My advice to people going to the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time to see shows:
Don’t assume that, because a show is tucked away at 0930 or midday or 1600 that it is any less good than one at 2000 or 2300… and see lots of shows by people you have never heard of – take a punt. If you have already heard of them, you can probably see them in London (other cities are available), so ignore them in Edinburgh…
…and, in the Old Town, beware of swooping seagulls after dark…
Filed under Travel
Adam juggling spaghetti in Edinburgh, 2011
So I had a chat last month (I am only just catching up) with Adam Wilder (previously aka Adam Oliver, previously Adam Taffler).
We first met at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2011 when he was street-performing in the Grassmarket and I asked him if he could juggle spaghetti…
JOHN: So we haven’t seen each other for ages. When last heard of, you were organising sex parties in tall tower blocks in 2017.
ADAM: (LAUGHS) No. Last time we spoke, I was running the Togetherness Festival of Human Connection, which did involve some sexuality, John, because that is a part of human connection – even for a Scottish Presbyterian like you…
JOHN: It’s the work of The Devil.
ADAM: It wasn’t a sex party. It was a Human Connection Festival…and that was really fun and, actually, I’ve been following that thread for the last three years.
The World Spooning Record at the Wilderness Festival, 2019
Last year, since I saw you, we broke a world record at the Wilderness Festival. We had 1,547 people spooning, to promote healthy…
JOHN: …sex.
ADAM: No. (LAUGHS) It was about non-sexual touch, actually. It’s so good for you. When we met today, I tried to hug you and you gave me a Scottish hug.
JOHN: What is a Scottish hug?
ADAM: It’s not really a hug. It’s like: I feel a bit disgusted, but I feel like I should do this.
JOHN: It was hard for me to say No.
ADAM: This is what I’m into now. I’m teaching a course called Embodied Sovereignty. It’s about knowing What do I want? What do I not want? I want to say No. Why is it hard to say No?
JOHN: Why is it hard to say No?
ADAM: Because we don’t want to upset people and have a bad reaction. We have two fundamental needs – The need for authenticity and the need for attachment.
So, spooning… We had these 1,547 people spooning and why is that important, John?
JOHN: Why?
ADAM: It’s so important, John, because it makes us feel relaxed. I feel sorry for people who have had no-one to hug during this COVID thing. It’s enough to send you mental. There is this thing now called Nordic Cuddling: you can hire someone to come round and cuddle you.
JOHN: Why Nordic?
ADAM: (LAUGHS) It makes you think of clean, blond people.
JOHN: I rather like dirty brunette people.
ADAM: I have a friend who was a cage fighter and he is really into all this intimacy work. He told me: “Adam, you know, I now realise why I was doing all the cage fighting was because I really wanted to hug and squeeze people, but I never knew how to ask for it.”
JOHN: I’ve always thought rugby players are sexually highly suspicious.
ADAM: I used to play rugby. I loved it. I loved getting the ball and people trying to take you down. It was somewhere you could actually express the anger and the passion. Normally, you’re not allowed to. It’s like Liza Minelli in Cabaret. You have to go under a bridge and scream when the trains come over.
JOHN: Well, what use is sitting alone in a room?
ADAM: I was a very angry kid.
JOHN: Why?
ADAM: Because of life. My mum was doing all this spiritual stuff and my dad was REALLY mainstream. A professor.
JOHN: Of what?
ADAM: Finance. Oh my god. It was such a weird kind of oil and wine situation. I had zero boundaries with my mum. ZERO. And then my dad would get really pissed-off because I just had no boundaries. They divorced.
JOHN: They were happy with each other?”
ADAM: No. They divorced. They divorced. Of course they did. I was about… John, you’re not my therapist! We are not going there. But, suffice to say, I was an angry kid. How do YOU feel when someone’s being angry near you?
JOHN: Erm… I don’t think I ever really had trouble with bullies at school.
ADAM: Might not be bullies. Might be parental stuff.
I’m big into the Embodiment Movement at the moment and I’m speaking at the Embodiment Conference in October, which is going to be the biggest online conference ever – over 130,000 people have signed up for free. Over 1,000 speakers, including me.
JOHN: Define ‘embodiment’?
ADAM: It’s essentially about noting sensations and feelings in your body and becoming more aware of them. It’s a big deal in Business now. It never used to be, but now it is. In Leadership and Training and all that stuff. If you notice a bit more about what’s going on, you can respond differently in the world.
There was a brilliant psychologist last century called Carl Rogers. He developed the Person-Centred Approach.
With normal psycho-analysis, you’d say: “Ah yes, this is your problem and this is how you will fix it!”
Adam had person-centred coffee with me…
The Person-Centred Approach is: “I’m your buddy and I’m just here to support you and listen to you and, actually, the best person to work it out is you. I’m just going to be here and help you.”
I like to create an environment where people feel they can explore this kind of stuff.
JOHN: Have you seen the movie Joker?
ADAM: Oh! I loved that SO much, John! Oh my God! It’s a warning about what happens when we’re not comfortable with our anger. And I also found it a very moving and beautiful story about someone coming into themselves and their life… taking power in his own life, though in a destructive, dark way.
I think I actually burst out laughing in that scene where he stabs the guy in the head with the scissors. I think I squealed with delight.
JOHN: Why?
ADAM: I just felt really happy that he was (LAUGHS) asserting himself, instead of just being a victim… although I don’t advocate that kind of destructive behaviour.
JOHN: You don’t seem to be an angry person as an adult.
ADAM: I love expressing a bit of anger.
JOHN: Ever have a primal scream like Liza Minelli?
ADAM: No. No. But I like to do a bit of shaking. That’s fun. Give a good shake. Shake your body from the top to the bottom for a good 10 minutes.
JOHN: What? Like Tom Cruise in Cocktail?
ADAM: No. It starts from the hips and knees and works up. Lets loose. Dancing. I love dancing.
JOHN: I never liked dancing. Couldn’t cope with strobe lights. The whole of the 1960s and 1970s were wasted on me.
ADAM: Nowadays it’s all about Hampstead Heath and wearing headphones.
JOHN: So what have you lined up?
ADAM: I’ve been trying to reconcile the various parts of my personality – this sort of wild happy-go-lucky comedian and this really grounded Yeah, I’m into Human Connection guy and I’ve finally got it… I am a Human Connection Coach and comedian. That’s what I’m putting myself out as now. I’ve done a bit of work with Google and Coca Cola and Accenture and some local governments…
JOHN: Doing what?
ADAM: Doing stuff around how to create a culture of togetherness where different people like hanging out with each other; giving people the skills to set boundaries and say No and get on better.
JOHN: This might not work in Glasgow, where they head-butt people to say hello…
ADAM: My friend is a sex therapist up in Glasgow…
JOHN: This doesn’t surprise me.
