The honour is primarily in recognition of her work as a comedian and writer.

Fey, who shot to fame in 2008 when she impersonated former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, will receive the award on 13 November on a night of humour that features other comedy stars.

The 40-year-old actress is only the third woman to become the recipient of the award in 13 years, after Whoopi Goldberg and Lily Tomlin.

Fey has already won six Emmy awards and two Golden Globes for her television comedy series ’30 Rock’, which she produces, writes and also stars in.

Before that, she had spent a total of nine seasons on the television satirical sketch programme ‘Saturday Night Live’. She later branched into films with ‘Date Night’, ‘Baby Mama’, and ‘Mean Girls’.

Founded in 1998, the Mark Twain Prize is an annual award that recognises individuals who have had an influence on society worthy of comparison to Mark Twain, the 19th century satirist and writer of renowned novels ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’.

Among previous recipients of the award include playwright Neil Simon, stand-up comic George Carlin, and actors Steve Martin and Bill Cosby, according to the Kennedy Centre.

“30 Rock” earned a Best Actor and Best Actress award for stars Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey respectively – Fey made a sly reference to NBC’s late night troubles by quipping “I just want to say to NBC – we are very happy with everything” – while “Basterds” took home both the award for Best Ensemble in a Film and Best Supporting Actor for Christoph Waltz.

In other categories, Julianna Margulies broke records by winning her seventh award for Best Actress in a Drama Series, this time for “The Good Wife”, while Michael C Hall won Best Actor in a Drama Series for his role as everyone’s favourite serial killer, “Dexter”. The awards for Best Drama Series and Best Comedy Series went to period drama “Mad Men” and freshman musical show “Glee” respectively. The Best Actor and Actress in film awards went to Jeff Bridges (for “The Crazy Heart”) and Sandra Bullock (for “The Blind Side”.) Bullock also made it to the stage to prevent the Lifetime Achievement Award to her “The Proposal” co-star, eighty eight year old Betty White, who was delighted with the honour and said she had no plans to leave acting. “Why should I retire from something I love doing?” she said to TV Guide. “You can’t get rid of me that way! It’s been 61 years. It doesn’t seem that long… How lucky can one person be?”

The comedy series received its much hyped premiere on German television on Sunday, via digital network ZDFNeo, to an audience of less than five thousand people. The numbers were so bad, in fact, that the “official” rating for the series’ debut was 0.0 million viewers. The show struggles to get attract viewers even in the US despite it being a major critical darling and awards favourite (an eight million rating for the new season premiere has since dwindled to an average of about six million), but a 0.0 rating seems almost cruel.

Promotion cannot be blamed, either, with the ZDFNeo channel, which is run by Germany’s public broadcaster ZDF, having given the show much hype and positive spin, making it the centerpiece of a much vaunted network revamp – costing several million – designed to give more room for cutting edge programming aimed at a younger demographic. It appears that neither the older nor the younger demographic were interested, however, with the rating below even the worst predictions of ZDFNeo’s network forecasters. Other shows were not exactly making waves in the ratings either, however, and so far the network’s revamp does not appear to be going as planned, but the failure of “30 Rock” is certainly the most embarrassing result… and for more people than just ZDFNeo.

In fact, the only major surprise was Tina Fey losing out to Toni Collete in the Best Actress in a Comedy Series category. Well, that and the ratings, which actually managed to pull the Awards out of a slump, improving on its performance in the last couple of years even despite being up against some tough competition, including a major football game.

Not that Tina Fey walked around empty-handed, winning an award for her role as producer of “30 Rock” in addition to the award she won last week for Guest Actress in a Comedy Program for her impersonation of Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live”. “Thank you for keeping us on the air, even though we’re so much more expensive than a talk show,” Fey quipped in a pointed reference to Jay Leno’s new daily chat show.

Host Neil Patrick Harris must take some of the credit for the success of the awards ceremony, with his emceeing being celebrated by just about everyone (with his attitude to Jon Cryer following his losing out on the Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series to the “Two and a Half Men” star being one of the comedic highlights of the evening, not to mention his crack at Kanye West. “Let’s hope Kanye likes “30 Rock”, Harris joked.)