PRESS

Sugar Sammy wins Olivier de l'annee for the second straight year

by Brendan Kelly
2014-05-12

Well the #VotezBrun campaign worked. Sugar Sammy – a man who's never more than a finger click away from his Twitter account – was working his social-media networks with even more enthusiasm than usual Sunday, inciting his fans to vote for him in the category of Olivier de l'annee at the Gala Les Olivier. He used the hashtag: #VotezBrun.

And all the tweeting paid off. Sugar Sammy won the Olivier de l'annee for the second consecutive year at the awards ceremony for Quebec comics.This is the most prestigious award at the Gala Les Olivier. It's the final trophy handed out and is basically the award for comic of the year.

It was a huge deal when Sammy won it last year because he still remains a bit of an outsider in the comfy world of Quebecois stand-up comedy. But maybe that's the way Sugar Sammy likes it. You kind of feel like he is only too happy to stand on the other side of the street and launch his barbed one-liners at whatever target that strikes his fancy, from old-school nationalists to journalists critical of him.

“C'est un honneur de gagner dans la seule vraie categorie des Olivier,” Sammy quipped on stage.

This big win comes on the heels of Billboard magazine, the bible of the concert business, declaring him the top-grossing domestic touring artist in Canada over the past 12 months, out selling all other homegrown comics and pop stars. The Montreal comic has sold 235,000 tickets since the bilingual You're Gonna Rire show premiered in February, 2012 at the Olympia Theatre. Since then, he's also lanched an all-French version of the same show En Francais, SVP!

There was some controversy in the lead up to the Gala Les Olivier because Sammy was not nominated for the award for most popular show of the year. That's due to the fact that the Olivier organizers refused to combine the sales figures for the two shows even though the content of the two shows is almost exactly the same. The only real difference is the language.

And the Sugar Sammy juggernaut just keeps on chugging along. 25,000 more tickets for the two shows went on sale earlier this month and he's set to play his 100th sold-out show at the Olympia June 14. There are You're Gonna Rire shows at the theatre May 22 and 24, and June 12, 13, 14, 20 and 21. The En Francais, SVP! is back at the Olympia May 30 and June 7. There are also dates for both shows booked at the Olympia in the fall.

And his hit TV show Ces gars-la returns for a second season on V next winter.

So the Sugar Sammy revolution ain't over yet.