ADAM: …and he gets very few people coming to him, but they’re really sweet, apparently. Imagine you were in a culture where you can’t talk about something but it’s really important to you and someone tells you: “Oh! This is really normal.” It’s liberating. He does some cuddle parties up there.
JOHN: Celtic cuddle parties?
ADAM: That’s about… JOHN!!!! I haven’t even told you about the House of Togetherness!!!
The House of Togetherness in Covent Garden, in April 2019
JOHN: Tell me.
ADAM: Last year in January (2019) I saw this old yoga studio in Covent Garden which was available for six months and I thought: Fuck it! I’ll take it! and create The House of Togetherness!
So I created a venue in London where people could come together for things like Blindfolded Adventure Time… Spooning Hour… something called Sex Club… Speak Your Truth… People could come together and have these experiences of how to connect better with ourselves and each other.
We had some very Glaswegian journalists come in for Spooning.
JOHN: Glaswegian journalists?
ADAM: People who don’t find it normal to touch other people.
JOHN: Did you call it House Of Togetherness because the initials are quite good – HOT?
ADAM: No. House of Togetherness because it made sense. I’m doing togetherness…
JOHN: … and it’s in a house. I see…
ADAM: We started in January and had to finish in October because the building was being redeveloped. It was really really good fun, man. I totally burnt myself out as well. It was nuts. I was wasted by the end.
I’ve been rebuilding myself over the last nine months and now I’m developing into the School of Connection: the School of Togetherness, basically. I want to help people learn the skills I think are really important in culture right now. Things like listening with empathy and compassion; speaking your truth; being able to say No; being able to ask for what you want; the relationship between pleasure and direction.
I have two courses running online right now. One is on non-violent communication. It’s about how behind every conflict are un-met needs and, if we can talk about those, then we can resolve things.
As a comedian and human connection coach, I feel like it’s all coming together now.
The mass spooning event organised by Adam Wilder at the Wilderness Festival last year…
Filed under Psychology, Sociology
Tonight, Sunday 17th March, BBC4 is screening a selection of short films in the UK under the umbrella title Born Digital: First Cuts.
I saw a preview of all the films earlier this week and Janitor of Lunacy by London-based Japanese director Umi Ishihara is well worth watching. What on earth it is about is another matter. It runs 12 minutes.
Coincidentally producer, director and actress Amanda Fleming’s company De Profundis has started a new international festival for short films – specifically horror films. The first – free – one-day festival is being held in Manchester in two weekends’ time.
I asked her: “Why?”
Amanda Fleming with halo at Soho Theatre Bar in London
AMANDA: Well, since I make short films and my direct theatre pieces tend to have a lot of horror.
JOHN: Why are you plugging other people’s films?
AMANDA: There are a lot of films that don’t get seen and a lot of film festivals that are particularly picky about how much money is spent on the film. I want to showcase talented up-and-coming film makers, so I thought it would be good to have a forum and to actually make a creative day of it.
It’s also a platform to meet some of the international people who have been entered into the festival – there will be Q&As.
We’ve had 75 submissions, 30 of them from abroad. Some of them were not the right genre of horror. Some were more psychological thriller rather than horror. Not quite the genre we were looking for. Maybe on the next one we will add in extra categories.
JOHN: There is a very nice dividing line between psychological thriller and horror.
AMANDA: We labelled it a ‘horror’ film festival. I was interested to see what came in.
JOHN: How do you decide something is a psychological thriller but not a real horror film?
AMANDA: Psychological tends be twists and turns – like somebody who thinks she’s hearing something and thinks it’s ghosts, but it’s just her own insanity or a stalker or whatever. The type of horror we were looking for was supernatural/Gothic, a little bit of zombie, a little bit of vampire.
JOHN: Val Lewton films in particular were all about the things you don’t see being more frightening than the things you do see. Were there films submitted that were on the borderline of your definition?
AMANDA: There was one. It won’t fit in this first festival but it was so good I am going to put in the next one. The festival is going to be twice a year. The first one is one day. Six hours. This first festival will be a small start-up one to see how it goes, then we will move to a slightly bigger venue in October or November this year.
JOHN: And this film which ‘doesn’t fit’ would be in the second festival in October or November?
AMANDA: Yes. I’m going to add an extra specific type of category so it will fit in.
JOHN: What’s that?
AMANDA: Comedy horror. This film’s amazing. It’s called Fowl Fury.
JOHN: Fowl?
AMANDA: Yes, so you know where it’s going to go, right?
JOHN: Why is it not horror?
AMANDA: Too funny. We are looking for more horror-horror. But I might even put it in this first festival as a token laugh moment. The trouble is we already have so many worth screening.
JOHN: They are all short films?
AMANDA: The films run between 2 minutes and 20 minutes.
JOHN: Two minutes is a scene, not a film.
AMANDA: But the 2-minute one is so good… to the point I have actually emailed them and said: I can see this becoming a major production. We are interested in talent and potential.
JOHN: You should have a Phlegming Award for Horror.
AMANDA: If we could afford it, we would, but we are just starting up. We are just awarding certificates for Best UK Film and Best International Film for this first one.
JOHN: And we will have to wait until October or November to see Fowl Fury…?
AMANDA: Probably… But, if we can fit the chicken one in this time, we will.
Becky Fury – real name – has something to say
I received what follows from Becky Fury yesterday.
She is not to be confused with Becky Sharp, the heroine of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair.
Becky Fury won a Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award in 2016.
Becky Sharp did not.
Becky Fury’s Award was well-deserved.
The poster for Becky Fury’s Political show
The anarchist festival at ADM platforms international anarchist artists working in any alternative medium – for example, vegan junk food boutiques raising money for anarchist solidarity causes.
My favourite and most edgy this year was the seitan (wheat gluten) wrap stand that was raising money for the solidarity campaign to support some anarchist bank robbers.
Tag line: Better rob a bank than be a thief that owns one.
There were a number of other insurrectionary installations and tongue-in-pierced-cheek institutions…
Punk hairdressers God Shave The Queen.
A fetish wear salon where the primary material for the kinky creations was recycled bike inner tubes. It was called Eco Slut. (Not to be confused with, but can be used in conjunction with, The Ethical Slut, an old anarchist handbook about the now super-trending polyamory.)
Even a robot had an axe to grind
A circus without a traditional ring person but with the tag line: No Gods, No (Ring)masters.
Also more standard festival fare bands, poets and one political comic performance artist. Me.
This was the 21st and possibly last year of the ADM festival and alternative arts showcase.
The ADM is an amazing autonomous artspace near Amsterdam which hosts several sub cultural festivals a year – or did for the past 21 years.
The location is unfortunately now a prime dockside development area and ADM is threatened with eviction this year. On Christmas Day.
One may wonder who would do such a cuntish act.
