Our six finalists; Matt Rees, Lucy Beaumont, Matt Winning, Sunil Patel, Pete Otway and Tommy Rowson, will be performing seven minute sets tailored for the live broadcast, which you can watch by pressing the red button on your remote whilst tuned in to any BBC channel.

Voting will commence at the end of the first show once everyone has performed, at approximately 20:57 and close at approximately 22:05 when we return to the Radio 2 airwaves after an hour-long break. You'll be able to vote by SMS or online, right here on this very website. All you'll need to do is to login via your BBC ID. For full terms and conditions please click here. To vote by SMS, you'll need to text the keyword corresponding to your favourite finalist to 65577. These keywords will be announced in the show tomorrow.

The decision of who'll take the BBC New Comedy Award 2012, including £1,000 prize money and a commission with BBC Radio Comedy will be down to your votes, however we'll also be joined by guest panellists Stephen K Amos, John Thompson and Head of Radio Comedy Jane Bethoud, who'll be sharing their expert opninions on the performers.

Although we'll be off air between 9 and 10pm to collect your votes, we'll still be broadcasting on the Red Button service, where 2011 winner Angela Barnes will be grilling our finalists on the evening's performances. We'll also be bringing you a performance from the electrifying comedy cabaret act Frisky & Mannish, who are one of the must-see acts at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival each year.

If you'd like to meet our finalists (in their own words, no less) and watch clips of them performing at the heats and semi-finals, click here.

Keep up with all the action from The Grand Theatre by following us on Twitter, @BBCNewComAward. We'll be backstage during the show, keeping you updated with events and answering any questions you may have.

If you'd like to be at tomorrow's event, you can still join us by getting your tickets from The Grand Theatre box office.

It's only when you get a bit of time to stop and reflect that you realise how far we've come and how much we've managed to fit in over the past few months.

It all started with the 800 of you who applied to take part in the competition. Producer Lianne Coop listened to every single entry with painstaking detail, deciding who to put through to the next stage and which heat to feature each act in.

Then we hit the road. You can see what we got up to at all eight heats by watching our mini movies of each show.

The second semi-final, filmed and recorded for BBC Radio 2 at The Sage Gateshead, based just across the river Tyne from Newcastle, will be available here from Thursday evening, after the show is broadcast on air at 21:30.

On Monday 12 November, at 20:00, we'll be live on BBC Radio 2 and the Red Button as the six finalists take to the stage at the Blackpool Grand Theatre for the final show of the competition. It goes without saying that we'll be more nervous than they are!

Follow the action as it happens by following us on Twitter. As always, we'll be bringing you video highlights from the event later on in the week, although you can watch the action as it happens by pressing the red button on your TV remote whilst viewing any BBC channel to watch the final live from the comfort of your sofas!

The big difference with the final, aside from being broadcast live, is that the power is now out of the hands of the judges and now within yours! You'll be able to vote on this website after all of the acts have performed - or if you prefer going mobile, you can do it via SMS too.

We'll be bringing you interviews with all the finalists soon, but in the meantime get behind your favourite on Twitter. 

Happily, you were keen to have your say and we can now reveal which of the wildcards will be joining fellow runners-up Hayley Ellis and Sunil Patel - who the judges chose to put straight through to the semi-finals - in the next stage of the competition.

So, without further ado, our winning wildcards are Harriet Kemsley and Tommy Rowson!

The two popular comedians will each be placed in one of our two semi-finals, the first of which takes place in London next week. You can watch Harriet's London heat performance here and Tommy's Cardiff set here.

Here are the performers they'll be joining - click on the name of each comedian to see them performing at their winning heat:

London semi-final (Leicester Square Theatre)

Matthew Winning (Edinburgh)

Stuart Hossack (Birmingham)

Matt Rees (Cardiff)

Lucy Beaumont (Brighton)

Kwame Asante (London)

Newcastle semi-final (The Sage, Gateshead)

Pete Otway (Leeds)

Steph Peart (Liverpool)

Liam Pickford (Manchester)

Hayley Ellis (Manchester runner-up)

Sunil Patel (Birmingham runner-up)

To keep up with the latest news from the competition, including ticket release dates and results, follow us on Twitter.

Eight of our runners-up have been handpicked by judges Executive Producer Alison Vernon-Smith and Chortle's Steve Bennett to face a public vote. The two with the most votes will earn themselves a place in the semi-finals later this month.

