The Old Fart’s Festival guide: Saying farewell to the Fringe

The final curtain has fallen and the party is officially over. So, what have we learned? Chris Bratt closes out his survival guide for the annual Edinburgh event with some parting advice

Farewell for now: the August festivities will be back again next year (Alamy)

Quite suddenly everyone’s making for Waverley Station. The party is over. So how have we old farts survived the past month in Edinburgh? Maybe my six Cardinal Rules for Survival have helped?

Cardinal Rule No 1: Never book an early morning show if you’ve had a late night show the night before.
Cardinal Rule No 2: Read everything very carefully, especially times and venues.
Cardinal Rule No 3: Always leave a generous amount of time between shows in different venues, if for no other reason than food.
Cardinal Rule No 4: If you’re not broadminded, don’t come to Edinburgh in August.
Cardinal Rule No 5: Even if you see 100 shows in the month, you will only see about 3 per cent of those available, so don’t beat yourself up that you missed some.
Cardinal Rule No 6: Go nowhere near John Lewis until 2020.

Once-bustling streets have started to clear as another festival wraps up

As regular readers may be aware the first three have been broken a few times this Fringe. Please feel free to take my advice; I’m clearly not using it.

So what have we learned?

1. Traffic on Edinburgh’s city centre streets is supposed to travel at no more than 20 miles per hour. This does not seem to apply to cyclists, especially on the footpaths across the Meadows. Avoid treading in the designated cycle lanes; the riders take no prisoners.

2. We might hope that the fashion for hair top knots for both men and women will have changed by next year. It’s one thing to ask the person in front of you to remove a hat, but quite another to ask someone to let their nine inch beehive hair down, especially at the Fringe. (Unintentional pun.)

3. We’ve learned about flyerers flyering flyers of course. And we’ve also heard the gentle noun message now upgraded to full verb status. As in, “I’ll message you on that.” “It’s OK, I’ve already been messaged by John.” “He’s messaging all the time!” Oh how the poor old English language has been stretched. And how often nowadays does the response to a question begin with “So, ...”?

5. It is a joy not to have switched on the telly once during the month. So has anything notable happened while we’ve been away?

6. Always carry an umbrella.

As I stated at the outset, the Fringe is about much more than comedy. In the weighty tome that lists all the shows, although it takes 140 pages to cover comedy, 107 are devoted to theatre. 59 more cover music and musicals, 14 cabaret and 18 children’s shows. There cannot be anywhere in the world that could offer more in one space. We have seen 78 shows in total which, if my maths serves me correctly, is some 2.8 per cent of what’s on offer. Planning is essential.

To avoid carrying the aforesaid weighty tome about, and those others offered by individual venues, my good friend Clive advocates the edfringe app and an iPhone or iPad spreadsheet. That’s all well and good, but he’s spent a good deal of time in IT and knows which buttons to press. We are still advocating The Book and pencil approach to remembering where we are supposed to be at any one time.

The author gets one last taste of the festivities (The author gets one last taste of the festival)

We have seen some remarkable theatre. Two contrasting shows on our last day. Not About Heroes at the Pleasance Dome celebrates the friendship of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, brought about by a mutual hatred of war and love of poetry, and their letters and poems are seamlessly woven into the taut narrative. Then on to an innovative and imaginative show, Amy Conway’s Super Awesome World at Summerhall, which seeks to understand why some people contact the Samaritans’ Help Line by involving the whole audience in video games battling demons. Summerhall is fast becoming the venue for stunning contemporary drama.

The Fringe is probably best known for comedy though. The official best joke of Fringe 2017 is from Ken Cheng “I’m not a fan of the new pound coin, but then again, I hate all change.” Everyone will have their favourites.

Some of ours: “It’s no good giving a recipe book to someone who’s never cooked. That’s like giving a lonely man the telephone directory and saying, ‘It’s all in there’.” (Stuart Goldsmith)

Bedlam Theatre was aptly named given the chaotic performance it housed

Fern Brady, who has cooked for ex- offenders, wonders why paedophiles seemingly love eating boiled eggs. “Presumably because they’re the youngest form of life?” she offers.

“If you always sleep on the left hand side of the bed, ring the changes. Sleep with someone else.” (Charmian Hughes)

Thousands of shows were put on for the affair

And the prize for the best comedic experience must go to Henning Wehn, the German Ambassador for Comedy. His show explores the question of whether in this Brexit time, he should be considered an immigrant. He was performing in Bolton a month or so ago and his comments about working here for 15 years and paying all due taxes and so on, upset one audience member. “Hey you! You German. F*** off back to London where you belong.”

Still annoyed that my Well Hung and Tender mug went unused this year. I really couldn’t see why this admirable mobile burger bar was not regarded as a street food outlet. There were plenty of other burger bars on wheels about, but all had the magic word “street” displayed somewhere. And some pushed the credibility a tad: “Scottish-French Fusion Street Cuisine” on a Grassmarket crêpe stall and “Freshly Cooked Urban Seafood” (fish and chips) on a stall in Udderbelly Gardens. Surely the authorities can’t object to the WH&T name itself with all the the innuendo around the city? I was bemoaning the loss in a queue one day with a couple who had just returned from a trip to Vietnam and they said that nothing would ever persuade them to taste street food anywhere after they’d seen the real thing.

How far have we walked? The Fitbit thing we were given as a Christmas present last year suggests about 4.5 miles a day, but also notes the calories burned were immediately replaced with the first large (of course) glass of wine. Edinburgh, if nothing else, is a walkable city, although hilly and cobbled of course. We aim to take two taxis in the month – to and from the station. This year we have only taken one other ride when we left very short time to get from the flat to a mid morning show. (Cardinal Rules Two and Three broken there!)

Arthur’s Seat will have to wait another year, as will the Edinburgh underground tours that we’ve promised ourselves for years. Both will be there we hope in 12 months, assuming we’re allowed across the border.

In the meantime, look out for Fringe shows coming to a theatre near you. You may be sure that if they do tour they are quality shows. There are a good many shows that clearly have appealed to older audiences this month – like Simon Evans, Mark Thomas, Pip Utton, Stuart Maconie and The Independent’s own Mark Steel; but these are no cosy slippers and Ovaltine presenters. They are sharp, incisive and thought-provoking observers of the current scene.

Our last show, The Cat Man Curse, a bizarre slapstick comedy from three ex-Footlights players was at the very aptly named Bedlam Theatre. Somehow a pretty fitting place to end up in at the end of our Fringe month.

Waverly station was packed as festivalgoers began to make their way home

Edinburgh, we thank you for allowing us to take over your city; I hope we have not damaged it too much and we look forward for returning in 2018. Will Trump and Brexit still be on the agenda or will President Pence have won the war with North Korea and will Prime Minister Corbyn have played guitar at Glastonbury? Who knows? Whatever the domestic and world scenarios, you can be assured that they will be reflected in some way at the Fringe Festival.

We will travel home only a hundred miles or so south; why, every year, when we are in the same time zone, do we seem to suffer the symptoms of jet lag?

See you next year!