UK-based US comic Lewis Schaffer has his trousers stolen in a seaside town

Lewis Schaffer on stage this week, before losing his trousers

London-based American comedian Lewis Schaffer is performing eight weekly shows at the Leicester Square Theatre, starting soon. You heard it here first.

Last night, we exchanged text messages…

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When is your first Leicester Square show?

3rd March

What time?

Sunday 6pm £10.

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He then texted that he was in a well-known seaside town to play a gig. I will call it Boringtown. I texted back: Condolences. He texted back: Been here before. Seems nice.

Later last night, I was travelling in my car with my eternally-un-named friend (hereinafter referred-to as my EUF). I got another text from Lewis and this exchange ensued:

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– I wrote that last text before my bag and useful black coat were stolen during the show. So now don’t have a good impression of Boringtown.

– In car. John is driving. EUF here. John says “Email me more about theft.” He hasn’t got a blog for tomorrow. It’s all Him Him Him isn’t it? – EUF says v. sorry to hear about coat. It’s cold. And bag. Hope no money was in it this time.

– I don’t want him to blog about that. I’m always losing things. Or having them taken from me. There’s a few Yiddish words for me. I’m the guy who spills the soup on you and I’m the one who gets the soup spilled on him. I had a feeling it wasn’t safe to leave it there.

It’s the jokes that I’ll miss. The paper bits with the funny things I said that I left in the bag. Who’s going to use them? I mean, if they can get laughs out of my joke scratchings then they’re funnier than I am.

– John says your txt msgs would make a good blog. I say you poor little Yiddish soupy sosage.

– Schmeil or schmozzel. I’ll have to look it up in Leo Rosten’s Joy of Yiddish. One of those words or both. I’m both. I wish I only spilled. My show at the Art Centre was good under difficult circumstances – there was an audience there (joke).

– John says your jokes are so specific to you that no-one else can tell them. He laughed out loud and said half your act is you saying the words ‘Lewis Schaffer’ – that is difficult to steal.

– It’s not that the jokes are good or that I would have used them. It is now I’ll imagine those lost jokes that I’ve forgotten are the funniest jokes I’ve thought up.

– John asks – You’re doing jokes now?

– I have jokes now. I don’t tell them in the right order or when I should, but I have jokes.

– John says Oh yes – The Holocaust ones.

– Now I have a bad view of Boringtown. Please don’t mention the town.

– John says you told him not to blog these texts.

– I lost my clothes. Luckily they didn’t think much of my leather jacket or I’d be going home dressed like a drunk stockbroker after a night out boozing.

– Are you still dressed in your stage gear? John asks have they taken your trousers? If so, comedy gold. EUF says are you on your journey home?

– They took my beloved Kenneth Cole stretchy trousers. I’m on the train. Please don’t say the name of the town. Me bad in not taking my belongings and putting them in a pile on stage with me.

– Sorry. Would hate to lose some fav clothes like that.

– And my beloved Kenneth Cole stretchy black jacket. And my beloved black and white checked shirt. By Kenneth Cole.

– John says have we agreed he can blog these texts minus Boringtown?

– And my beloved black casual shoes by Kenneth Cole, the American clothing designer.

– No more beloved clothes. I don’t know K Cole.

– Beloved Kenneth Cole.

– John says are you naked? If so, send pic immediately.

– They left my ratty suit carrier bag. Why am I such a plonker?

– I say you aren’t. John says you are. Have you still got phone charger? We are arriving at my flat now so there will be a pause.

– Luckily I hid that behind the portable heater in the dressing room. I am a plonker. I don’t think that’s a Yiddish word.

– It’s John here again now. So can I blog, provided I don’t mention Boringtown?

– I’m not sure you posting my mishaps is helping me in the comedy business. I’m not sure still makes other comics happy to read of my failures. I’m not a threat to them. Yes, you can blog this, but only because I sense your desperation to keep this daily blogging going. I admire your commitment. I could only do 3 months, if that.

– Do you want an IKEA double bed settee, lightweight base with mattress? Was EUF’s sister-in-law’s. Pix to follow. We just brought it back to Greenwich. IKEA beds longer than UK ones.