My explanation is Scrooge Industries (or Industrie de Scroogen in Dutch ). One can only hope that Meester or Mrs Scroogen receives a visitation from the Ghost of Festivals Past who gives them a fat spliff of Amsterdam’s Cannabis Cup winning finest and they chill out and reconsider and join the party
Unlikely supernatural intervention aside, there is a petition on the ADM website you can sign, if that’s your sort of thing. It is against the closure of the space. Not for it. Though there is probably a petition for that elsewhere.
The sub-header for the pro ADM petition is:
“Without Subculture, There is No Culture”
The ADM Petition: Without sub-culture, there is no culture
Artists need space to develop interesting work without economic restriction even if its only function is to provide creative detritus to fuel the industries of mainstream culture.
As an example of this, I offer the 5 Euro For a 10 Inch Vegan Pizza stall at the festival.
Veganism and moaning about vegans has been a staple of the punk movement and squat culture for years – only recently commodified and adopted by the mainstream as part of woke capitalism and priced accordingly.
The over-priced products are voided of their revolutionary potential as they are way out of the reach of the proletariat and the vegan vanguard that lived in my squat and threw my milk in the bin after scrawling COW RAPE all over the fridge in permanent marker.
Vegans have always been known with the prefix ‘fucking’ – but I always had more affection for the ‘fucking vegans’ when their virtue signalling went beyond taking photos of their over-priced and under-seasoned lunch on Instagram. Back in the days when Insta-gram meant having your drug dealer on speed dial and the only virtue signalling done was by the Land Rover used for hunt sabotaging and transporting the vegan burger stand to festivals to fund all this ethically sourced nonsense.
Sorry not sorry if that offends any fucking vegans.
If you choose to take offence, that is your choice. This is not the Oscars. Save me your acceptance speech.
I digress.
To err in a blog is human; to digress is divine
But this is John’s blog, so that is traditional and part of the idiosyncratic construct of the oeuvre.
My point is that, without free space, we end with no culture or a battery culture. Without nurturing and protecting artists, we end up with the artistic equivalent of battery hens laying mass-produced low-grade products for market.
One would hope there would be a revolution in the hen house – or should that be a coup?
One would hope the fashion for things organic and free range would extend to people but one imagines that there is a lack of imagination that will mean this is not the case.
It betrays a lack of joined-up thinking – but nowadays everyone writes on keyboards.
Anyway, I should have written this article before I left the sanctity of the artists’ utopia in Amsterdam.
I have performed at five arts festivals this year and that was by far the finest.
I have included some pictures for you to enjoy. You have seen them here first before they end up in adverts and their creators end up in the gutter.
Viva the revoloucion!
And come see my show Political when it’s next in your town or the one you’re squatting in the way that creative industry professionals do when they take over a town for their creative industrial professional ends.
Filed under Anarchy, Performance, Politics
Lynn Ruth Miller on her 82nd birthday
A message received today from performer Lynn Ruth Miller which, I think, deserves a blog in itself for unexpectedness:
I am now in Montenegro with 200 Russians at a conference called Well Over Fifty.
So far, there have been lectures on how to pulverise spinach for a gourmet treat, how to be happy – whatever that is – how to not give a damn about money after you make the first million and a demonstration by a 97-year-old woman shorter than I am on how to shoot a bow and arrow: a technique I have long needed in case I get accosted in a dark alley.
The bow and arrow was a great deal bigger than she was and the only problem she did not address was how to transport it in your handbag.
Filed under Age, Comedy, Montenegro
Cowgatehead venue – entrance to the Edinburgh labyrinth… Abandon hope all ye who try to explain what’s happened here.
This year, the Edinburgh Fringe Programme will make the Minoan labyrinth seem like the open plains of the Serengeti (and contain more rogue animals) because of the ongoing Cowgatehead affair. As a result of it, acts are going to be performing in different venues at different times to where/when they are billed. Or not at all.
The Cowgatehead elevator pitch explanation is that there are four organisations offering ‘free’ shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. In order of appearance: the PBH Free Fringe (so-called after its founder Peter Buckley Hill) from which split off the Laughing Horse Free Festival, Bob Slayer’s Heroes of the Fringe and the Freestival.
Freestival understood they had rights this year to programme acts in the Cowgatehead venue. Now the PBH Free Fringe has those rights. As a result, it has been calculated that (overall) acts will lose at least £77,000.
Over a week ago, I had a long-planned chat with Alex Petty of the Laughing Horse Free Festival (not directly involved in the Cowgatehead fiasco) and I have been sitting on the resultant blog ever since then, awaiting the rumoured sudden announcement of a new venue or venues (unconnected with Alex).
Two days ago, I was told yet another free venue may have been lost because there was no signed contract (again, unconnected with Alex). And not a venue one might have expected. But that (if true) has not yet been announced.
The Edinburgh Fringe thrives on gossip, starts in just four weeks time, the chaos continues… and the most gobsmacking story of the whole Cowgatehead affair (which I believe) seems unlikely to be revealed for several months, if ever. Now there is a tease. I do like a good tease.
Anyway, I met and chatted to Alex Petty of the Laughing Horse Free Festival over a week ago.
“Cowgatehead has been a mess, then,” was the first thing I said to him.
Alex Petty at the Soho Theatre last month
“I think that’s fair to say,” he replied.
“It could be turned into a show,” I said.
“Probably a musical,” suggested Alex. “That’s what usually happens at the Fringe.”
When booked and advertised shows were unceremoniously chucked out of the Cowgatehead, some were given homes by other promoters.
“The Free Festival,” said Alex, “has got about 15 shows that have moved across this year. Bob Slayer has some. And I know Darrell (Martin, of Just the Tonic) has a load. Behind-the-scenes, most venues do help each other. That does genuinely happen. I was lending equipment to Freestival people last year.”
“And,” I said, “The Gilded Balloon had trouble with a new room this year, so the competing Pleasance Dome has let them use one of their rooms. And a couple of years ago, Bob Slayer was short of chairs, so the Underbelly venue gave him some – for free.”
“There is a genuine Fringe community,” said Alex. “The one good thing about the Cowgatehead affair is that people have proved this community idea does happen. I find Peter’s publicity wants to make people believe there is a battle between free and paid venues, a battle between Free Fringe and Freestival and Free Festival but most of the venues just want to get on with it and will help each other out.”
“The whole Cowgatehead thing was unnecessary,” I suggested.
“In reality,” agreed Alex, “if everything that Peter said had happened had happened and Freestival had maybe buggered it up a bit, then if Peter had just put out just exactly what had happened and said We have six spaces rather than nine, so six shows are going to go ahead and we will help out the other shows, finding them other places, then people would have said he was brilliant for saving the venue. But it was the whole way he did it that has made him into a Public Enemy as well.”
