Edinburgh Festival – setting the scene
The entertainment highlight of the year.
The Edinburgh Festival (2-26 August!) is fast approaching and my thoughts are turning to which shows to pre-book… and remembering highlights of past years.
Late to the Edinburgh party
I’ve been going to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe every year since about 2013, and fully intend to carry on until I’m unable to do so!
Despite loving live comedy, I was rather a late starter to this event, mainly due to the word ‘Festival’.
I had assumed all Festivals involved camping on some level, the thought of which fills me with absolute horror… mud, dodgy loos, crowds, getting lost and general shit-ness, both literally and figuratively.
Glamping hadn’t been invented by the time I was already put off.
These days I could just about stand a high-end yurt… so long as it had full plumbing and a decent thread count.
I put my aversion to festivals down to working with a guy who did the annual pilgrimage to the infamous Glastonbury Festival, and one year he came back saying it was so muddy a girl had fallen in the dug-out that was one of the blokes loos! Yikes!
Imagine?! Er, no, don’t imagine. Sorry!
I then saw the 2005 film ‘Festival’ about Edinburgh ‘festival’ and my view of it changed. It looked like there was zero camping involved and lots of shows and hanging out in pubs, which are two things I can do very well!
I made my first visit up there around 2013, it came about as a friend of mine goes up there every year for work, and said why didn’t I come along for one of the weekends?
Why on earth not I thought… assuming full Wonder Woman stance.
So I said yes, I’d go up on my own and then hang out with her when she wasn’t working.
I offered Mr.D the option of accompanying me, but he politely declined with a ‘No thank you, I don’t think it’s for me’.
Then another friend of ours got wind that I was going and said he wanted to go too, which I very much welcomed so I wouldn’t then just be solely hanging around someone who’s trying to work.
When Mr.D heard that the two of us were going up, he then decided to join us, as it was no longer a girls weekend… so then there were three.
Happy days! Off we go!
That original group of three, then grow to four the following year (again with someone who thought ‘it’s not for me’ despite being a huge comedy fan!), and we have all been going every year since!
And we love it!
Here’s why…
The itinerary
Day 1 (arrive in the pm): dump bags off, beer, beer, show, beer, food, show, beer, beer, show, beer, show, beer.
Day 2: food, beer, show, beer, beer, show, food, show, beer, show, food, beer, beer, show, beer.
Day 3: food, beer, show, beer, go home.
You can ascertain several things from this.
There are plenty of shows.
There are plenty of food & drink opportunities.
Please note: all drinks are available, but look how many keystrokes I saved not choosing a Gin & Tonic. 🤓
3,500+ shows
The 2024 festival has ‘over 3,500’ shows planned!
But surely there aren’t that many theatres in Edinburgh?
Great question! I’m glad you asked. There aren’t.
Basically the word ‘theatre’ is a very loose term during festival month, and can be applied to a room over a pub, a Portakabin, or even the street in some cases… which reminds me of one of the best experiences I’ve ever had at the Festival…
Guru Dudu’s Silent Disco Walking Tour
If you only do one thing with your life ever, make it this, I cannot recommend it enough!
The premise, as the title would suggest, is you don headphones and walk through the streets of Edinburgh.
So far so good.
What you might not realise is that our fearless leader Guru Dudu will be encouraging you to follow his dance moves too!
Eek! Total nightmare?!
Here’s the thing, yes, you do feel a bit awkward and self-conscious for the first song, as you are all (about 30 people) gathered at the starting place, usually a very visible Square, and you’re hoping this will not descend into an aerobics class.
Then you just follow the herd as it starts to move around the City and find yourself singing along.
By the second Street you have lost all inhibitions, are joining in with the dance moves and really don’t give a shit.
You have also noticed that wherever you go the onlookers are all smiling, it’s like a moving train of joy that infects passers-by with happiness.
I’m not even joking, some of our number were quite moved by the experience, and not just by clapping in time to Queen’s Radio Gaga!
By the time you head to the finish line (conveniently situated in a bar) you will be singing at the top of your voice:
“But I would walk five hundred miles,
and I would walk five hundred more!”
à la The Proclaimers… you’ve never felt more Scottish and in love with life!
Guru Dudu will, once again, be at the Edinburgh Festival this year, so you have no excuses!
Another show that leaps out of the memory banks was…
Red Bastard
The hands-down winner of the ‘Most Terrifying Show Ever’ award.