– Can use bed.

– Good.

– Actually, can’t. Sorry. No room.

– Pity.

– That’s 3 thefts in 5 months.

– 3 thefts in 5 months? You are being targeted by rogue members of the Elders of Zion… Maybe the Middle Aged of Zion.

– First the money in Edinburgh. Then my iPhone 4S in November. Now this. I should stress that the show was amazing. No-one walked out.

– My EUF says this means none of the audience stole your things. She trained as a sleuth by watching Monk on TV.

– I’ve had a run of good shows.

– Don’t worry. Things will get worse. I presume tonight was part of your Free Until Famous tour of Arts Centres?

– Yes. Packed. 150.

– Your Leicester Square Theatre gigs are eight Sundays in a row?

– Yes. Not announced yet. You can announce them in your blog. But they are paid dates. How can I justify it?

– The audience will justify it by arriving. When are you back in South London?

– I’m in New Cross now.

– Do you want food?

– Where? It is 1.30am. This is England.

– I have a car. We can find.

– Okay. Come. I can change.

– At your age, you cannot change. My EUF is starving. We will come round to your place.

– Okay. Hurry. Am fading fast. No. Don’t come. My door keys were in coat. Feeling flu-ish. Have to wake early to take son to football. His birthday. Sorry John. Ask for EUF’s forgiveness.

The Cinema Museum’s nostalgic smell is in Charlie Chaplin’s old workhouse

Cinefiler and collector Ronald Grant as an even younger man

Yesterday, I had a tour of the Cinema Museum in London with Ronald Grant of the separate but linked Ronald Grant Film Archive which has well over one million images from more than 50,000 movies.

Ronald was born near Aberdeen and brought up watching films in his local village hall three nights a week.

“I became enchanted with the cinema,” he said yesterday, clearly under-stating the case. “I liked to help the projectionist and got pieces of film and took them home and showed them on the wall with a magnifying glass and a torch.”

By the time he left school, he just wanted to be a projectionist and got a job with the four Donald brothers who ran 13 of the 15 cinemas in Aberdeen.

Eventually, in London in 1981, his extraordinarily wide-ranging collection of movie memorabilia formed the basis of the Cinema Museum, which is housed in The Master’s House of the old Lambeth Workhouse – the workhouse where Charlie Chaplin was partly brought up.

Ronald Grant at the Cinema Museum in London  yesterday

As well as screening rare films, occasionally with producers/directors/actors there to talk about the production, the Cinema Museum has an almost eccentrically wide collection of film memorabilia from stills and posters to UK and UK books and fan magazines, original cinema projectors, signs from the inside and outside of old cinemas, staff uniforms, pieces of period carpet and even something I had never heard of – small tins of cinema fragrance sprays.

Ronald Grant told me:

“You have to remember that, in the 1920s and 1930s, many houses had no piped water. If you had no piped water, then there was a tap and there were lavatories outside and you shared them with the other tenants. If you wanted to have a bath, you had to go to the municipal baths, which cost money. Or you could have a tin bath which you put in front of your open fire. But this meant you had to go downstairs and bring up pails of water, fill the kettles, put the kettles on the range, heat the kettles, fill the bath…

“It was a whole lot of diddle-daddling and fiddling about, so children sometimes shared the water that other people had bathed in and, generally speaking, people didn’t bathe as regularly as they do now.

“In which case, if you had 1,500 to 2,000 of these people in a confined space like a cinema on a hot summer night…

“The other thing was that, before 1948 and the National Health Service, there were a lot of diseases and illnesses that might prove fatal. There was scarlet fever and diphtheria and there was a lot of tuberculosis around, which is a disease of the lungs. People would cough-cough-cough and spit on the floor. Tuberculosis is carried by moisture so, if you’re coughing – and with many people who had tuberculosis their lungs were bad so they would cough – the moist air could carry the tubercular infection.

“People were very nervous about going to crowded places and maybe catching something that might kill them or might involve a lot of attention from the doctor. Before 1948, you had to pay for the doctor. He was a professional like a lawyer and would charge a professional fee. Medicines would all have to be bought at full price.

