TORONTO - Stuart McLean, of CBC radio's Vinyl Cafe, was awarded the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour on Thursday, for the second time in two years.

The author and broadcaster is also the two-time winner of a $6,000 cash prize from the Laurentian Bank of Canada. McLean was also awarded both prizes in 1999. Vinyl Cafe Unplugged (Penguin) was chosen from a short list of five titles in Orillia, Ont., scene of Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.

The others nominated were Linwood Barclay for Last Resort: A Memoir (M&S); Lynn Coady for Play the Monster Blind (Doubleday); Bob Collins for Out Standing in their Field: The Rural Adventures of Hap & Edna (Stone Pillow Press) and Allan Stratton for The Phoenix Lottery (Riverbank Press).

McLean, the author of several books and a professor of broadcast journalism at Ryerson University, will be the guest of honour at the Humour Award Weekend in Orillia on June 9.