Wordia blog

Fresh from defining ‘five’ for us last week, Danny Robins is our guest blogger for today. He discusses the most important ‘five’ of all to an Edinburgh performer – those crucial stars at the top of a review.

And this year, he’s dishing them out as well as taking them.

Poacher Turned Gamekeeper

For a comedian, the Edinburgh Fringe is like one of those relationships you have where, even though you know you’re going to get hurt, you somehow find yourselves always ending up back in bed together. Year after year, we head up there with dreams of winning awards and landing big money TV deals; some do, a lot don’t, but still the buzz of this strange and unique experience – like a holiday camp for stand ups – draws us all back.

This year, I’m poacher turned gamekeeper. Instead of performing, I’ll be watching shows for Radio 4’s Saturday Review. It makes me feel slightly uncomfortable telling other comedians that I will be there as (whisper it) ‘ a critic’. It’s tantamount to confessing I slept with their wife or defecated on their collection of Bill Hicks DVDs.

Comedians and critics may be co-dependent but we will never get on. A few years ago I took part in a Comedians vs Critics football match. All the critics knew who we were but we had no idea who they were. In the second half when people started making connections – “their centre forward is the bloke from the Evening Post who gave me two stars” – the tackles went in a lot harder.

It always feels a bit weird going up to the festival if I’m not doing a show. Edinburgh is to comics what Ibiza is to DJs; anyone who is anyone is there and if you’re not gigging, you feel like you’re missing out. That’s where the Ibiza analogy ends; the weather is always awful.

I think one of the most interesting things this year will be seeing how the Fringe rides out the recession. With more and more people opting for ’staycations’, it may be that a trip to Scotland’s hilly rain-soaked capital offers an interesting and affordable alternative to the annual break in Tuscany or Provence. Who needs sun and red wine when you can have street performance and deep-fried pizzas?

This could be the year that the Fringe reclaims its ‘DIY’ status. When I first performed  there as a student in 1997, in a tiny sweaty attic room so hot that men in the front row actually took off their shirts and sat there bare-chested, we were completely unheard of but people came and watched. We were probably quite awful, but for only a few quid a ticket, they weren’t afraid to take a risk.

In recent years though, with ticket prices hitting £15, audiences tend to be more wary about who they give their money to, relying on bigger name comics who they’ve seen on the telly and often missing out on some of the rougher diamonds and undiscovered gems who can’t afford to splash out on billboards and adverts on buses. Last summer however, the Free Fringe, organised by legendary Edinburgh Festival veteran Peter Buckley Hill, started to attract both punters and performers and 2009 sees the debut of the ‘Five Pound Fringe’ where every show at the venues involved will cost – you guessed it – a fiver.

There are some decent acts doing these cheap shows, perhaps because comedians themselves are starting to feel the pinch. Putting on a show at one of the big established venues can cost as much as a deposit on a small house once you’ve paid for publicity costs, venue hire, accommodation and of course beer money, and some Edinburgh stalwarts are now opting to do shorter runs at smaller venues and pass on the savings to their audience. This can only be a good thing. This summer, go and see one or two big names at fifteen quid a pop and then take in 6 other shows for the same cost. Of course I get in free anyway – I’m a reviewer; I just need to get over the self loathing first.