Watch this video to hear 2011 winner - and successful wildcard - Angela Barnes talk about why the vote will be so important to our current line-up. It is, after all, another crack at the prize!

And how do you vote, exactly? Well, first we reccommend that you watch each of our wildcards performing by following this link. It'll take you to a page where you can find all of the videos for each of the stand-ups. The vote itself takes place on our homepage. You'll need a BBC ID to be able to vote, but don't let that put you off; once you have a login you can leave comments on pages across the BBC, take part in future polls and votes, and curate a space where you can keep all your favourite clips and programmes - this is especially useful if you've just downloaded the shiny new BBC iPlayer Radio app.

So what are you waiting for? Go vote and potentially change the life of a budding stand-up and then send us a tweet @BBCNewComAward to let us know you've got involved.

She's spent a whopping 67 hours listening to 800 entries, whittling down the swift competition into eight heats with ten performers each. If you've not been contacted then sadly this means you haven't progressed further in the competition, but please keep going - it's been a stellar year for submissions and the competition is geniunely tougher than ever.

Now, with the successful entrants notified, we can start bringing you the freshest new stand-up acts in the land. The fun begins on Saturday 11th August at the BBC Potterow site in Edinburgh, before we move onto Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Brighton and London. You can find out how and where to get your tickets on this dedicated page.

We'll be filming at all the heats so that anyone who can't join us on the night can still experience the competition from the comfort of their own homes (although we really do reccommend coming to a show - they're great fun and we're a friendly bunch!).

If you were put off from entering this year due to a lack of experience, or thought you might like to have a go in 2013, why not apply for one of our beginners' comedy workshops? We'll be giving you the chance to write and perform your own material, helped by experts and the odd comedian, and you'll also have the opportunity to perform in front of a camera and have your first filmed performance!

If you're planning you join us, let us know by sending us a tweet to @BBCNewComAward.

Despite the constant Tweets and Facebook updates, over 800 of you decided that, rather than take out a social media restraining order against us, you’d actually give this thing a go and send us recordings of you at your funniest. For that we simply can’t thank you enough.

So what happens next? Well over the next three weeks we’ll pretty much be bathing in your entries, (like rich people in the movies do with money whilst laughing manically). Oh, and between these unhinged episodes, we’ll also be doing a spot of listening too!

At the beginning of August, 80 entrants will be asked to attend one of eight regional heats. You can find out a bit more about where these are here. Very soon, we’ll be telling you how you, friends, family and distant acquaintances can get hold of tickets to all of these shows, but for now why not find out more about how you can be at the very first heat in Edinburgh?

Are you one of the nervous comedians holding a vigil by your phone? Producer Lianne has a message for you…

“Phew.

“Submissions have closed and we’ve received over 800 entries, which is an unbelievable response! It goes without saying that we really appreciate the time and effort you all took to apply, and we’re looking forward to locking ourselves away from the world for the next 4 weeks and listening to you all.

“If we received your completed entry – application form and audio – you would have had an email notification from the team to say so. Any questions, you can email us at newcomedyawards@bbc.co.uk, send us a tweet or message us on Facebook and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

“Just to put into context the task ahead of us: 800 entries at 5 minutes each works out at 4,000 minutes, or 67 (ish) hours, which means that if we were to tie ourselves to a desk in isolation and listen solidly – without any breaks for eating, toilet, life in general (but perhaps for sleeping) - we might get through the initial listening period in around 8 days. Unfortunately we will need to have a bit of time for normal activities, including things like breathing. (And we’ll probably need to give our ears a break every now and then.) So we reckon we have about 17 days of listening ahead of us. And that will still be pretty much full on every day. So do bear with us! And if you see us in the street give us a little cheer maybe. Or a hug. (Just don’t tell us a joke as I expect we will be joked up to the max).      

“I’ll be judging the entries with a team of Producers from the BBC Radio Comedy department. Each entry will have at least two listens and on undecided decisions, a third. We’ll be judging them using our judging criteria (originality of material; quality of writing (structure); likeability (audience engagement); performance and delivery).

“As our Online Producer Frankie says, we’ll be whittling the entries down to our top 80, and these entrants will be invited to go through to one of eight national heats – we’ll let you know from the week beginning 30th July. The heats take place from 11th August through to 2nd October. If you're successful you'll be invited to a heat closest to you wherever possible (though this may not be possible in all cases). 

