Comedy takes over the Edinburgh Festival.Comedians outnumber performing arts at the Fringe. And the old standard: Is comedy destroying the world's biggest arts festival?

The headlines bear closer examination. Tomorrow night, the If.commedie awards are announced. Still widely known as the Perriers (if.com finance have been sponsoring the award since 2005, but the new name still struggles to lodge itself in the conscience after the two decades of sponsorship by the mineral water company), the award is the most important in the comedy world and provides a barometer of our changing tastes in humour.

Each year a panel of judges sit through as many of the increasing number of comedy shows at the Fringe they can and draw up a shortlist. Being named on the shortlist is a major achievement.

The strong favourite to be named winner tomorrow night is Welshman Rhod Gilbert, whose whimsical contemplations on modern life have been enjoyed by increasingly large audiences in Yorkshire on tours over the past three years. If Gilbert wins, he will take away the £8,000 cheque but he will also find himself the figurehead for what many decry as everything that's been wrong with the Fringe over the past few years.

It started about four years ago. "There's too much comedy at the Fringe" was the cry from many corners. Last year, the figures were trotted out to demonstrate the point: in 2005, there were 435 comedy shows at the Fringe; in 2006, 566; and last year, 630. This year, the rage appears to have been replaced by a sense of resignation.

The statistics tell the story: this is the first year that comedy outweighs "straight" theatre – 32 per cent of the total of 2,088 acts are stand-up comedy, versus 29 per cent theatre. The message has to be this: don't panic.

When the Perrier was inaugurated in 1981, it was won by a group of students representing Cambridge Footlights. The cast list included Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery and Emma Thompson. Frank Skinner, Steve Coogan, Lee Evans, The League of Gentlemen and Dylan Moran are other former winners of the Perrier.

The Fringe is a very expensive place for a performer to be, with acts losing an average of £7,349.

The best way to cut costs is to limit both the number in your cast and the amount of set you need to carry around. Stand-up comedians (unless they're a double act) have a cast of one and a prop list that goes as far as a microphone (and possibly an alcoholic beverage to loosen the larynx).

But the most important thing to remember for those who think comedy are the weeds in the theatre flowerbed of the Fringe is this: stand-up comedy is theatre. It's probably the purest theatre there is. Theatre at its heart is about telling stories – and stand-up comedians at their best, are storytellers – and the Fringe can always accommodate them.