The
Edinburgh Fringe is underway and I am alternating between enjoying my shows and
panicking about how much money I might lose. It’s OK, I only have to write a
weekly Metro column for the next five years and I should break even. As long as
I don’t eat anything in that time.
Much
has changed since I first came up to this beautiful and brutal Festival in
1987. The trams are finally up and running, after six years and going
£200 million over budget (even though seemingly no one in the city actually wanted
them). But by my estimates they will already have clawed back over £420 of the
£776 million they’ve spent. And they can easily pay off the rest if they rent
out every carriage at night-time for comedians to sleep in. You could go on a
month long 5-star exotic holiday with the money it takes to rent a small flat
here in August. In fact that’s exactly what the man whose flat I am in has
done. I don’t feel resentful.
It’s the things that don’t change
that provide comfort to the Fringe veteran.
My favourite place in the city is a tiny baked potato shop on Jeffrey
Street called “The Tempting Tattie”. Its combination of hearty carbohydrate
packed meals at a budget price meant I would dine here every other day as a
student. Now I find it a bit too much to stomach, but still aim to eat there
once a year, for the Proustian rush of consuming my favourite: medium baked
potato filled with orange Cheddar cheese and mango chutney. Sounds pretty awful right? But you have to
give it a go. Just pop in and ask for a “Richard Herring” and when the owner
looks at you blank-faced then say “Medium cheese and mango chutney.” My many
years of publicising this takeaway (for no financial or potato based reward)
have disappointingly not led to them naming the dish in my honour.
But that’s good. It gives me
something to aim for. I only return in the hope that this will be my year. Some
comics want awards. I just want a potato. Five years ago the owner finally
worked out that I was the guy who kept mentioning his shop in newspaper
articles – was this going to be my moment? No, he then sold the lease to
someone else and the whole awful process had to start again.
I miss him. He was a reassuringly
grumpy man who seemed to resent the fact that he had given up the best years of
his life to baking potatoes (as if there could be a more worthwhile vocation).
One year I tried to cheer him up, by persuading my entire audience to descend
on the shop at the same time. A queue of over 100 people snaked down the street
and it took him over an hour to serve us
all. I had hoped he’d run out of ingredients, but somehow he coped with the
demand. I thought he’d thank me, but when I rocked up at the end of the line
for a “Richard Herring” he attempted to strangle me. Then he gave me a medium
potato with cheese, mango chutney and pineapple. He still didn’t know my
preferred spud. Pineapple? What kind of
sick pervert did he think I was?
The new owners are polite and seem
to love serving baked potatoes, which makes dining there much less enjoyable.
But one day I will get a potato
named after me. I may be bankrupt, but my life will have been worthwhile.
