The Comedy Festival? It's no laughing matter

In it he called the event "the festival that dare not speak its name" due to its lack of visibility. He proposed that the "big four" should meet with all other Fringe comedy promoters to discuss how they can collectively take comedy forward, as opposed to operating as "a cartel of big players". Sheppard called on the Fringe's chief executive, Kath Mainland, to broker such a meeting.

The letter has been met with little humour by the big four. Most have refused to comment.

Last March the quartet announced their intention to create the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. They argued that the move was needed to attract more money to Edinburgh, thereby safeguarding the financial future of comedy at the Fringe.

Since comedy, they said, was the most popular part of the festival, by pooling their resources the Edinburgh Comedy Festival could attract £1.8 million in sponsorship. However, after two years the event remains without a sponsor.

At the time many comedians, including the likes of Stuart Lee and Mark Thomas, condemned the idea. Other Fringe insiders, including Sheppard, worried the marketing would be divisive and potentially lead to the nascent festival breaking away from the Fringe itself.

In the leaked letter Sheppard begins: "I am writing to ask you to wind up the Edinburgh Comedy Festival and instead to work with other venues to secure the future for comedy on the Fringe. Although we all seem to be having a good year, there are precarious times ahead, and money will be in short supply. In times like these we will achieve more together than apart."

He continues by saying he could find no proof on the streets of the existence of Edinburgh Comedy Festival.

"Nowhere could I see a poster or banner heralding its existence," he said. "Nowhere on the myriad of display material advertising the various comedy shows was there any reference to being part of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. I actually asked a couple of your security staff where the Edinburgh Comedy Festival was and they didn't know.

"It's as if this has become the festival that dare not speak its name. This reality bears out the feelings and perceptions of the comedians playing your venues that they are doing a show on the Fringe rather than being part of a separate or distinct comedy festival."

The conditions that motivated the Edinburgh Comedy Festival's creation - a desire to attract more money and frustration at the Fringe Society's inability to exploit sponsorship possibilities - no longer holds sway, according to the letter.

Following last year's tickets debacle the society is undergoing a root and branch review of itself.

Sheppard said that the time was ripe for the Fringe as a whole to approach sponsors, not just the big four acting independently.

"Any company is bound to be more impressed by an approach by the official Fringe organisation offering the entirety of the comedy programme, than by a small number of (albeit large) venues who can offer less than half of the fringe comedy shows," he said.

A spokesman for the Fringe said that the issue was between Sheppard and the big four at present, but if Mainland was asked to chair a meeting "she would do whatever is in the best interest of the Fringe. But at the moment she has not actually been asked."

Several big comedy producers at the Fringe declined to comment on the issue, with one deeming it to be "too controversial".

The heads of the big four were also reluctant to be drawn on the future of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival and the leaked letter.

The Gilded Balloon said it was not focusing on issues surrounding the Edinburgh Comedy Festival at the moment.

"Thousands of Fringe-goers are keeping the Gilded Balloon busy until the wee hours of the morning and right now our main focus is on working hard for artists at our venue," said director Karen Koren.

William Burdett-Coutts, director of the Assembly Rooms, declined to comment on the letter or its proposals. The Underbelly also said they would not like to comment. The Pleasance failed to return calls.

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Twitter ye hot ...

how to separate the hits from the duds

Having changed how politicians and celebrities communicate with the world, Twitter, the world's fastest growing social media tool, is potentially revolutionising how the masses sift through the seething mass of shows that make up the Edinburgh festivals.

Two rival sites have been set up this year, FestBuzz and EdTwinge, to harvest the thousands of tweets, messages no longer than 140 characters, about festival shows. Both sites then use software to gauge whether the tweets are positive or negative and rate the shows accordingly.

In a year when professional reviewers at the festivals are down on previous years, experts and performers are calling 2009 year dot for Twitter taking over the duty of recommending shows.

Why rely on one person's opinion when you can have the "wisdom of the crowd", one asked.

"Professional reviewers are a protected species," said William Burdett-Coutts, director of the Assembly Rooms. "There is not a lot of them around this year. So any way of communicating over the web is crucial for getting word out there. It will be a growing force in coming years."

To mark the tool's new found power, on Friday night a Fringe party and comedy gig was organised and acts sourced solely through Twitter.

Launching the event, Kath Mainland, the Fringe chief executive said: "I don't know much about Twitter, but the Fringe is about community, and this is a great new community within it."

Jennie Lees from FestBuzz, who organised the comedy strand of the night, said communities like hers will help democratise how shows are rated.

"I almost feel sorry for reviewers," she said. "We are not trying to put them out of work. But I find I'm not the kind that agrees with arts reviewers. Maybe I like my stuff too simple. I just want something that is funny. And if 10 people on Twitter say so, it probably is funny."

FestBuzz ascribes a traditional star rating to each act. EdTwinge uses a system called karma.

From more than 400,000 tweets relating to the Fringe, FestBuzz ranked the comedian Mark Watson's play Hotel the top show in Edinburgh.

He said Twitter had definitely had an effect at the Fringe this year.

For example, he announced a secret gig on the site and it sold out.

He said: "For years people have complained about reviews being rather arbitrary because it was just one person's opinions.

"Now we have a way of actually countering that. It will be a long time before people attach the same kind of importance to on-line karma as to newspaper reviews. But I do think this year people are looking less to the mainstream reviewers. You can go on-line and get a wider consensus."

But whereas a five-star review in a national paper will definitely increase ticket sales, a high rating on FestBuzz or EdTwinge carries no such guarantee.

The Grind Show, a dark circus-based fairytale at C Venues, has been rated the top theatre act on EdTwinge all week but audience numbers have been low.

"We are very flattered to have a good score, but there is a gap between doing something on Twitter and actually paying money to see a show," said performer Shannon Erickson. "It's been nice to have a lot of buzz on Twitter, but in terms of translating to audiences, it hasn't really been a benefit to us."

On Friday night the world's first literary twitter festival, or twestival', was held as part of the West Port Book Festival, a series of free events based around a huddle of second-hand book stores near the Grassmarket.

In the month prior to the event the festival released a series of literary twitter challenges, such as Project Twutenberg (condensing classic novels into 140 characters), flash fiction (a story in a tweet), and Pass The Plot (a story written one tweet at a time between twitterers).

Authors such as AL Kennedy and India Knight have taken part, as have contributors from around the world.

"Twitter is a very literary medium," said Colin Fraser, the festival's social media manager. "Some of the entries are actually very good. The art of condensing is a creative process. Some people are better at it that others.

"Twitter is so transient and brief, you see it once, have a wry smile, and then it gets lost. But the point of our twestival is to celebrate and memorialise them at an event."