“So poor families did not want to go anywhere and risk catching something that would create illness.

“And so cinema owners wanted you to think it was fresh and hygienic and they would spray this perfume.

“Here’s one you can smell. This is what was sprayed in the cinema. We have various flavours and scents. This one is Neuroma Spraying Essence – germicide, it says in brackets – Guaranteed to contain powerful germ-destroying properties blended with a delicate perfume.”

The Cinema Museum – a unique collection of memorabilia

The Cinema Museum has existed since 1981 and has never received any money from any funding body. It hopes to buy its current building which it leases from the NHS, but that could cost anything from £2 million to £5 million.

It would be tragedy to lose a unique collection of movie memorabilia.

Here is a 2000 tour of a small part of the Cinema Museum:

Wall Street actor/singer/dancer starts the first Brooklyn Fringe Festival

Calvin Wynter. No hair, but a man sporting his own Fringe

I think I first met US promoter/publicist Calvin Wynter at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007, when he was involved in opening the new Green Room Venue, but he had been going there since 2004.

Yesterday, he told me: “I went to school in Geneva for a year and I had no idea the Edinburgh Fringe existed. My parents were avid theatre-goers and we were travelling to Europe almost every summer, but they had no idea the Edinburgh Fringe existed. When I was made aware that Edinburgh was the place to go then, in 2004, I went over with five shows. All sold out, were critically-acclaimed and one won the Richard Pryor Award. The following year, Richard Pryor’s daughter went over with us with six other shows.

“Now we’ve taken 135 shows to Edinburgh and we’ve done 250 shows worldwide. We’ve been at 50 festivals worldwide and toured 120 cities.”

And now, through his company Inbrook (of which I am an alleged creative consultant) he is staging his very own Fringe Festival – the Brooklyn Fringe, running 12th-21st July next year in New York.

“It’s something I’ve been thinking of for about four years,” he told me yesterday.

“In the East Coast, there is no ‘open’ festival. Everything is either juried or curated. It’s either You spend your money but we’re going to tell you if you can get in or We’ll decide whether you get in and we’ll pay for it. But there is nothing on the East Coast that is You find a place, you register with us and you’re now part of the Festival.

“There is a New York Fringe which has been around for over a decade, but it’s juried and they take 2% of your box office gross for the next seven years. I think that’s absurd. If you participate in the New York Fringe, for the next seven years – simply because they provided a place which you paid for for maybe six performances – they then take 2% of your box office gross whether you play in Boise, Indiana or Brighton, England.”

“What will you do instead?” I asked.

“We won’t take a percentage when they’re not in our facilities under our Festival banner,” he told me.

“What,” I said, “if I have a wonderful success at the Brooklyn Fringe and decide to go with a promoter other than you?”

“I worked for 13 years on Wall Street,” said Calvin. “On Wall Street, we don’t have competitors. We have colleagues. We don’t worry about the size of the pie. We’ll all eat. I come from an entirely different mindset than what I’ve experienced in a lot of emerging entertainment areas, which seem to think  that the world is small and that all of us are fierce competitors… It’s unecessary.

“If you go with another promoter, you are still going to tell someone Go to the Brooklyn Festival – and maybe they’ll go on to work with us afterwards. We’re thinking long term. The more the Brooklyn Fringe succeeds, the more our organisation gets a higher profile.

“At this stage, we’re looking for venues. By putting the word out that we’re looking for venues, we will also receive information about participants.”

“What if you don’t get enough venues to make it viable?” I asked.

A new Festival that is definitinely in Brooklyn not New York…

“There’s more than enough venues to make it viable,” Calvin told me. “Brooklyn is so vibrant. There’s a new stadium. The Nets basketball team have moved from New Jersey. A hockey team The Long Islanders are going to move in less that two years. Jay-Z did an intro concert there. The amount of construction is… Let’s put it this way, if Brooklyn were a free-standing city, it would be the fourth largest city in the United States right now, but it’s trending that, in the next few years, it will be the third largest.

