Marina Hyde

Always perceptive, often hilarious and never afraid to call out injustice, Marina Hyde’s ability to make serious points while simultaneously provoking laughter, is second to none. During last year’s election campaign she cast her gimlet eye across the political spectrum as she filed daily comment pieces from around the country, culminating in an article penned in the small hours of 5 July. “It’s incredible to think that only a short while ago we thought we’d eradicated measles and Nigel Farage. Both have now been brought back, largely by the same people,” she opined. “Farage won in Clacton, a constituency for which he will now have to hold surgeries, presumably by Zoom link from his hot desk in the US presidential colon.”

She also dived into the mushrooming controversy around F1 Red Bull team principal Christian Horner – or, as she christened it, ‘Keeping Up With the Carkrashians’.

And she turned her satire on “the motley crew of enablers, enforcers and concealers” who surrounded the likes of Mohamed Al Fayed and music mogul Sean Combs and allowed them to continue their alleged sexual abuses for so long. “Consistent, charismatic and on the mark from the first word to the last,” said the judges.