“I think,” I said, “the Rubicon was that meeting arranged by Freestival to agree a compromise in London which Peter said he couldn’t go to because it didn’t exist (using the present tense). If that meeting had happened, no act would have lost money or rooms. I think the Free Fringe and Freestival have both (as far as I can see) told the exact truth and, with Peter’s very exact use of present and/or past tenses in what he said, apparently opposite realities can both be true. Did you see the emails between the Free Fringe and Freestival which I posted in my blog? They were both co-operating amiably on all sorts of things. earlier his year.”
Free Fringe – interesting times
“I would suggest,” said Alex, “that Peter had never seen any of those emails. The problem with the Free Fringe which I had, Bob Slayer had and Freestival had was that, as individuals, you think: I could do this better. If we could change that a little bit, that would help. And you genuinely believe you can take things forward. But then you hit a brick wall with Peter.”
“Why did Laughing Horse and PBH fall out?” I asked.
“We worked with him for two years and it gradually got more and more obvious that we had – and it was probably only slightly – different views on how things should work. Obviously, Peter is well-known for his (acts) not-contributing-any-money-for-anything stance unless it’s voluntary. Whereas we suggested acts should bung in a bit of money to go towards printing a programme. It was a hundred little things like that amplified.
“Essentially, after two years, I came to the realisation: This whole thing is being held together by a very narrow, wet bit of string. It’s not working for everyone. Peter wasn’t happy about it. We weren’t happy. What can we do? Let’s go and do our own thing. In our own heads, not really knowing the full psychology of Peter, the whole idea was: We will go and run some free stuff our way – which is basically the way Peter does it, but we take a bit of money and we supply equipment. Same ends; slightly different route getting there. We can maybe both have a brochure together and work together where we can.
“At that point, there were only four venues – Lindsay’s, Canons’ Gait, the Meadow Bar and Jekyll & Hyde. As part of a conversation we had with Peter, we said: If you speak to them and we speak to them, they’ll make a decision about what they want to do. And, obviously, the moment we said that, we were Public enemy No 1.”
“You started Laughing Horse,” I said, “with just one little club in…”
Free Festival shows in the Fringe Programme
“Richmond,” said Alex. “In March 1999. I’ve never had any sort of plan. I went up to Edinburgh one year and thought: Better do something here. We don’t do so many comedy clubs these days. We still have the one in Richmond. One in Brighton. Edinburgh has pushed us on to doing festivals. We still do our New Act competition each year in the UK. We’re probably associated with 4 or 5 different venues but it’s really moved on to festival stuff.
“We do the Perth Fringe World and Adelaide. So much of the stuff has all sprung from doing Edinburgh. Last year we did the Singapore Comedy Festival for the first time: lots of expat Brits, Americans and locals – a good mix of Malay and Thai and other people doing comedy.”
“You co-run that festival, don’t you?” I asked.
“My job mostly is finding the acts, looking after the acts and maybe giving advice on setting up venues. There’s a couple of people out in Singapore who essentially run it.
“This year, we did three nights of shows in Hong Kong, Manila two nights, Singapore three nights. It worked pretty well. It was fun. Twenty-odd comedians all meeting up in Hong Kong and having ten days together in three countries and figuring out if comedy is ever going to work in Manila.”
“Because?” I asked.
“Because Manila was certainly an experience. It’s the only time I’ve been nose-to-nose with someone who is meant to be the head of a biker gang who says he doesn’t want comedians anywhere near the venue because they’ve had a bit of a falling-out with one of the acts.
“It was completely not the act’s fault. But there was a disagreement with the act and the wife of this guy who was really kicking-off – irate, with hands all over the place. We ended up just basically bundling the comedians out the back door and saying: Let’s not do any more comedy here. He was a really irate man. It was my first trip to the Philippines; never been there before.”
“Are you going to be back in Manila again next year?”
“Yes.”
“So, after this,” I said, “the Cowgatehead kerfuffle was a stroll in the park?”
“Absolutely.”
“Laughing Horse,” I pointed out, “has not done the obvious leap from comedy promotions and venue-running into comedy act management. Why?”
“I like to be out doing shows. Management is just more admin, more sitting in front of a computer, more shuffling numbers and contracts around. We’ve had conversations about Laughing Horse having a small agency but it’s not what I’m interested in.”
“How are you going to expand?”
“Well, Perth has only happened the last couple of years. That is a cracking festival. At the moment, I just produce shows there. I’d eventually like to find a venue to run and push it forward that way. In Adelaide, we’re involved in a couple of venues – one we run; one we co-run. I’ve been at Melbourne two or three years now and I’m hoping to build up and see what happens there. The Sydney Comedy Festival happens in May and that could be added on to the end of Melbourne. We may look at that one year. There’s also the New Zealand festivals that happen in May. So there are some other things out there to look at. Though May clashes with the Brighton Festival back in the UK, which has ended up being the Edinburgh preview festival.”
“Next year?” I asked.
Alex Petty at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013 (Photograph by Brian Higgins)
“For Laughing Horse, the plans are more of the same, really. I would like Freestival to continue. The more promoters of free shows there are the better. This nonsense happens at Edinburgh every year in one way, shape or form. It’s chaos. My experience of other festivals around the world is you just turn up and do your thing. Why not at Edinburgh? Is it lack of spaces? Is it bigger egos? I don’t know. I think it was Brian Damage who said to me that the Fringe basically is always chaos for everyone but you get there and always get through in the end and that’s a philosophy that has always been true. Somehow it all works. But I don’t think anyone really knows how.”
Tonight, I stage the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards Show – starting slightly late in The Counting House, one of the venues provided by the Laughing Horse Free Festival at the Edinburgh Fringe.
I am old enough to remember Swinging London and the Summer of Love. I helped out briefly at The Free Bookshop – it was a garage in Earl’s Court – where people donated the books they had read and other people could come along, take them away, read them and, if they wanted to, bring them back.
I even went barefoot for a brief time, but grit and dog turds on suburban London pavements proved to be a deterrent to long-term foot liberation.
The iconic ‘it’ girl on the hippie International Times logo
Later, I was Film Section Editor – I wrote reviews and gossip about movies – for a re-incarnation of iconic hippie newspaper International Times (latterly called simply it after The Times threatened legal action on the basis people might confuse the two).
So I am no stranger to the concept of “Let’s make it free, man” which has now changed the face of the Edinburgh Fringe.
There are currently four free organisations at the Fringe: the original PBH Free Fringe… the breakaway Free Festival… Bob Slayer’s Pay What You Want model which is separate from but happily co-exists with the Free Festival… and the Freestival, this year’s new breakaway from PBH. I understand that, next year, there may even be a fifth free organisation.
My first involvement with the free organisations at the Edinburgh Fringe was in 2008, when I helped stage a comedy show for a performer.
This year’s PBH Fringe logo
The performer wanted to go with the PBH Free Fringe, so I staged my other show with the Free Festival to keep a foot in both camps. If the performer had wanted to go with the Free Festival, I would have staged the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards shows with PBH.
In 2011, I staged some chat shows with the Free Festival.