“We have no fixed number of venues. The New York Fringe has stopped at around 200 venues. The more the merrier for us. We already have a number of shows that would like to work with us in Brooklyn under any circumstances.”

“So,” I said, “I can come to you and say I’ve got a venue above a bar in Brooklyn and I want to put on a show and then you would put me in the Festival programme?”

“If someone registers a show from that location, then you are now a Festival venue. As long as you do it within Brooklyn, it’s part of the Brooklyn Fringe.”

“And,” I asked, “it will be ‘open’ like the Edinburgh Fringe? You will co-ordinate but not put on any shows yourself?”

“We will put on shows,” said Calvin. “We are going to be ‘open’, juried, curated and ‘pay-what-you-can’.

“If you go see a show that is ‘free’, the reality is that the performer, producer or someone stands there with a bucket or a hat at the end., asking for money. What is that really? It’s pay-what-you-can.

“So we are going to be up-front and say that some shows are pay-what-you-can.”

“So,” I said, “I can come to you either with my own fixed-price show or pay-what-you-can show and venue or I can come to you and you’ll provide the venue and hire it out to me?”

“Yes,” said Calvin. “Or some other entrepreneur will set up a venue and put on a show. It’s every variable. On some shows, if it’s necessary for us to put our own money up and bring our own expertise to it, we’re gonna do that, bringing in the creatives, the crew, the marketing effort.”

“Are you getting any money from the local council?” I asked.

“This is the American Dream,” said Calvin. “You go out. You focus on being the best. And you are able to create something that serves the public need. It’s a team of performers and creatives that also – almost all of us – have backgrounds in the financial industry. We do it in such a way that it’s self-sufficient. We can’t depend on government. Arts funding has been cut throughout the United States. We are not dependent on public funding or donations or grants. As we see government and foundation funding evaporate… we just create a business model that works for all.”

“So your background is Wall Street?” I asked.

“I retired 12 years ago, when I was 40 years old. I don’t need the money. I want to be creative. I want to help artists to grow.

Calvin Wynter Jnr as a child with his father

“I was a performer as a child. Even when I was a baby, I was in a commercial for milk. But, when it came time for career selection, I ended up going to Wall Street and, just before I left Wall Street, I found out that I had – without my knowledge – been hiring actors, dancers, comedians. Every member of my staff was in not only one but the three major unions in the United States. Even in the case of members of staff from Britain, they were in British Equity.

“I had been unconsciously surrounding myself  with performers. So it was natural when one said You should pursue this that I went, in less than 90 days, from taking three acting classes to being in one off-Broadway show, in rehearsals for another, doing indie films at the weekend and setting up a production company that would go on to be nominated for a Drama Desk Award in less than 18 months. I leased a theatre – the Gene Frankel Theatre – renovated it, started putting on productions.”

“You were an actor?” I asked.

“I was an actor, a singer and dancer. I’ve just got back from producing a show in Amsterdam, scouting theatres in Berlin for touring and being taken to Prague to consult on a musical that was in a 1,000 seat theatre.”

“So you are an actor, singer and dancer who turned producer, promoter and publicist?”

“In one instance,” said Calvin, “we were even involved in producing a show in a car. Two actors in the fronts seats, two audience members in the back. Whether it’s an elevator, a boiler room, a toilet or a 1,000 seat theater we want to see Art.”

“And a businessman,” I added.

“Brooklyn Fringe venue registration applications are due by Monday, 28 January 2013,” Calvin told me.

“And a salesman,” I added.

The Edinburgh Fringe now insists on artistic control of all shows’ promotion

Comedian Lewis Schaffer lost his shirt staging Fringe shows.

In 2009, I staged a show at the Edinburgh Fringe titled Aaaaaaaaaarrghhh! It’s Bollock Relief! – The Malcolm Hardee Award Show. No-one batted an eyelid. More’s the pity.

Not when the title appeared in full in the Edinburgh Fringe Programme. Not when flyers were handed out in the street. Not when posters appeared in the refined streets of Edinburgh.

No-one cared about the word “bollock” back then.

