The other Saturday I came out of an evening show at the Assembly Rooms on the Mound. It was not long after eight in the evening, the sky was overcast but it was a clear enough night and right in front of me, framed between the buildings of Edinburgh’s New Town, I could see a slice of Fife glowing greenly, so close I could almost touch it.
For a moment I imagined being on that side of the Firth of Forth - somewhere near Burntisland, I guess - away from the crowds and the chaos that is Edinburgh in August. A moment’s longing for something else.
And then I turned and headed off to catch my next show.
For most people in Edinburgh there will come a point in August when it all becomes a bit much. A point when the constant crowds and noise and street jugglers get to you. A point when you get tired of risking your life jumping into the bus lane while navigating a particularly slow-moving clot of people on North Bridge. A point when just getting from A to B, or from Assembly Roxy to Monkey Barrel, feels like a military operation. A point when Fife might well seem the best option.
But here’s a thought experiment. Try to imagine Edinburgh without the Fringe, indeed, without any of the festivals. What would the city be? What would be lost?
Many years ago - probably more like decades now - I remember interviewing the Irish comedian Dylan Moran. He lived in Edinburgh at the time (I don’t know if he still does). When I asked him why, he told me that he just liked a city that went to bed at night. That’s Edinburgh without the Fringe, isn’t it? An early-to-bed place.
In August, though, Edinburgh suddenly forgets it even owns pyjamas. For a month both Edinburgh’s Old Town and New Town are late to bed - if they go to bed at all.
The Fringe is now so familiar a thing in Scottish cultural life that there’s a danger we forget how unfamiliar it actually is. Thousands upon thousands of shows, tens of thousands of visitors, millions of tickets sold. If that happened in any other country you’d want to go and experience it. But it’s happening here on our doorstep.
As a result, what can be a douce, sedate city most of the year (Hogmanay apart) feels electric for a few weeks in the summer, so much so that you feel that if you could just plug all that energy into the national grid you’d probably power the city for the rest of the year.
In a way that’s exactly what happens. The Fringe, it is estimated, is worth somewhere in the region of £500 million to the city annually. This year that figure will be presumably boosted by the new tourist levy. Never mind the culture, this is, economically, a big deal.
Does any of this need said, you might ask? I think so. The arts seem to have to justify their existence constantly. But when people ask - and they do - “Does the Fringe mean anything anymore?” I’m always tempted to take them to the Pleasance Courtyard or Bristo Square or onto the Meadows, or even up to the Royal Mile during August and say, “Just look around you. See all these people? They wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
The fact is, for a few weeks in August, Edinburgh feels like it’s the centre of the world. A magnet for dancers, actors, comedians and, yes, street jugglers, from five continents, a prime reason for tourists to come to Scotland. And all those of us who live here have to do is jump on a train or a tram or a bus and we get to experience it.
I’ve been “there” a lot this August, reviewing shows, eating at the Mosque Kitchen, drinking too much coffee between shows.
I’ve sat in audiences beside producers, reviewers, and other acts. I’ve met someone called Constantine (in another show someone in the audience announced they were also called Constantine; I don’t think it was the same man). I’ve seen good shows (a high percentage actually), a few really great shows, and a couple of absolute howlers. And I’ve seen artists from all over the world take risks and test themselves. I’ve seen a lot of female comedians absolutely smash their shows.
I’ve also heard a lot of jokes about Donald Trump, JK Rowling and, umm, sex (sex is big at the Fringe this year).
I’ve overheard people raving about shows they’ve seen, bemoaning others that didn’t work and, more than once, bemoaning the cost of everything from accommodation to the food stalls on Charles Street.
And despite being around and about nearly every day, cramming in as much as I can, I’ve barely scratched the surface. Edinburgh in August is an endless smorgasbord of possibilities, good, bad and indifferent. You can pick your way through it discerningly or you can greedily devour what’s put in front of you.
That’s if you bother eating at all. It’s hardly news that for parts of Edinburgh the Fringe means very little. When he was growing up in Gilmerton, the comedian Connor Burns admits he felt pretty disconnected from the festivals.
“You’d have maybe a day where you went up and saw some stuff, wandered about, watched the street performers, sat in a beer garden, had a couple of pints and that was it,” he recalls.
“It still does feel inherently middle class in some ways,” he adds. “I think that’s just a culture thing. We need to stop making it feel that way.
“I think, actually, there is genuinely something for everybody at the Fringe, it doesn’t matter what you’re into, you’ll find something you’ll enjoy.”
And anyway, he adds, “There needs to be a place for the Footlights people to come and also make mistakes.”
Burns in many ways could be a poster boy for the Fringe as an entry vehicle for working-class talent. He did his first show at the Fringe in 2019 under a gazebo in the beer garden of Bar 50 in the Cowgate.
“It was horrific. There was no soundproofing. Every time it rained the place leaked. But it was the best month ever.
“I had 50 seats in my wee tent and I was literally just flyering for about an hour and a half before the show. I had no fanbase. I was literally just playing to people who liked the sound of whatever I said to them when I was flyering. It was very up and down. Some nights it was rammed and we were turning people away and there were probably four or five nights over that first month where I ended up not doing the show because there was no one there. You’ve just got to check your ego.
