Nicola Couglan who plays Clare in Derry Girls says automated voting is being used in Radio Times comedy award
Derry Girls is neck-and-neck with dark comedy Inside No. 9 in the vote for Radio Ties Comedy Champion 2018, with less than a percentage points separating them as of Tuesday afternoon.
The two comedies are facing off after beating out competition from Peter Kay’s Car Share, Mrs Brown’s Boys, Catastrophe and The Young Offenders.
With less than five hours to go until the voting closes actor Nichola Coughlan, who plays Clare Devlin on the programme, tweeted at Radio Times highlighting the possible use of automated software to vote against Derry Girls.
“Is there some way to rectify this as is really unfair to the people who’ve spent their time voting for us fairly,” she wrote.
Ms Coughlan included screengrabs of tweets discussing the use of TinyTask automated voting software to support Inside No. 9.
Responding to the tweet, the official Radio Times account issued an assurance the poll was being conducted fairly.
“The poll has a failsafe that catches that kind of thing so please don’t fret. We make everything as fair as possible for fans on both sides,” the tweet read.
The public can vote for their favourite comedy on the Radio Times website.