But yesterday, in an online response to a piece in the Edinburgh Evening News about censorship in this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Programme, comedian Jackson Voorhaar wrote:

A quote in my blurb was actually censored to “the b*st*rd offspring of Eddie Izzard and Noel Fielding”. Surely in that context bastard is a perfectly legitimate and inoffensive term?

My last couple of blogs have been about the Edinburgh Fringe Programme’s new-found puritanism where, for example, Richard Herring’s show Talking Cock (which had no problem in 2002) now has to be printed as Talking C*ck in the Fringe Programme because it might offend someone – despite the fact that, in August 2012 (as was the case in August 2002), large posters will festoon the billboards of Edinburgh saying Talking Cock and random pedestrians will be given A5 flyers advertising Talking Cock.

Vivienne Soan of London’s Pull The Other One comedy club talked to me yesterday about the title of the Stuart Goldsmith show, which the Fringe has insisted cannot be listed as Prick but has to be listed as Pr!ck. Vivienne sensibly said: “I think that, at first sight, they look like the same word… but actually the latter is slightly funnier/cleverer. Therefore,” she added a tad mischievously, “the Fringe programme are also insisting on artistic contro!”

She raises an interesting point here.

As Richard Herring told me: “Underneath the silliness and twatdom it’s a very important issue.” And it is.

Last night Mervyn Stutter, who has been staging Fringe shows for 26 years, asked me about the Charlie Chuck listing which the Fringe this year objected to as being “ungrammatical”.

“Strangely,” Mervyn told me, “I find that more sinister because it will affect so many more people with perfectly safe show titles.”

The 40 word Fringe Programme entry is an advertisement for each performer’s Fringe show. It is an ad paid for by the performer. It costs almost £400. So, if you use all 40 words, it costs £10 per word. If you used only 20 words, it would cost £20 per word.

Mervyn Stutter says: “If we pay £400 then we should choose exactly the wording we want. If it doesn’t ‘make grammatical sense’ then what happens next? An angry letter to the Fringe from an audience member demanding better grammar or just that we – the performers who pay for it – lose some audience?”

This is the key point.

Does the Guardian tell Renault it has to change the wording for a new car ad because it does not conform with the Guardian’s own ‘house style’? Does Exchange & Mart or eBay tell advertisers their ads are ungrammatical or must be changed into an appropriate house style?

The Fringe Programme is perfectly entitled to have a house style for its own wording. But not for paid advertisements. Occasionally, in the past, the Royal Bank of Scotland has taken out ads in the Fringe Programme. Were these vetted by the Fringe for proper grammar and checked for adherence to the Fringe Programme’s own house style? Bollocks. They were not.

Part of the blurb for absurdist comedian Charlie Chuck’s new show Cirque du Charlie Chuck mentioned above (trying to make every £10 work count) was submitted as:

“Charlie Chuck back with cabaret, organ-playing, drum-smashing mixed-up magic, with burlesque bits of French songs and lady assistant.”

The Fringe changed this to (the capitalisation is mine to show the changes):

“Charlie Chuck, IS back with cabaret, organ-playing, drum-smashing AND mixed-up magic, with burlesque bits of French songs and A lady assistant.”

The Fringe insisted: “These words are required to be added to make sure the copy is in our house style.”

Note they said “are required”. Not suggested. Required to be added.

When queried about this, Fringe Publications Manager Martin Chester confirmed that “as long as your copy… is grammatically correct… it can be run.”

His full explanation was:

“As long as your copy adheres to the style guide found on edfringe.com, is grammatically correct and within the 40 word limit (including your show title) it can be run.”

There are two points here…

• What does it matter if it is ungrammatical? If an act were to pay the Fringe £400 to run a badly-written Fringe entry which made the show look bad, the performer seem illiterate and it persuaded punters NOT to come to the show, that is entirely the act’s problem. The Fringe officers – if they are hanging around and have loads of time on their hands – might kindly suggest the entry could be improved. But, if they are taking £400 simply to print the ad, then (provided the wording is legal and ‘decent’ by their standards) the English grammar contained within the ad is nothing to do with them. And…
• Why do £400 paid-for ads come within the Fringe Programme’s house style at all?