In 2013, I staged some chat shows with Bob Slayer’s Pay What You Want operation.
And this year’s Grouchy Club chat-with-the-audience shows are with the Free Festival.
The ‘free’ show model is that the audience pays nothing in advance. They can pay whatever they want (or nothing) on leaving. It is like indoor busking.
With the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Award Shows, I take no profit and cover none of my costs. 100% of any and all money donated goes to Kate Copstick’s admirable Mama Biashara charity in Kenya.
On my Grouchy Club shows, no money is collected. The shows are totally free. This is because I am old enough to know how to stage 23 hour-long shows for a total cost of £60.
I love Edinburgh.
My favourite places in the world are Edinburgh, Prague and Luang Prabang in Laos. I feel more at home in Edinburgh than anywhere else. Which is strange, as I have never had a home here.
Isle of Whithorn: Another childhood destination in August
When I was a kid, after my parents moved to London, my family used to go to Scotland every August for our summer holidays – we stayed (for free, obviously) with relations in Wigtownshire where both my parents grew up, and in Edinburgh, where my father had an aunt. After I left college, I started going to the Edinburgh Film Festival (then in August; now in June). And, around 1985, I started going to the Edinburgh Fringe. So I have been going to Edinburgh in August for most of my life, possibly since I was an embryo.
And, perhaps excepting two years, for free.
When I was accredited at the Film Festival, I happily sat in press screenings in darkened rooms from 10.00am to 10.00pm.
When I came to the Fringe, it was usually scouting talent for TV companies, publishers or whatever.
The three Malcolm Hardee Awards, awaiting their collection
I started the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards in 2007 partly because I thought Malcolm (who drowned in 2005) deserved to be remembered, definitely because I wanted to see new comedy talent and partly because it was a good way to get free tickets to every comedy show in Edinburgh for ten years. (I had trophies made in advance for 2007-2017.)
In 2007, shows were mostly pay-to-see at a rapidly escalating rate. If a show costs £10 and you see 6-8 shows per day for perhaps 28 days, that adds up. Well, at that rate, 6 shows per day actually adds up to £1,680.
It is said that the Free Fringe was started by PBH (Peter Buckley Hill) with one show in 1996. But it took a few years to get momentum going and it was probably just before I started the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards that the Free Fringe started having a serious impact.
In 2008, PBH himself was nominated for the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality for starting the Free Fringe (the award eventually went to comic Ed Aczel) and, in 2009, PBH won the panel prize from the Perrier Award (which, that year, was calling itself the Edinburgh Comedy Awards).
This year, PBH has again been nominated for one of the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards – as the Act Least Likely to Make a Million Quid because (the nomination says) “unlike most acts, Peter has heroically never aspired to make any money from the Fringe and has staunchly defended his free model.”
Peter has said he declines to be nominated: “I did not seek it and do not want it.”
Well, you can’t really turn down a nomination. You can turn down an award, if it were to be offered (which it has not been yet, at the time of writing) or send a Native American Indian along, like Marlon Brando did at the Oscars. There is, luckily, a community of Native American Indians in nearby Glasgow, left behind from when Buffalo Bill performed his Wild West show there in the early 20th century…
The Malcolm Hardee ‘Act Most Likely’ Award awaits its fate in Edinburgh this morning
I have no idea if Peter will win this, one of the three increasing prestigious Malcolm Hardee Awards. We decide this afternoon and announce the full awards at midnight tonight, during the Counting House show.
But he deserves an Award. He has changed the face of the Fringe.
Most of the shows I saw at the Fringe this year were free shows.
All three of the nominees for the main Comic Originality Award were performing free shows.
For the Cunning Stunt Award, two of the nominees were flyerers and the other one was performing a free show.
In the Act Most Likely To category, both the nominees were linked to free shows.
That reflects a major change in the Fringe.
Janey Godley (left) podcasts with daughter Ashley Storrie
In her podcast last week, my comedy chum Janey Godley, who has always very successfully performed in pay venues at the Fringe, revealed that, next year, she will be performing in a free venue. I know that she and her husband go through Fringe revenues with a fine tooth comb. This is not a minor change. If someone with Janey’s profile in Edinburgh is prepared to move from the pay model to the free model, others will move.
Filed under Comedy, Edinburgh, Uncategorized
In Edinburgh last night, bad eating options…
In yesterday’s blog, I mentioned a comedian who, for two consecutive days, had not noticed the line between admirable persistence and pointless harassment to plug his Edinburgh Fringe show. Yesterday, I had yet another text and another phone call from him. Thankfully, my iPhone makes it easy to block numbers, which I have now done.
Over-promotion without originality is counter-promotion.
My yesterday – in brief – was seeing in their shows:
– Weirdo Ali Brice directed by Weirdo Adam Larter in Eric Meat Wants To Go Shopping. It is rare to see a director with a propellor on his head.
– Beloved, if unnecessarily hirsute, Alexander Bennett putting a black sack over the head of a member of the media in Follow Me. Brave or foolhardy?
– Carter and Ollerton doing the best pigeon impressions in their Won’t Go Quietly show since Phil ‘Pigeon Man’ Zimmerman.
– Daphna Baram in AKA Miss D talking about the current Gaza Strip violence, during which I heard a punter behind me genuinely confuse ‘Hamas’ with ‘hummus’.
Three of the shows above were at the Freestival’s new (and not yet completed) Cowgatehead venue.
Years ago, my chum Janey Godley performed at the new (and not yet completed) Green Room Venue. She complained that the signage outside the venue was virtually non-existent. Someone involved suggested that the venue could be “a little secret that punters will slowly discover and treasure”. This is not something to say to Janey about a Fringe venue at which she is performing and the guy was lucky not to be found attached to a bag of cement underwater in Leith.
But I think Cowgatehead may have out-done The Green Room in the invisibility stakes.
Not only is the interior signage to the (I think six) performance spaces either non-existent or brilliantly hidden (worse than C Venues, which is traditionally a triumph of confusion) but there is no signage at all outside which hints that this might be the Cowgatehead venue; it is just a narrow doorway with no sign.
Note that, above, I was criticising the new Freestival, a breakaway from the original PBH Free Fringe. PBH is Peter Buckley-Hill.
The Grouchy Club yesterday – a bad selfie of Copstick and me
Yesterday, at the first of my daily Grouchy Club shows with Kate Copstick, she told the audience:
“I met Peter Buckley-Hill in the Cowgate last night. He was the man who started all the free shows (at the Fringe) as a real mission from his heart and soul. He thought people ought not to be getting ripped-off: performers, punters, whoever. He started with one show – Peter Buckley-Hill & Some Comedians and, on the shoulders of that, stands every single performer in any free show on this Fringe.