“But by the end of it I was like, ‘Oh, this is what being a comedian feels like.’ I felt like I’d got three times as good in that first month because it’s just so condensed.
“You end the month with something so bulletproof. Just the process of the Fringe is so valuable to comedians.”
Fast forward seven years and at this Fringe Burns has played three sold-out dates at the Edinburgh Playhouse this month. Without the Fringe, he says, that would have been impossible.
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For artists the Fringe is both a bootcamp and a shop window. And as Burns points out, there’s no vetting process. Anyone can put on a show. If they can afford to.
Ah yes. As the Fringe’s own website points out, “it is likely that your expenses will be greater than your revenue.” That may be something of an understatement.
“I sleep in my own bed for a month and I know the venue is going to be busy,” Burns says, “but if I was paying three or four grand for student accommodation I’m sure that would probably sour my opinion of it. But I think there’s so much value in the Fringe. It’s really a special thing.”
The only reason the Australian comedian Kate Dehnert has been able to come here from the other side of the world is because she was backed by her management and the Melbourne comedy venue Comedy Republic.
“I was never going to Edinburgh because there’s no way I could financially do this in the position I’m in,” Dehnert admits. “It’s a real golden ticket.”
A few months ago Dehnert was on the verge of giving up on comedy altogether. “In my head I was like, ‘I’m going to have to quit because this is untenable,’ basically.”
She had already spent years in London trying to make it in comedy. But when her long-term relationship broke up she was forced to return to Australia. That break-up is at the heart of her astonishing show Echo at the Pleasance. It’s stand-up as exorcism. After it went over so big at the Melbourne Comedy Festival she was encouraged to bring it to Edinburgh. It’s her first solo show in 10 years.
“All of this has come in the last four months, which is absolutely ridiculous and wonderful,” she admits.
Coming to the Fringe, she says, has meant she can maybe now begin to see a future in comedy again.
“What does it mean to me? There’s several factors going on. Emotionally this is huge to me. The fact that I’ve made a show that has allowed me to see my friends again, who I didn’t know when I would ever see again, that’s been a real tearjerker.
“From a pure life level this show is an opportunity to close a lot of circles.
“Career-wise it puts you on the map … if people come to it. If people like it, it means you can start building something from there. It means you can move up to the next little campsite.
“Doing something is better than doing nothing, right? And there is so much something to be done here.”
She pauses, then adds, “It means the f****** world to me to be entirely honest. It’s huge. It’s a monumental event in my life, I would say.”
That sounds like a ringing endorsement but there are those who would tell you that the Fringe isn’t what it was. It’s got too big. It’s too this, it’s too that. It’s not as important. Who gets discovered in Edinburgh anymore anyway, they ask?
“I think it’s changed a lot since the Nineties,” Connor Burns accepts. “I think it was viewed as an industry trade show where you’d all arrive in town and go, ‘Here are my wares.’ The people who ran television would go, ‘Yeah, we can put you on that, we can put you on that.’ “And obviously that’s very different now, because people are going to see the people that they follow online for the most part.”
The entertainment industry as a whole is shrinking, Dehnert agrees. But, she adds, “I still see the UK as a place of enormous opportunity.” And Edinburgh is where those opportunities can be seized.
But maybe TV careers shouldn’t be the yardstick by which to measure the Fringe’s success. For Connor Burns it can be as much about the social and creative rewards as about furthering your career.
“Everyone’s in my city for a month and we actually get to be sociable and enjoy this really cool job.
“I write like crazy this month because you just find yourself in creative mode. The city’s totally alive. It’s buzzing. You’re constantly chatting to people who are also stand-ups or performers and I often find, just creatively, it’s a really fruitful month for me. The show just naturally changes every night because every day you wake up and think, ‘Oh, what if I said that? What if I changed that to that?’ “You don’t get that if you’re travelling. You fall into that trap of all you can talk about are hotel rooms and planes.”
Let’s go back to that thought experiment I suggested earlier. The thing is we do already know what Edinburgh - what all Scotland - is like for that matter, without the Fringe. It already happened during Covid, when the world shut down for the best part of two years.
“I don’t even think we understand the social impact yet of what Covid really did,” suggests Burns. “I think we will be unwrapping that for years. But to go from where we were, and how hopeless that felt, to just being able to wander around … And yeah it’s mental and driving a car in the city is hell, but how nice is it to see everybody having a laugh and a drink and socialising again?
“We’ve all moved on so quickly from the fact that we were government-mandated in our house for a couple of years. I’ll take this. I’ll take it being a slight pain in the arse to get a bus if it means we can have some kind of human experience.”
The Fringe is an experience. It’s messy and noisy and busy and too much all of the time. But what would we do without it?
As Kate Dehnert says, there is so much something to be done here. For another few days at least.
Connor Burns: Flow Just the Atomic Room at Just the Tonic Nucleus until August 30
Read my review: Connor Burns: Flow, Edinburgh Playhouse, four stars
Kate Dehnert: Echo Baby Grand at Pleasance Courtyard, until August 30
Read my review: Kate Dehnert: Echo, Pleasance Courtyard Baby Grand, four stars
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