A house style exists to homogenise the style of a publication created by a single entity.

It is reasonable that a document or publication written by the Fringe itself should have a house style.

It is unreasonable that a Programme listing hundreds of separate £400 paid-for ads in which individual performers are trying to uniquely distinguish their own show from the (literally) thousands of other shows should have all the £400 paid-for ads homogenised into a single style.

It is artistic nonsense. It is financial nonsense.

In yesterday’s blog, I mentioned that comedian Jody Kamali told me that the Fringe Office “said I couldn’t use three dollar signs in a row ‘$$$’ in my Fringe entry, as it didn’t fit their ‘house style’.”

Call me innocent, but to have $$$ in your show title is not going to offend any man, woman or child who reads it. I fail to believe it will psychologically damage or morally offend anyone. I am unaware of $$$ being any obscure sexual term and I somehow think the Fringe’s own imposed C*ck and Pr!ick are a tad more objectionable than $$$.

What insanity is ruling at the Fringe this year?

This all seems to be the opposite of why the Fringe Programme exists. It seems to be the opposite of why the Fringe exists, the opposite of what the ‘open to all’ nature of the Edinburgh Fringe itself is supposed to be.

Performers and acts are not invited to the Fringe. Anyone can perform anywhere. You just have to arrange it yourself. The Fringe as an entity (the Fringe Office) does not stage, produce or directly promote the shows.

It can cost, over-all, around £7,500 to stage a fairly average Fringe show – venue costs, accommodation, promotion (including £400 to write Fringe Programme’s 40 words) etc etc.

100% of this is paid for by the performers.

The Fringe does not pay for the shows. The Fringe does not pay for the £400 show listings within the Fringe Programme.

So why does the Fringe claim that the £400 small ads (because that is what they are) within the Fringe Programme have (in the words of the man in charge) to “adhere to the style guide” and be “grammatically correct”?

In the Edinburgh Evening News yesterday, Neil Mackinnon, Head of External Affairs for the Fringe, said:

“It is not for us to vet the content of anyone’s shows – that’s one of our principles”.

Well, he is talking bollocks. And they are not even disguised, Photoshopped bollocks.

The Fringe are vetting the content of the ads people pay £400 to run. And not just for what they now (but did not in previous years) regard as ‘rude’ words. According to the Fringe’s own Publications Manager, the paid-for £400 non-rude words are vetted because they have to conform with the “style guide” – no use of $$$ in a title, for example – and be “grammatical”. Why?

The road to hell really is paved with good intentions.

In effect, the Edinburgh Fringe are now insisting on artistic control of the promotion of all Fringe shows. And charging performers £400 for the privilege not to have control of their own advertising.

The people who think of themselves as ‘good guys’ have turned into ‘rip-off’ merchants.

American comic Lewis Schaffer (who is staging two shows at this year’s Fringe – that means two Fringe Programme entries at £394 each) commented on a blog I wrote a couple of days ago:

“Next year I am not going to register my show with the Fringe and instead I will spend the money more effectively by paying the first 700 punters £1 each to come into my show. Or enrol everyone who comes to my show in a £700 lottery. Or spend £700 extra pounds buying drinks for the other acts bled dry by the Fringe Society.”

He may not be joking.

And he has a point.

The man with advice on how to make an Edinburgh Fringe show successful

Mark Fisher: the man who knows about Edinburgh pitfalls

(This piece was also later published in the Huffington Post)

I have occasionally blogged advice on the perils and pitfalls of staging a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. But it really requires a whole book – which is what Mark Fisher has now done with The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide – How to Make Your Show a Success – published today.

In 1983, Mark appeared in a Fringe show called Shubinkin, which The Scotsman described as weaving “a Coronation Street idiom on a Miltonian frame”. He took part in the Fringe as part of a student production in each of the three years of his undergraduate life. In 1986, he returned to Edinburgh to work at the Fringe Office and he is now Scottish Theatre Critic for the Guardian and Variety, a judge for the annual Scotsman Fringe First Awards and much else.