“Unfortunately if you don't hear from us in that week, it means that you won’t have made it through to the heats this year, but thank you for entering and we wish you every luck in the future! And do keep in touch with us – we’d love to meet you at one of the heats and hear from you via on Facebook, Twitter and the blog, where we’ll be posting lots of content as we work our way around the UK in the next few months, before crowning our BBC New Comedy Award Winner 2012 in November.

“Right. These entries are not going to listen to themselves…”

Well, it’s been almost a year since I won the BBC New Comedy Award and blimey what a year it's been.

(L-R Lewis Carnie, Radio 2 Head of Programming, Sarah Millican, Patrick Kielty, Angela Barnes, Stephen K. Amos and Jane Bethoud,Head of BBC Radio Comedy)

This time last year I was working full time and just doing as many open spots as I could, like any budding comedian does. I’d been gigging for just over a year on the open mic circuit and, (it’s a familiar story), travelling round the country doing 5 or 10 minutes of material in line-ups of 20 other comedians, for no money - sometimes not even a drink - and spending a fortune on train fares.  As horrific as that may sound, anyone who has done it will tell you that they wouldn’t change it for the world; being an open spot on the new act circuit introduced me to some of my favourite people in the world. There’s an overwhelming sense of camaraderie, and 'we’re all in this togetherness',  which, believe me, you need when faced with a room that can hold 50 people, but contains just three that have been dragged off the street and 15+ other acts. This is your apprenticeship as a comedian. It is thankless, hard work, time consuming and exhausting, but you love it and it makes you the comedian you become.

Then, pretty last minute and on a bit of a whim, I entered the BBC New Comedy Award and things started to change. The competition was one that I’d been very aware of in the 90s. I distinctly remember watching it on TV the night Dan Antopolski won it in 1998, and thinking then that stand-up was something I really wanted to do. (It took me a good 11 years to pluck up the courage to do my first gig though!) Comedy competitions can feel a bit counterintuitive. One of the things I loved most about being on the open mic circuit was the support of the other comics and the genuine will that everyone involved in a gig had a good time. To then put myself in a position where I was competing against those very supportive friends I had made felt at odds with what we were doing. However, with the ever growing number of people turning to comedy, there is that all important need to get your CV looking good if you want to make it to the next level, and competitions are part and parcel of getting to the next rung of the ladder.  So, when a well-respected  comedy promoter saw me at a gig and told me they thought I should enter the BBC New Comedy Award, I thought “why not?”, dutifully sent off my application and promptly forgot all about it.

I then got the call that I had made it to the heats; mine would be at Komedia, in my home town of Brighton. When I walked into the room that night and looked at the comics I was up against - people I gigged with regularly and respected - my first thought was "well, you might as well go home now". But I didn’t, I did my 5 minutes and had a lovely time. The heats are judged by a professional comedian (in my case Simon Evans), and industry experts. It was a blessed relief from those other competitions where the audience votes for their favourite comic, meaning that they are merely an exercise in who can bring most friends to the gig. I was runner up in my heat to the rather brilliant Adam Hess. I was well happy with that. I was already starting to see things I could pop on the old CV.

All the runners up from the ten heats were put into an online vote for the two wildcard places on the semi-finals. When I got the call from Lianne (producer) to say that I had made it through the vote and won one of the places on the Edinburgh semi-final, I was beside myself: I had what I wanted from the process, the chance to put 'BBC New Comedy Award Semi-Finalist' on my CV.  I also started getting interest from agents at this stage – something that it hadn’t occurred to me would happen. I was made up. The semi in Edinburgh was a delight; a road-trip with some wonderful friends. The gig was fun, we had a ball doing it, and when the judges announced my name as one of the 3 going through to the finals, well, that was proper smashing.

As the final approached, the mix of nerves and excitement began to build. I had already achieved what I wanted, to be a finalist in this prestigious event. Job done. On the day of the final, I sat in my hotel room and tried to keep calm and remember to eat.

Then, the totally unexpected happened: I won. When Patrick said my name, I thought I had heard him wrong. No part of me thought I had what it takes to win, but there he was saying my name on Radio 2. Lordy.  And what a night we had to celebrate. Most of it is a blur. I just have my treasured lump of Perspex (resplendent with chip out of corner where I drunkenly dropped it at the after show celebration).