“He grew the Free Fringe and then this lot, Laughing Horse, got invoked (we were in The Counting House, a Laughing Horse Free Festival venue) but only because it looked like there was a bit of a thing already going. I don’t believe they would have started it on their own. There was a bit of a hoo-hah and they ended up with quite a few of Peter’s venues.
“After that, there was a £5 Fringe and then an Oh, We’re Free Too Fringe and then, this year, some misguided, egotistical, selfish little shits decided that Peter wasn’t running his Free Fringe well enough. Good grief! they said. These incredible artists are being expected to play rooms where there is sound-spill from the next venue!
“These boys decided they could do it better than Peter. But they wanted to do it better with quite a lot of his shows and some of his venues. So they have now started the Freestival. They stabbed him in the back and hurt him – though he wouldn’t admit that – hurt him considerably. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who hurts Peter Buckley-Hill is beyond the pale.
“He can be ‘challenging’ to work with but I really believe, in an increasingly industrialised comedy environment, passion is something to be treasured beyond everything and Peter does what he does from passion. You should try to see Peter Buckley Hill & Some Comedians. It’s very late.”
“Is he on this year?” I asked. “I thought he wasn’t coming up to Edinburgh.”
“Well,” said Copstick, “I met him in the Cowgate last night and he said to me: I understand you’re doing a show with the opposition… And you’re doing a show with the odious John Fleming… I am such a clype. That’s a Scottish word that means tell-tale. I said I don’t think John’s odious… Peter said: Oh! He’s odious! You’re with the Freestival.
“I said: I’m not with the Freestival. I know it’s bad enough we’re at The Counting House, but that’s because that’s where the increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show goes on. A brilliant show. And it’s so big it needs a venue like The Ballroom at The Counting House.”
“He said: I thought you were with the Freestival… No, no, no, we’re not, I said. And then I got a text from him this morning to say – far be it from me to be partisan – that the Cowgatehead is not quite ready for the Freestival acts.”
“I want to know why I was odious,” I said. “I don’t mind. I think being called odious is good. It’s better than being ignored.”
“I don’t think you’re odious at all,” said Copstick. “Have you written something nasty about Peter in your blog?”
“No,” I said, “I always try to be very even-handed about Peter.”
“Ah, but you’ve been writing stuff about the Freestival,” suggested Copstick.
“Well, I went to the Freestival launch,” I admitted, “a couple of days ago and said they had very good fairy cakes.”
“He who is not my friend is my enemy,” said Copstick.
“Haven’t you got a little bit in the Freestival Programme?” a voice from the audience asked.
“Oh yes, so I have!” I said. “Ah!”
“Oh John!” said Copstick. “That’s odious!”
“They asked me to write a little bit for their brochure,” I said. “I’ll write anything for anyone.”
“Actually,” said Copstick. “It’s quite cool to be odious.”
“It’s good PR for me,” I said.
“Indeed,” said Copstick. “Indeed.”
Below is the piece I wrote for the Freestival Programme. They headlined it:
A Few Words From (The Increasingly Prestigious) John Fleming
This Freestival piece made me an odious man?
I started the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards in 2007 (or 2005 – it depends how you look at it).
I started them partly in memory of Malcolm Hardee – the increasingly prestigious (since his death) ’godfather’ of British Alternative Comedy – and partly because I thought the Fringe awards scene had got a bit stale and established and the whole thing needed a bit of chaotic amateurism re-inserted to re-invigorate it. I think I do that rather well.
There is a lot to be said for chaotic amateurism and, just to prove my point, there are now four lots of people organising ‘free’ shows at the Fringe – the original PBH Free Fringe, the breakaway Laughing Horse Free Festival, Bob Slayer’s complementary Pay What You Want @Heroes shows and now, this year, the Freestival (another breakaway from the original PBH Free Fringe).
(That last sentence was edited in the printed Freestival Programme to “and now, this year, La Favorita Freestival”)
While the Freestival people seem to be commendably efficient at getting sponsorship backing, I still retain high hopes that there can be an element of chaotic amateurism in there.
The Fringe without chaos would be like the Glastonbury Festival without mud. You would feel less soiled but be less satisfied.
The spirit of the Fringe is much talked about but difficult to define. I think it is chaotic amateurism stopping only a tiny bit short of utter anarchy.
That starts from the basic fact that no-one organises the Fringe.
The Festival Fringe Office co-ordinates and helps performers and punters, but anyone can take part and do anything anywhere within the laws of libel and short of actually murdering or mutilating members of the audience. (Although I would pay to see that show.)
If Fred Bloggs wants to come to Edinburgh in August and perform Hamlet in Swedish every hour for 28 consecutive days in a butcher’s shop in Leith while dressed as a penguin, then he just has to arrange the venue himself, pay the Fringe Office to list it in the Fringe Programme and he is performing on the Fringe… and he would stand a good chance of getting an increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Award.
In fact, he does not even need to be in the Fringe Programme. If he merely SAYS he will and DOES perform, then he is part of the Fringe.
I have always thought the Chinese curse – May you live in interesting times – was a rather attractive option. Which is why I enjoy the Fringe.
The only Fringe rule is constant, blatant self-publicity.
I write an increasingly prestigious daily blog at http://blog.thejohnfleming.com
If you REALLY want to know what is happening behind-the-scenes at the Fringe, you should read my daily blog or go hear the gossip at the daily Grouchy Club.
When I was asked to write this piece, I asked: “Does it not matter that both my shows are at the Free Festival, not the Freestival?”
“No,” I was told. “We’re all free. We’re all in it together.”
That is the sort of anarchy I like.
Blatant self interest at Edinburgh Fringe
I have to declare an interest. At the Edinburgh Fringe this year, the annual increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show AND the daily Grouchy Club which I am hosting with critic Kate Copstick are both being staged at The Counting House – a Laughing Horse Free Festival venue. The Edinburgh Fringe is strangely complicated. Pay attention. This year, the Fringe officially starts on Friday but, as always, actually starts this Wednesday. The Laughing Horse Free Festival and Bob Slayer’s Heroes of Fringe/Pay What You Want shows start on Thursday. The La Favorita Freestival starts on Friday. And the PBH Free Fringe starts on Saturday. There are two types of venues in Edinburgh. There are the traditional ‘pay’ venues. That means audiences pay in advance to see the shows and the performers pay large amounts to rent the rooms and facilities.
This year’s PBH Fringe logo
But there are now four organisations hosting ‘free’ shows. That means entry is free (though you are expected to donate money on the way out) and the performers pay nothing to perform in the venue. The original Free Fringe was started by Peter Buckley-Hill (known as PBH) in 1996. He was later joined by Alex Petty of Laughing Horse Comedy, but they split in 2004 and Alex started the (in Peter’s eyes) competing Free Festival. My understanding was that Peter did not agree with Alex’s view that they should charge the acts a small amount to cover the cost of appearing in the printed Free Fringe programme (although the PBH Free Fringe runs fund-raising pre-Fringe shows in London). Last year, Bob Slayer started his ‘Pay What You Want’ version of the free model which means you can either get in for free or guarantee a seat by buying a £5 ticket in advance. This year, there was another breakaway from PBH’s original Free Fringe organisation. The breakaway organisers – calling themselves The Freestival – have managed to get £25,000 sponsorship from local La Favorita pizza chain, matched by £25,000 sponsorship from Arts & Business Scotland.