There are many ways to get a book published. In 2002, I approached Random House with an idea for a book to be written by comedian Malcolm Hardee and me. They turned it down but suggested we instead write a book called Sit-Down Comedy, which a new Random House editor had been thinking about. It was published in 2003 and was recently brought out in Kindle and iBook editions.

Rule One of writing books: never stop publicising them.

Mark Fisher’s book came about in much the same way. It was not his idea. He got an email from Anna Brewer at Methuen Drama. She did not know him, but she had come across his theatreSCOTLAND website and she asked him if he would like to comment on a book idea she was developing: how to put on a show on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

“She had lots of good ideas,” Mark tells me, “but she couldn’t decide how it should be written – whether it should be a Fringe Office insider or lots of people writing different bits or someone else entirely. My reply was: Not only do I think there should be a single author, but I think it should be me. That got me the gig. Brass neck. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

And, pursuing the importance of publicising your book, Mark is now thinking about staging his own Fringe shows this August: “I’d like to do a series of chat shows that cover the same territory as the book, so I’d have different sessions with producers, publicists, critics, actors, stand-ups and so on. I’m in discussion with one of the big venues about it.”

Chat shows seem to have multiplied at the Fringe in the last few years – I even did four evenings myself last year, but surely only comedy really sells at the Fringe nowadays?

“Well,” says Mark, “you see some extremely inventive examples of comedy at the Fringe, so I’m not inclined to complain that it’s doing well. Even though I earn a good chunk of my income as a theatre critic, I find it hard to despair about the rise of comedy as some people do. However big comedy is, there are still 80 pages of Theatre listed in the Fringe Programme – and that doesn’t include categories such as Dance and Physical Theatre. Does anyone really think 80 pages of Theatre is too little?

“One reason comedy has proliferated on the Fringe, however, is that it’s the cheapest type of performance you can do: one comic, one microphone, one spotlight and you’re away. For the same reason, you see a large number of one-person plays on the Fringe. Many of these are very good, but often you feel artists are limiting their imaginations because of the budget. Comedy is not to blame for this, but its proliferation is a symptom of the same financial pressure that affects theatre.”

But, I suggest to him, surely the Free Fringe(s) are now the true spirit of the Fringe and the paid-venue Fringe tends to rip-off performers? It is a point I’ve made in several blogs. Mark disagrees.

“It is hard to argue that paid venues are ripping artists off,” he tells me. “On the whole, the venue managers are in it because they like the art and what they charge for are the professional facilities that you don’t necessarily get in the free festivals. Most of them tell you that they’re lucky to break even themselves.

“I love the way the Fringe always seems to balance itself,” he continues. “So just as one end of the market appeared to be getting ever-more commercial, with major TV names playing to big audiences… up popped the PBH Free Fringe, the Laughing Horse Free Festival and the Forest Fringe to make more room for artists at the other end of the scale. So, yes, in one sense it does feel like that is the true spirit of the Fringe. But, in reality, the Fringe has always been a mix of the amateur and the professional, the new and the established, and you could argue that the spirit of the Fringe is actually in its diversity. Anything that keeps that diversity as broad as possible is good.”

So who, I ask him, was the best act he ever saw who never got famous by performing at the Fringe?

“I suppose the Doug Anthony Allstars did get famous,” he says, “but nobody seems to remember them now and I had some of my best Fringe experiences in their company. I remember following them out of the theatre into the women’s toilets of Teviot Row House (now the Gilded Balloon) where they crawled over the cubicles and sang Christian songs. Then there was the time we ended up round a bonfire at the back of the Pleasance and the audience started voluntarily throwing their credit cards into the flames – I think even the Doug Anthony Allstars were surprised by that one.”

Mark Fisher knows his Fringe from the inside out and the outside in. And, with quoted advice from comic Phil Nichol, actress Siobhan Redmond, actor/director Guy Masterson et al, his Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide may even tell you, as claimed, How To Make Your Show a Success.

Yesterday evening, I was having a drink with Italian-born stand-up comic Giacinto Palmieri. By bizarre coincidence, this book came up in conversation. He had a copy of it in his bag; he had bought it from Amazon; it had arrived the day before – two days before publication – and he was already well into reading it.