Soon after the final, more agents started showing an interest, and I was being asked to do some dream gigs. I had some really good people around me helping me to make decisions and to make sense of everything that was going on. I really must do a shout out here and say a thank you to the wonderful Sarah Millican, who was there on the night of the final. She took me by the hand, lead me back to the dressing room and sat me down. We had a cup of tea and she let me get my breath back. She went over with me what would happen next and ever since that moment has been a brilliant support and mentor to me. She rocks.

Between then and now some truly amazing things have happened that I could only have dreamt about: performing at Latitude Festival, playing Eddie Izzard’s Laughs in the Park on BBC2, appearing on Weekend Wogan’s Children in Need Special (alongside Gary Barlow – I will never stop banging on about that), appearing on Russell Kane’s Whistlestop Tour for Radio 2, writing on Radio 4’s the News Quiz, developing my own series with BBC Radio Comedy and appearing on Russell Howard’s Good News (which will be aired this Fri 15 June, BBC Three, 22.00). Not to mention, of course, the increase in offers of circuit gigs and getting to play bigger live venues alongside my heroes of comedy.

So there we are. It happened. On that night last June, my little comedy hobby ended... and my comedy career began.  Winning the Award put me on the first rung of a long, long ladder. Thanks to the BBC New Comedy Award, I am now a year into the career I have wanted for a long, long time.  I have a long way to go and a LOT of hard work ahead of me, but having the validation of the public saying “Yes, we think you’re funny”, gave me the strength I needed to face the challenge.  There will be highs and lows on this journey, but I’m ready for ‘em and am getting right stuck in. Winning the BBC New Comedy Award doesn’t mean you’ve made it. It means you’ve made the first step into the professional arena. It’s up to me now. And I intend to work my arse off to get there.

Fancy turning your comedy hobby into a career like Angela? Submit your BBC New Comedy Award 2012 entry here.

The BBC New Comedy 2012 launched today on Steve Wright's show on Radio 2 - we are now up and running and open for submissions. Visit bbc.co.uk/radio2/comedy/new-comedy-award-2012/

We relaunched the BBC New Comedy Award last year in 2011, and we had such an amazing experience - we were absolutely bowled over by the response from all of the new stand-up talent around the UK. The standard of entries was incredibly high, and the acts we worked with throughout the heats, semi-finals and final were an absolute joy. Many of the people that you saw appear throughout the process we continue to work with now.

Angela Barnes was our winner in 2011, and she's gone on to have a fantastic year -  securing Agent Representation with one of the UK's biggest talent agencies and performing on a number of programmes - "Laughs in the Park" (BBC2), "It's All About Me" (ITV1), "Children in Need 30th Anniversary Gala" (BBC Radio 2), "Russell Kane's Summer Seaside Tour" (BBC Radio 2), "Weekend Wogan" (BBC Radio 2), "BBC Comedy Presents...Edinburgh 2011" (BBC Radio 4), "Laughs In The Park" (BBC Radio 1) and has just recorded an upcoming appearance on "Russell Howard's Good News" (BBC3).

Since winning, Angela has been able to give up her job as a Social worker and is concentrating on her comedy career full time. She's written on "The News Quiz" for Radio 4 and "Newsjack" for Radio 4 Extra, and is currently developing her own radio series with BBC Radio Comedy.

Angela Barnes on the Comedy Carpet, Blackpool

Our other finalists are all also doing well - Joe Lycett co-hosted "Epic Win" on BBC1, he's appeared on "8 Out of 10 Cats" and "Celebrity Deal or No Deal" on C4, "The Dirty Digest" and "Show and Tell" on E4 and he'll be performing his debut Edinburgh show at the Edinburgh festival this year. Pat Cahill went on to win New Act of the Year 2012 (formerly Hackney Empire New Act of the Year) and Chortle Best Newcomer 2012, he has just recently recorded some content for BBC Comedy Online -  and he will also be taking a show to the Edinburgh festival this year.

I hope they, and all of the others that took part, are shining examples that taking part can reap positive rewards.

Our entry process is a little easier this year - we still want 5 minutes of audio of you performing your stand up routine, but this year you can upload this through the Radio 2 website where you'll need to fill out an online application form - then we'll do the listening and let you know if you make it through to the heats which will take place around the UK.

