They were founded in 2014 and give out awards in eleven categories every year.
The Midlands Comedy Awards were created by Birmingham-based comedian Jay Shareef in 2014, "to recognise the huge number of hard working and talented people in [the] regional comedy community".
This means that comedians resident in The Midlands are eligible even if they are originally from elsewhere.
The awards include the following counties in their definition of the Midlands region: Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands and Worcestershire.
[4][5] Before Brexit, the awards accepted the definition of East Midlands and West Midlands as the areas represented in the European Parliament by those constituencies.