(From top) Kader Khan, Asrani, Mehmood: Last laugh

Mumbai, Feb. 10: It makes for a funny list. Sunjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi. Sunjay Dutt and Govinda. Paresh Rawal and Shoma Anand.

The Indian Comedy Association has announced the nominations for the country’s first comedy awards. The nominations above are for the category, Best Comedian Jodi No. 1.

There are 12 other categories, including one for Lifetime Achievement, which will honour Bollywood veterans Mehmood, Kader Khan, Jagdeep and Asrani. Paintal, another luminary from Bollywood comedy, is the mission ambassador for the recently formed association.

The awards function, to be held at a city auditorium on February 14, will have a sprinkling of stars and well-known names (or surnames).

Govinda will attend it, as will Annie Chaplin, one of Charlie’s daughters and Sue Kelly Christio, a comedian from South Africa.

The idea, says industrialist Baldev Sharma, who has instituted the awards, is to bring a smile to the faces of those who make other people laugh. Because for every actor who will get an award that night, there will be a hundred who are roughing it out in tinseltown, surviving from one stage show to another, in the hope of getting that one break, giving that one big laugh that will have audiences roaring for more.

“It is to give these comic actors a platform that the Indian Comedy Association was formed,” says Sharma. “It will start with the awards night, where several comic actors will perform. There will be no glamour, only laughter,” he says.

Television personality and compere Ruby Bhatia will anchor the show, which will line up various comic acts, from mimicry to satire. Later, Sharma promises, the association will send up the more talented ones to shows around the country and abroad.

There will be training institutes where international names will be brought over to teach the fine art of comedy, says Sharma.

“They need it. The most in-demand among the comic actors make about Rs 10,000 to 15,000 a month from stage shows, their mainstay.

“Things are becoming worse with the notion of comedy changing in films,” he said.

“The names that are nominated for the awards say it. Things are tougher for us with people like Sunjay Dutt playing comedians,” says comic actor Ashok Mishra, 32, who came to Mumbai 10 years ago from Gorakhpur and is still waiting to make it. He has become a mimicry artiste, his best piece being Amitabh Bachchan’s “Mandir speech” in Deewar.

But he has pinned his hopes on the awards for the visibility it will bring to him — he will perform — and his ilk.

Sunil Pal, another mimicry artiste who has been nominated in the category Best Comedy Outstanding Voice, agrees that things have become worse for actors like him. “There is only one Paresh Rawal or Johny Lever who are comic actors as well as stars. Gone are the days of Mehmood, when several comedians were stars.”

He came from Nagpur eight years ago. He is good with his imitations of actors, Shah Rukh Khan, Nana Patekar and even Lever. He, too, is yet to get his break.

But he hopes things will change. “Awards se hamara charcha hoga. That may lead on to more things,” he says.