So - what are we looking for? YOU! If you think you could be the next big thing in stand-up talent. Maybe you've always wanted to try your hand at performing stand up but haven't quite taken the leap, or perhaps you have been performing for a couple of years. As long as you haven't been performing on the live circuit regularly for more than 3 years then we want to hear from you. You could be a one liner gag merchant, a story teller or more of a set up and punch line type of comic. You could be political, topical, a character stand up, you might be musical, whimsical or just totally tropical - whichever it is get to bbc.co.uk/radio2 and apply!

After a hiatus of six years, BBC Radio 2 brought the New Comedy Award back to life. Over 600 people applied, each sending in an application form accompanied by a 5-minute CD of stand-up. After each entry was listened to (at least twice), 100 were selected to appear in ten heats across the UK (in London, Brighton, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester and Belfast).

The heat winners made it through to the semi-final, accompanied by the two winners of our online vote. This left twelve comedians to fight it out for the six spots in tomorrow night's live final. Our first three finalists emerged from the Edinburgh semi-final:

It was a very good evening for Mark, Angela and Joe. Joining them in the final will be the three winners of last week's Bath semi-final:

So, on your radio tomorrow night: Mark Restuccia, Angela Barnes, Joe Lycett, Tez Ilyas, Pat Cahill and Chris Turner.

And one more thing: you decide who wins. This is what happens tomorrow night:

7pm - 8pm -- The six acts perform live on BBC Radio 2

8pm - 9pm -- The lines open for you to text or phone in with your favourite.

9pm - 9.30pm -- The live results show.

Tune in and play your part in crowning the next winner of the BBC New Comedy Award. Previous winners and finalists include: Alan Carr, Lee Mack, Rhod Gilbert and Sarah Millican. So… this one matters.

The ten heats' runners-up up have been competing in an online vote to determine the last two semi-finalists in the New Comedy Award 2011. Voting closed at 23.59 on Sunday night, and huge congratulations should go to all ten stand-ups who took part. They made it to the top 20 from over 600 who entered the Award this year.

However, only two make it through and they are Angela Barnes (runner-up, Brighton heat) and Tez Ilyas (runner-up, Newcastle heat). Well done! You'll hear both of them in the semi-finals on Radio 2 in the next fortnight. In the meantime, you can see clips of both by clicking their names, and you can see clips from all ten runners-up here.

In the meantime, this is a big week for the Award: 

-- The ten heats' winners have made it through to the semi-finals, but there are still two spots left. The ten heats' runners-up are fighting it out for those two places in an online vote. The vote went live yesterday, and you have until 23.59 on Sunday night to choose your favourite. You can see longer clips of each runner-up here before making your decision.

-- Highlights from the heats in Glasgow and Newcastle have been published, and we'll get highlights from Manchester and Belfast to you this week. 

-- Please do follow us Twitter and Facebook. We'll keep you up-do-date all the latest news, updates and highlights from the New Comedy Award 2011. 

Last week’s heats took place in Birmingham and Cardiff, and we’ve just published the highlights videos for both. Cardiff features a particularly clever turn from guest judge Rhod Gilbert: 

A couple of days earlier, we squeezed into the Cheeky Monkey in Birmingham: 

Congratulations to Chris Turner and Luke Graves; you’ll hear both in the semi-finals on BBC Radio 2 in a few weeks time. We’ll get highlights from Newcastle and Glasgow to you next week. In the meantime, you can delve into full details of heats contestants, winners, judges and MCs here. 

Congratulations to Adam Hess -- you'll be hearing him on Radio 2 along with the rest of the semi-finalists in just a few weeks time.

We've just had a great couple of heats in Birmingham (2 May) and Cardiff (4 May); you'll see the highlights from those next week…

We've been filming each of the heats, and we will be publishing little packages with some video highlights from each. Here's what happened at the London double-heat last Tuesday:

Congratulations to Ian Smith and Pat Cahill for winning their rounds. There were also two runners-up, about whom you'll hear a lot more about in a few weeks time. The ten heats' runners-up will be subject to a public vote, from which two will make it through to the semi-finals on Radio 2.

We're busy editing some highlights from Brighton (last Wednesday) and Birmingham (last night) and we'll get those published as soon as we can.

We’ve been very quiet for the last few weeks – sorry.  We’ve had our earphones permanently stuck to our heads! After listening to more than 50 hours of stand-up comedy twice (and in some cases, thrice) we’ve finally confirmed our heats line up. I have been absolutely blown away by the standard of entries – let me say now a huge thank you to everyone who applied, and really well done.