Alex Petty talked to me at the Soho Theatre
“PBH seemed to feel threatened by your Free Festival,” I said to Alex Petty when we met at the Soho Theatre in London. “Do you feel threatened by the new Freestival this year?” “Not at all,” said Alex. “I think the more free organisations the better. And let’s not forget the Scottish Comedy Festival down at The Beehive, where they do a mixture of paid and free stuff.” “Would you take sponsorship like the Freestival?” I asked. “I think that’s given them a good foundation this year,” said Alex. “They’ve started as quite a large organisation with several venues and performance spaces, whereas we started with one venue and gradually grew and acquired equipment and things we needed over the course of eleven years. What they’ve managed to do is get the equipment and stuff in and pay for the set-up for their venues in one go.
The Laughing Horse Free Festival logo for this year
“The Free Festival gets sponsorship in little ways – Kopparberg sponsor various bits of The Counting House. The Three Sisters is sponsored. It tends to be the venues themselves in partnership with sponsors, not us. It pays for the stages. “And then a lot of the companies behind the venues put money in as well. Our three main venues – The Counting House, Three Sisters and Espionage – spend a lot of money on advertising themselves, supplying equipment and staff. “We’ve never got to the point of having a big headline sponsor for the Free Festival. A lot of companies who want to sponsor comedy are alcohol companies and they want to get their products into the venues, but we have 22 venues all tied to different breweries, different companies. Some are owned by bigger companies; some are independent; trying to get them all to sign up to the same thing is difficult.”
The new Freestival 2014 logo from pizza sponsors La Favorita
“Now, with the Freestival,” I said, “there is even more competition.” “We’ve all got slightly different ideas,” said Alex. “It’s going to be a friendly rivalry.” “Bob Slayer’s Pay What You Want shows are listed in your Free Festival brochure,” I said. “Can you see a joint Free brochure coming out?… Although presumably not with PBH Free Fringe shows in it.” “Peter can be very combative about stuff,” said Alex. “It’s his way or no way. He’s got a very set vision and sticking to that is good in many ways. You would think Peter would be happy and proud that there are so many people now doing free shows, but he’s not happy with other people doing similar things.” “The perceived problem with free shows,” I said, “is the quality.”
Bob Slayer’s Pay What You Want hybrid of both free & book
“Well,” said Alex, “there are good and bad free shows. There are good and bad paid shows. There used to be a lot of Oh. It’s free. It must be rubbish. But now people are just treating them as normal shows. Every individual show, free or paid, rests on its own laurels. “The more people put on serious free shows and set up decent venues, the more people will come across to the free shows. In the last eleven years, it’s grown ridiculously and we have not seen a dip in audiences even though, every year, there are more shows – We have grown; PBH has grown; Bob Slayer has come along and expanded things. I think, with bigger and better acts and more venues running for free, that is going to pull audiences away from paid to free venues rather than taking any numbers away from the existing free audience.” “But the quality of the free shows,” I persisted, “must be lower, because you haven’t got the technical back-up. You can’t do a 10-person musical.”
The cast of Austentatious: An Improvised Jane Austen Novel (Image by Idil Sukan of Draw HQ)
“Austentatious was in The Counting House Ballroom last year,” Alex pointed out, “and this year we have Who Ya Gonna Call? (the Ghostbusters musical). In terms of putting on large, complex productions, it’s difficult. But the Ballroom at The Counting House means we can put on things which have 6-10 people on stage. It has programmable lights; we can do scene changes and lighting changes. The Three Sisters is getting there as well, with a couple of its bigger rooms.” “I understand,” I said, “that the Freestival have put soundproofing into the Cowgatehead. So things ARE looking up. But what do you get out of it? Not vast amounts of money.” “Sadly not,” said Alex. “Laughing Horse gets work and good PR. When performers go up to Edinburgh and then progress their career, we go on with them to other festivals where we do make money and we get a lot of good PR which pushes us up in the industry a bit for getting further work.
Janey Godley at the Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show in the ballroom of The Counting House (Photograph by Stephen O’Donnell)
“We don’t run quite so many comedy clubs any more. We have 10 or 15 places where we do regular monthly gigs or on-and-off. But we do a lot of corporate bookings and one-offs. We have 22 venues in Edinburgh during the Fringe – about 35 performance spaces. We have four venues during the Brighton Fringe. This year we did the Perth Fringe in Australia for the first time. Our main one in Australia is still the Adelaide Fringe; we manage some spaces out there. And we’ve done the Melbourne Fringe for the last couple of years. The Singapore Comedy Festival we started doing this year: we actually run that festival with guys out in Singapore – we pay acts to come out and do the festival. So we run venues and promote and produce shows and make money throughout the year.” “So how can you expand in Edinburgh?” I asked. “We’re comfortable with where we are at the moment. We’re at a size which is manageable. We want to do better what we are doing now.” “Have you ever wanted to perform yourself?” I asked. “No,” said Alex,. “I see all the stresses and strains the acts go through. I like being in the back room, enjoying it and putting stuff together.” “How did you get into the business?”
Laughing Horse Comedy originally came from a Black Horse
“I used to go to a comedy club in Richmond with a mate of mine, Rob Lee. He wanted to get into comedy. It ended up not being the thing for him. “But I had sat down with him and his brother and we wrote a bit of material for him and he did do a few gigs and one of the local pubs we drank in – The Black Horse – said You should run a comedy club. That’s where the name Laughing Horse comes from. A couple of the guys he’d done open spots for – Kevin McCarron and Fenton McCoot…” “Fenton McCoot?” I asked. “He was an ex-hairdresser who, about a year-and-a-half in, just vanished completely. I’ve not heard from him since. He moved back to Ireland, apparently. But he just vanished at one point and him vanishing was when I started booking the acts because no other bugger would do it. So we started running a comedy club and we fucked everything up as we went along but gradually got our thing together and we got a second comedy club and, over the course of two or three years, learnt what we were doing and started to go up to the Edinburgh Fringe. We just learnt as we went. Now I can book all the acts I want to see myself.” “I like comedy,” I said, “ because it gives me a chance to meet bizarre, mentally-deranged people.” “There’s certainly a few of those around,” said Alex, “But I think the one thing that’s lacking on the comedy circuit these days is there are not the good entertaining nutters around that there used to be. People who would go on and do bizarre acts and be great at what they did for five minutes. I miss that element of the comedy circuit. It has got blander.”
Paul Gudgin talked yesterday
The Edinburgh Fringe Programme is published in two days time.