The ‘word on the street’ (i.e. the flyer folk handing out leaflets, who are the fount of all local knowledge), was that they were having to lay on trauma counsellors to deal with some of the audience members who had interacted with him!
Zut alors! Did we really want to put ourselves through it?
It can’t be that bad surely?
I have never stood in a show queue, before or since, where there was a palpable frisson of fear.
Once inside, the show starts and out he comes, a terrifying creature, leaping and rolling about the stage in a very inhuman way.
Relying on his balloon filled, hooded onesie to boinnnggg him back up again, which it does repeatedly, before running into the audience…
JESUS CHRIST!!!…
at which point we all shat ourselves and dispersed, like a bomb had gone off.
This was a genius move, as it splits everyone up from their friends and so the focus from that point for everyone is purely on him, and we don’t have the reassurance of being in a group, however small.
I then spent the rest of the show sitting on some steps mid-aisle, about 30 seats away from my original seat and friends, who had also split up in the mayhem!
I couldn’t see any seats near me free, and there was no way in hell I was going to draw attention to myself by looking for one… and risk the human velociraptor’s rage.
The resulting show was nothing short of extraordinary, and you emerge with the same (I’m guessing) smugness after a successful bungee jump.
Almost wearing the show like badge of honour… bloody glad you had the bollox to turn up for it and very thankful to come out unscathed.
A very unique show.
That last sentence almost seems redundant in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival context, as the one thing that hits you, is the uniqueness and creativity of all the shows!
Crying with laughter
The most unlikely ‘hit’ that we’ve ever stumbled across at the Festival was staged by the New Zealand branch of ‘Save the Whales’… well, when I say ‘staged’ it was basically some street theatre that we happened upon whilst nursing a breakfast beer and waiting for our ‘proper’ show to start in a nearby theatre.
It was genius in its design and execution, and took place in a paved square at the base of some steps…
Picture around 8-10 actors wearing wetsuits, with a dorsal fin taped to their backs, lying face-down, motionless on the paving stones, seemingly beached.
An earnest Kiwi with a megaphone was on a mission to recruit passers-by to aid in the ‘rescue’ and get said whales ‘back out to sea’.
This was achieved by arming any passing toddler, who showed an interest, with a fully loaded water pistol that they were then encouraged to shoot at the actors/whales to keep them hydrated during the rescue!
Imagine being a toddler, just drifting along, wondering where your next ice cream is coming from, and suddenly someone gives you a water pistol and tells you to shoot some skint actor/student in a wetsuit at point blank range… repeatedly?!
It was all their Christmasses come at once!
Captain Courageous on the megaphone was not short of diminutive volunteers!
Slowly, with all the rehydration, the whales began to rise and majestically moved up the paved steps, as if going out to sea.
As they reached the top, stage hands hurled water from buckets skyward, and when it smacked back down onto the paving, it sounded exactly like a whale breaching!
I doubt whether even Sir David Attenborough could tell the difference!
Genius!
By the end I was laughing uncontrollably at this brilliantly funny little scene that we’d simply stumbled into. No ticket required.
So the moral of this story is, even if you think ‘it’s not your thing’ it might surprise you.
And if it does, you, like me, will wish you’d started going years ago!
Off you pop now, and go and book it up, and we can swap stories in a few weeks time.
You’re welcome.
K8x
Join in the comments below:
Have you ever been to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe?
What’s the weirdest show you’ve ever seen?
Do you own a red onesie and a balloon pump?
Thank you for being here, please ❤️ (below) if you enjoyed this piece, it really helps others find it.
Rave review: Julia Masli – Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
I heard a faint whisper of ‘audience participation’ as we entered the packed main stage of London’s Soho Theatre for Julia Masli’s show: ‘Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha’.
Rave review: Baby Reindeer – Netflix
I am not usually drawn to tales of woe, but since starting this Substack I’ve liked to pay close attention to what everyone else is watching, and therefore have been keeping one foot in Netflix’s Top Ten, hoping for another One Day or The Gentlemen.
I was there for a week last year, saw 5-6 shows a day (mostly comedy) and laughed myself out of a neurological disorder. No kidding - for two months I had been having serious balance issues and by day 3, gone. Didn’t come back. Everyone should go.
The festival is on my bucket list but so happy to live vicariously through this piece. Sounds like a blast.