“There is so much love about Edinburgh in the book,” he enthused. “It really tries to convey the idea of how mad and intense and crazy the Fringe is. So much good advice and full of interviews with people who brought shows there. One of the very first sentences is from somebody (playwright and director John Clancy) who says of the Edinburgh Fringe It’s like sex, it’s like having children; there’s no way to explain it to anybody.”

So Mark Fisher had a bit of a challenge writing the book, then.

But he seems to have succeeded.

Where the Edinburgh Fringe is involved, anything is possible.

A Broadway success story for anyone staging a show at the Edinburgh Fringe

There are two things which will make people queue round the block to see a stage production.

Great reviews.

Or widespread press coverage saying it is a catastrophe.

I am allegedly a creative consultant to US theater promoter Calvin Wynter’s company Inbrook based in New York.

He phoned me last night. One of the most interesting things he told me were the Broadway box office figures for Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.

Inbrook handled PR and general management services for Spider-man producer David Garfinkle at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe and, after that, I had followed the increasingly OTT production stories of Spider-man in the US trade magazines.

You know a show is going to be interesting when the opening line of the New York Post’s review is:

“Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark pulled off a miracle this week: it opened…”

Spider-man took eight years of pre-production, its premiere was postponed five times and, at a reported $65 million (or possibly $75 million), it is the most expensive production in Broadway history. The previous most-expensive-production Shrek only cost half that to stage on Broadway.

Spider-man has 41 cast-members, an 18-strong orchestra, complicated mechanical sets and 27 aerial stunts including a battle over the audience between two characters.

It has music by Bono and the Edge of U2 and it has been described – and indeed promoted – as one of the most technically elaborate Broadway musicals of all time. Which was what caused a lot of the problems in pre-production. That and the soaring budget, cash flow, cast problems and the fact it managed to knock up four accidents in one month.

It reportedly has a weekly running bill of $1 million.

Last week, of the 24 shows on Broadway, only seven grossed over $1 million at the box office. They were:

Wicked – $1,882,731

The Lion King – $1,854,764

Spider-man – $1,811,432

The Book of Mormon – $1,256,830

How to Succeed in Showbusiness – $1,223,226

Mary Poppins – $1,111,911

The Phantom of the Opera – $1,026,795

The previous week, Spider-man also stood in the No 3 position.

Why are people going to see it in droves? Because of the overwhelming publicity.

It’s spectacular, it got varied reviews, but – hey! – it might be a car crash or – literally – someone might fall on top of your head. The one thing it is unlikely to be is dull.

In the UK, I remember stories of the legendarily catastrophic 1980 Old Vic and touring production of Macbeth with Peter O’Toole – tales of rickety sets sometimes falling down, totally OTT blood and Peter O’Toole virtually eating the scenery with his over-acting – It was a show which got worse reviews than the Third Reich… and yet you couldn’t get tickets for it anywhere – I tried to buy tickets to see it in London and Manchester myself – No chance. It was a sell-out.

Stephen Pile wrote: “Eradicating the unnecessarily tragic aspects that have always weighed the play down, the cast sent the first-night audience home rocking with happy laughter.”

The Daily Mail wrote: “It was, of course, the rottenest luck for him (Peter O’Toole) to run smack into a wall on his third bravura exit (so much of the play takes place in the dark).”

The Independent reckoned: “the sheer quantities of stage blood reduced audiences to hysterical giggling”.

The London Evening News claimed Lady Macbeth “greeted her husband by leaping at him and achieving a leg-encircling embrace of the kind which illustrates helpful sex manuals” and that her antics “would have woken the whole castle”.

In an admirably odd interview several years later, Peter O’Toole said: “My nose bleeds as I think of it”.

So, if you are staging a play and want to get lots of bums on seats, either get great reviews, horrendous pre-publicity or truly awful reviews.

All publicity is good publicity.

If you can kill a member of the cast or audience, you will sell out at the box office.

I am still looking for worthy nominees for this year’s Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award.