Paul Gudgin, former boss of the Edinburgh Fringe, got in touch with me last week to publicise the City of London Festival, which he now runs.
But, when we met yesterday, inevitably, the subject of the Edinburgh Fringe’s increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards came up.
“There aren’t many other comedians,” suggested Paul, “for whom the idea of setting up an award in their honour would gain traction.
“I once made a proposal to a couple of people who were interested in doing a book about the 10 or 20 people who ‘made the Edinburgh Fringe’. Obviously, people like Ricky DeMarco, Nica Burns, Bill Burdett-Coutts, Christopher Richardson but then I thought, actually, Malcolm Hardee too. There are certain key individuals who left an indelible mark on Edinburgh.”
“More like a few suspicious stains in Malcolm’s case,” I suggested.
Malcolm Hardee had substance or left stains?
“But on the comedy side of the Fringe,” said Paul, “he was one of the significant characters. It was that period from the early 1980s when comedy took hold and took off at the Fringe. At that time, a lot of the theatre was quite political and had a purpose and then you had someone like Malcolm Hardee fooling around, but there was some substance behind that too.”
“What was the substance?” I asked.
“I think whatever was on sale,” said Paul.
“He did epitomise the spirit of the Fringe,” I agreed, “in the sense that the spirit of the Fringe is that it is intentionally not organised. You were Director of the Edinburgh Fringe for eight years (1999-2007).”
“Yes,” said Paul. “That job title – Director – was strange, because you direct very little. In a way, the art of running the Fringe is having a seam of competence running under the general nonsense.
“It is anarchic up to the point when people want to receive their cheques. Then everyone expects it to be throughly professional. The job, really, is just about enabling. You try to maintain an equilibrium between what the city wants and what the performers and venues want.
High Street in the Royal Mile during Edinburgh Fringe, 2008
“A lot of my time was taken up with disputes and complications between venues and performers particularly as the venues became more sophisticated and more commercially challenging.”
“What does ‘commercially challenging’ mean?” I asked.
“It was getting harder and harder to run venues in Edinburgh,” explained Paul, “because the people who own the properties – the Council and the University and other property owners – wanted more and more money.
“There is a slight temptation to demonise the big venues, but they have two major pressures – they are being squeezed by their landlords and they have all built up quite considerable infrastructures which need to be paid for. Also they have no security of tenure.
“It is one of the challenges we have here in London as well. When you try to put on a festival in a place where real estate values are soaring, it is going to affect you.”
“The collateral damage,” I suggested, “is that, because Edinburgh performers see themselves as getting ripped-off by the big pay venues (not the free venues) the Fringe Office is seen as ripping them off too.”
“The Fringe Society,” said Paul, “is a much steadier ship, because it doesn’t have the level of risk which the venues do, but it’s by no means wealthy.”
Paul Gudgin – now in the City of London
Paul started his career at the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk – “It was both a concert hall and a festival,” he told me.
Then he ran the Bury St Edmunds Festival – “It was mainly the festival,” he says, “but I was involved in running a couple of civic venues as well.”
Then, 1995-1999, he ran The Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh which, every August, runs events as part of the official Edinburgh International Festival.
Then he became Director of the Edinburgh Fringe for eight years, then four years as an independent consultant and now – since last August – he is Director of the City of London Festival.
“Why did you leave the Edinburgh Fringe?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t say I got bored with it at all. If you’re bored of the Fringe, you’re bored of life. But I do genuinely believe that, with festivals, you have a shelf life. It’s all about energy and ideas and there comes a point where a new person should take over.”
“So why London now?” I asked.
City of London – old and new
“All the good festivals I’ve ever been to,” Paul explained, “are characterised by the fact that the city is pretty much the star of the show. That’s certainly the case with Edinburgh. There are now 90 Fringe festivals around the world. Adelaide is fantastic and Amsterdam is a really good little Fringe. But I’ve been to a few others – no names – where, even though you have those same principles and some good shows, somehow the place doesn’t work in the way Edinburgh does.
“The City of London is a really interesting place, because virtually no-one lives here but 350,000 people descend on it during the day and you have these amazing buildings and spaces. On the one hand it’s this massive world financial centre and, on the other, it has extraordinary history and heritage. So there are a lot of interesting contradictions and I thought that was an interesting starting place for a festival.”
“Surely,” I said, “the City of London’s image is that it is dull and filled with non-arty people who are not anarchic and anarchy not conventionality is a good thing for creativity.”
(Note to non-UK readers of this blog, The City of London is not the same as the city of London. The City of London is the one square mile original city of London which is administratively separate from the rest of London. Now read on, confused…)
“The City of London,” I said, “is a staid city full of staid people.”
“But,” argued Paul, “in a way, that description might have been used of Edinburgh about 40 or 50 years ago. Edinburgh was seen as being very formal and stuffy and Glasgow was the place where things happened. In some ways, the Edinburgh Festival helped change that narrative. And, if ever there’s a place in the UK that needs a bit of a different narrative at the moment, it’s the City of London.”
“So you want to make the City of London Festival less stuffy?” I asked.
Paul’s programme – over 250 live events from 22 June
“Broader, definitely,” said Paul. “When I was a young music student, I used to come for lessons at the Guildhall and, since then, there have been massive changes in the City. There is a night time economy now. When I used to come, you couldn’t get a drink or a restaurant past 7.00pm. It’s a much younger and more diverse place now than it was years ago and I think the Festival programme has to reflect that.
“My predecessor’s major passion was classical music, particularly contemporary classical music. And there was quite a bit of dance and they did some wonderful installations. But most of the programme was classical music.
“We have still retained that music because, if you have St Paul’s Cathedral and all these amazing churches and livery halls…”
“But now you also have a new comedy section,” I said.
“Yes,” said Paul. “the festival hasn’t particularly had comedy before. I think if you put someone like Andy Zaltzman inside a large inflatable bowler hat shaped venue, it may get a bit of attention.
The City of London Festival’s new inflatable bowler hat venue
“We have all these beautiful venues – churches, livery halls – but they’re firstly mostly very formal and secondly hidden away. Stationers’ Hall is stunning – absolutely stunning – but no-one knows it’s there. And, while it’s nice for people to discover venues, you also need people to know you are actually happening.”
The large inflatable bowler hat venue is a symbol of the re-energised 52-year old City of London Festival.
“Is your target comedy audience,” I asked, “the people who go to comedy clubs in the West End?”
“Well,” said Paul, “we do have to get the London comedy audience coming into the City, but what I really want is a sense that, when it’s festival time, groups of people who work together in offices in the City will say Let’s go and have a drink, have a bite to eat and take in some comedy at the festival – in the same way non-tourists do in Edinburgh, where it becomes a big part of the social calendar. I’d love to see people coming out of their offices, walking down to Paternoster Square and taking in a bit of comedy.”
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 