and new talent – you only have to sit in Edinburgh and watch the producers lapping it up."

The Edinburgh Fringe also sees the culmination of five comedy awards that are regarded in the industry as one long audition for lucrative TV work. There is a new addition this year, the Wilkinson Sword Cutting Edge of Comedy award, which, in common with the BBC New Comedy Award, The Daily Telegraph Open Mic and Channel 4's So You Think You're Funny?, is for breakthrough talent, while the Perrier, the most famous award, is for established comics, although it too has a newcomer section. Among the hot tips to pick up the newcomer awards this year are Hils Barker, Phil Walker, Ria Lina, Matthew Osborne and Nina Conti.

The eventual winners will variously receive fat cheques or guaranteed runs at the prestigious Montreal and Melbourne comedy festivals as their prizes, or even a contract for a one-off TV show. The real prize for many competitors, though, is being snapped up by a top agent or TV production company.

Edinburgh is only one of the many comedy festivals in Britain where comics can ply their wares. Several British cities have festivals and October sees the launch of the Brighton Comedy Festival, with Burdett-Coutts as its director. He cautions that it's not all milk and honey, and maintains that there's room for another comedy festival in a seemingly overcrowded market. "Manchester struggles," Burdett-Coutts says, "Leicester carries on, Newcastle has closed and London is a hard one to crack as there is so much going on there all the time. There are many, many comedians who have been around for years without a breakthrough."

That said, the openings for talented funny people are many and varied – and it's not just performers that TV wants to lure. As Lisa Thomas, joint director of Karushi Management, which handles several top comics, such as Mackenzie Crook of The Office, says: "A few years ago, TV producers would want to see someone performing live, now they're more interested in how the comic can write. They may think someone doesn't quite have 'it' on stage, but has a talent that could be put to better use as a gag writer or a script editor. Multi-talented comics are being snapped up."

While Thomas welcomes the extra money and audience interest that awards attract, she believes they are not an automatic entree to well-paid comedy life, but rather they act as an industry shop window. "They are definitely the foot in the door," she says. "A lot of performers feel they have to pay their dues and do live performance for a couple of years before they can call themselves a comic. It certainly helps in terms of knowing whether a gag is 'sayable' or if the timing's right when they go into writing or production."

One comedian who made the deviation from stand-up to writing for others is Phil Whelans, once half of improv act The Sean Connery Brotherhood and now a writer on the Brian Conley Show. Although he does the occasional stand-up and corporate work as half of Spontaneous Combustion, he now considers himself a writer and made the career change in the late 1990s after the Brotherhood broke up. "I couldn't face starting at the beginning again, doing tryout spots," says Whelans, 37. "The scene is so diluted now – there are hundreds of competent, vanilla, slightly uninteresting stand-ups who I would be up against and my heart sank at the thought."

While writer/performers such as Peter Kay, French & Saunders and Victoria Wood originate all their own material, other performers in TV and radio – including luminaries Ali G, Graham Norton and Steve Coogan – work with a team of gag writers and script editors. And look at the credits on any light entertainment programme – whether it's a quiz, chat, sketch or variety show, from Des O'Connor to Ant and Dec – and you'll see a list of writers mentioned, many of whom started in stand-up.

But even if broadcasting doesn't beckon, stand-up now offers a good living, says Whelans. "In Britain there is a whole raft of comics who play universities and big clubs at weekends and are pulling in 800 quid a week and that's before voiceovers or corporate work."

And the money in broadcasting? "The rates vary wildly," says Whelans, who is currently devising an improvised sitcom for TV. "I've seen writers turn ashen with jealousy when they hear what others can earn, but, believe me, it's a very decent living for most."

Edinburgh Fringe to 26 August (0131 226 0000); Brighton Comedy Festival (01273 709709) 8 to 19 October