Brisbane or Bris-bin?

By Evie Drinnan

Brisbane Comedy Festival’s annual fundraising event, The Debate, attracted a large audience in the Powerhouse’s Pleasuredome on Friday 10 May to raise funds for the New Farm Neighbourhood Centre.

This year’s event saw the two teams of comedians battling to argue whether Brisbane is “the peak of perfection or the pit of disappointment”.

The affirmative team consisted of Bianca Cordez, Sophie Bannister and Simon Taylor, while the negative team consisted of Chris Martin, Chiara Stegert, and Craig Quartermaine.

Natalie Bochenski hosted the debate and delivered an impressive plethora of Brisbane suburb-based puns throughout the night.

Amongst plenty of dry humour, sledging and self (Brisbane)-deprecating humour, some crowd highlights were affirmative team captain Sophie Bannister’s jazz song and dance featuring an acrostic poem about Brisbane’s qualities and negative team captain Craig Quartermaine’s stories.

The crowd cheered to vote the affirmative team as the winner, declaring that Brisbane is indeed the peak of perfection.