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It’s a fairly brutal regime for me here at the Fringe, even if it looks just like an hour’s work a day. Catie is working nights which means that I have to put the kids to bed, but also get up early with them (I usually do this anyway, because my old man body generally wakes up early anyway). I have to stop the kids killing each other whilst researching for that day’s podcast, then do the podcast and come straight home to do more dadding. By the time the kids are asleep (they’re sharing a bed so that takes longer than usual) I am pretty much ready for bed myself. Sometimes Catie gets back just before I fall asleep, but not that often. We are ships that pass in the day.
It is not like the Fringes of the past, but on balance I prefer hanging out with my kids to hanging out in performer bars. It does feel a bit relentless though. My fitness regime has gone to shit and I am eating too much crap. I am at least walking to the venue and back every day and haven’t yet got to the stage where I have to sit on a wall before I go up a hill. Hopefully the short stay at the Fringe will mean that doesn’t happen this year.
Today’s guest was John Robins who has now appeared on RHLSTP/RHEFP seven times, equalling the record set by Adam Buxton. And John is the only other person to have hosted the show (when I was the guest for episode 300- 99 episodes ago). I like giving the successful comedians of the generation (or two) below me a hard time, but the truth is that I feel more at home with them than the comedians of my generation. These are the guys that I worked with when I came back to stand up in 2004 onwards and with whom I had much more in common than the comedians of the early 90s. We talked a little about how the weight of all the previous Fringes pulls you down. I am enjoying doing the podcast this year, but coming back to the Fringe is taking a mental toll. I think quite a few acts are feeling the same. The past haunts every corner but we’ve nearly all been away from here for three years and are having to adjust to doing this stressful festival in a post-Covid world, where a recession is about to hit and everything is more expensive (apart from, as John pointed out, the price of tickets to the shows - everything else has risen by three or four hundred per cent, but ticket prices remain at more or less the same level as a decade ago). I bumped into a distracted Jayde Adams in the Meadows, who is rightly on the rise and breaking through (she’s on the new Strictly) and she acknowledged that there was a blueness beneath the surface for most comedians this year.
I always say I won’t come back. But I always do. This year I am really wondering if that might not be the case after this. I am uncomfortable with this being a festival only for the wealthy. Nica Burns seemed happy that the Fringe is smaller this year (and it certainly has got too big) but as John pointed out, this is because people can’t afford to come. Which isn’t a good thing. The Fringe has, of course, always been a bit middle class, but is in danger of actively excluding anyone without ready cash (or parents to pay for the debts) and that’s not right.
