Many Edinburgh Fringe comedians, who already make a loss at the festival, are angry about being squeezed by the big names, writes Brian Boyd
Ten years ago at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe I found myself at a midnight show at the city's Assembly Rooms venue - a show I went to more to keep out of the bar for an hour or so more than anything else. There were about four of five us scattered desultorily around the 250-seater venue. A very pudgy camp comic eventually trundled on and put together a not-too-bad, but not-really-remarkable one-hour performance. A large part of the show was given over to the comic rifling through personal ads in a local magazine and telephoning anyone who had dared to post their phone number.
A year or so later, I turned on Channel 4 and saw the now slimmed-down camp comic presenting his own show, So Graham Norton(and he was still using the telephone to have salacious conversations).
Something very similar happened another year: there was a small show by three guys who - without make-up or costume changes - presented a bewildering array of scary characters. "Brilliant show, they'll go far," read my review. And The League Of Gentlemendid go very far, via Royston Vasey.
More up-to-date, a few years ago it was a posh English bloke called Jimmy Carr playing to tiny Edinburgh rooms.
Previously, people would have had the same stories about Frank Skinner, Jack Dee, Sean Hughes, Eddie Izzard and indeed, right back to 1981, when the first ever winners of the Perrier Award included Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.
Almost every comedy-based show on UK television was commissioned at the Edinburgh Fringe. TV executives descend on the city for the month of August and sit through innumerable rubbishy shows to find (and quickly sign up) fresh comic talent.
This is why hundreds of comedy acts pay the estimated £10,000 (€14,700) it costs to put on a show at the Fringe. Some 90 per cent will be battered and bruised by the experience and will never be heard of again. About 8 per cent will end up doing the rounds of the panel shows and will come back with bigger and better shows. The remaining 2 per cent become tomorrow's stars.
The saturation press coverage of Edinburgh seldom reports on the overdrawn masses - the ones who, at the end of every August, disappointedly slink back to doing gigs in rooms over pubs. A lot of them return, though, with ever bigger overdrafts, the following year.
And they return with the same stars in their eyes: maybe a five-star review, maybe the head of BBC comedy will be in the front row choking on laughter and waving a chequebook.
This year, though, there is revolutionary ferment in the air. Although resentment over the huge financial cost of Edinburgh has been brewing for years, one person this August has been responsible for considerably sharpening the debate: Ricky Gervais.
Listed in the Fringe programme is Gervais's massive show at Edinburgh Castle tomorrow night. He will play to 8,000 people and has charged £37.50 (€55) per ticket. First to criticise Gervais's show of muscle in Edinburgh was Colin Fox, chairman of the Edinburgh People's Festival (a smaller and cheaper local rival to the Fringe). In a letter to the Edinburgh Evening News, he wrote: "When tickets for a stand-up comedian cost £37.50 it illustrates how far today's festival has gone in forgetting its roots. Gone are the days when anyone could go from one show to another and still have change left to meet up for a pint or two with his mates." To put the Gervais ticket price in perspective, you can get a ticket to see last year's if.comedy (formerly the Perrier) winner Phil Nichol at this year's Fringe for £12.50 (€18).
IT IS THEother Fringe comedians who are grumbling the most - and not just about Gervais but also Jimmy Carr's decision to play in the city's cavernous (and very "un-Fringe") International Conference Centre instead of one of the recognised Fringe venues. To be fair to both Gervais and Carr, both play massive venues because of ticket demand, but, the other comics ask, do they really need to be doing these gigs during August, when they will be taking away thousands of comedy fans from Fringe shows?
"The Fringe is killing comedy" is this year's catchphrase, and there is a growing belief that, with a record 2,050 Fringe shows (about 650 are comedy shows) this year, what began as an alternative afterthought way back in 1947 is now just a PR-driven exercise that has killed off the possibility of any new talent actually breaking through without a small army of agents, management and press people to raise the act's profile in such a crowded and competitive arena.
Dubliner Andrew Maxwell, who was this week nominated for the if.comedy award (the winner will be announced tonight) is quoted in the Scotsman'sfestival blog: "The Fringe is brilliant," he says with real feeling. "It's big, but it's intimate. The comedians who come here every year - we're like a little fishing village: we fish together, we work together, we help each other out. So how do you think we feel when a giant super-trawler turns up?
" The Officeis a f***ing brilliant show, but Ricky Gervais could roll into town any weekend of the year. I see no malice in his actions, but I think he's been ill-advised."
Maxwell's point, writes the Scotsman, is that although Gervais is only in town for one night, he will take revenue away from comedians at the bottom of the food chain, many of whom are first-timers who already stand to make a huge loss on the month.
TOMMY SHEPPARD, WHOruns the city's all-year-round comedy venue, The Stand, wonders: "In what sense could anyone plausibly call Ricky Gervais playing Edinburgh Castle a Fringe activity? There are some players within the Fringe who are making it extremely difficult for the next generation of comedy talent to be discovered. Ironically, a lot of these are people who, a generation ago, were in the same position themselves."
For one of last year's if.comedy contenders, David O'Doherty, the problem with the Fringe is that "if you're not doing Edinburgh, people think you've retired from comedy, but if you do Edinburgh and lose a packet and get nowhere, what use is that?".
O'Doherty, who has been on the Fringe for eight years now, would be typical of the comedian who makes a huge loss at the festival in the early years, then as he establishes an audience he might break even one year (considered a major victory in Edinburgh). Now, as something of a Fringe veteran, he probably turns a profit, however modest.
"There is an imperative to do it," he says. "It's where you pick up other work, and where you might get the TV deal. That's why so many comics take such a financial hit on it."
Such is the level of disquiet, however, that this year in London (where the majority of Fringe comics are based) there is the first Camden Fringe Festival, which was set up by disillusioned Fringe acts who just didn't fancy losing another £10,000 at the festival. One of the shows at the Camden Fringe Festival, by comic Chris Neill, is archly titled Not Wanting to Lose a Wad in Edinburgh.
Whether any of this year's dissent will have any long-term effect on the ever-growing, ever-more-expensive Fringe remains to be seen.
Tonight at midnight in Edinburgh, the Intelligent Finance Comedy Award will be handed out. It is a safe bet that the winner, and the four other nominees and 600-odd other comics who didn't make the cut, all secretly wish that one day they too can play Edinburgh Castle. At £37.50 a ticket. And sell it out as quickly as Ricky Gervais did.