Their appearance was low-key, but successful. In the first year, they attracted big enough audiences and impressed people sufficiently to encourage others to come back the year after with a similar number of performances on the periphery of the main International Festival. It was during the 1948 festival that the event received its name, when Scottish critic Robert Kemp, who had turned up to review some of the events, wrote in one of his articles: ‘Round the Fringe of the official Festival drama, there seems to be more private enterprise than before…I am afraid some of us are not going to get home in the evenings!’
What he was referring to was the tendency of the Fringe to stage more shows at night. Whereas the majority of the International Festival events took place during the day, the Fringe shows played to audiences wanting something to do when night began to fall. To entertain them at a time we now regard as the norm – perhaps with a drink in their hand rather than in the traditionally rather stiff-shirt environment of a concert hall or grand theatre.
It was a way of doing things that would later add to the festival’s appeal as the place to go to be entertained in a more light-hearted fashion, without needing to adhere to the conventions of the day.
In the first few years, all the acts that turned up for the Fringe did so completely independently of each other. There was no co-ordination, no programming and no curation of those that took part. Groups from Cambridge, Oxford and Durham Universities came to join their colleagues from the equivalent Scottish learning establishments.
Many began to see this less-organised aspect of the Fringe as one of its strong points. Acts that turned up to take part did not have the luxury of pre-publicity and marketing. They were forced to perform to the top of their abilities in order to get the crowds in, or they would end up as commercial failures. It was a case of ‘entertain or die’. Anyone who attended did not have the advantage of knowing that an act had been chosen for its previous record, but they could be sure the actors and theatre producers would be trying their hardest to impress people. It was a Darwinian ethos that echoed through the ages to today, with acts surviving purely because of their ability to put bums on seats.
Originally, the groups that turned up tended to put on fairly traditional theatre. In 1947, Shakespeare was performed, alongside more avant-garde offerings such as Strindberg and T S Eliot. But, as time went on, the Fringe began to become increasingly an outlet for more experimental or original work.
It became a place where theatre writers and directors could try out new work to see whether it was likely to get an audience if it went elsewhere. Many of the shows began to be more lighthearted, with increasing numbers of revues appearing on the bill.
In 1951, the first signs that some sort of organisation would soon start to evolve came when Edinburgh University students opened a drop-in centre for Fringe performers offering cheap food and a bed for the night. By 1954, that had coalesced into an agreement among some of the groups taking part to hold a meeting before the start of the festival to discuss working together. At first, it was agreed that they would establish a joint box office, arrange publicity and produce a joint programme. In that year, 13 groups took part, but not all of them agreed to take part in the joint arrangements.
In 1958, the Festival Fringe Society was created, making the term Fringe official, and setting the boundaries for the events that were not covered by the International Festival. Its constitution was written in line with the ethos that had brought the first eight groups together in 1947: that there should be no vetting of or restrictions on any person or group wanting to take part. It was a principle that was to stay at the heart of the festival right up to the present day and one that would ultimately lead to its success.
In 1959, the year after the society was formed, 19 groups took part. By 1962, 34 were on the bill and Edinburgh University was already complaining it couldn’t cope with the numbers involved.
It was around this time that performers who would later go on to make their names in television, began appearing. With its atmosphere of freedom and experimentation, the Fringe provided many of those who later became Britain’s most famous and distinguished writers and actors the chance to try out something that hadn’t been seen before.
One of the most famous was not actually in the Fringe at all. Beyond The Fringe, which appeared in 1960, was a stage revue show starring Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett. Despite its name, or possibly as revealed in its name, it was in fact part of the International Festival. Its mix of sketches about current affairs and British society and willingness to cock a snook at the establishment, is regarded as having heralded a wave of political satire that much later came to dominate the world of light entertainment. Have I Got News For You can trace its lineage right back to the revues of which Beyond The Fringe was the most famous early version.
In the late 1950s, Derek Jacobi appeared in a sixth-form production of Hamlet, playing the lead role. The first performance of Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead also took place at the Fringe in 1966.
In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, an increasing number of student groups began to use the evenings at the Fringe venues to perform revue shows, giving them a chance to supplement the amount they were earning from the more serious theatre they would perform in the daytime. Student groups might perform a Shakespeare play during the day and then put on a more humorous show later that night, to help fund the cost of staying in the city.
The Monty Python team members were among those who took part in shows of this type in the 1960s. Some appeared as members of Cambridge University’s Footlights groups that became regular visitors to the Fringe; others with the Footlights’ Oxford University equivalent. The Fringe was a rite of passage for young talented performer and writers who could cut their teeth in front of a receptive audience and became a testing ground for many of those who later went on to become the mainstay of British TV comedy of the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie, Rowan Atkinson and Douglas Adams, were among some of those from Cambridge University who took to the stage along with the Python members during that period.
With such talent and originality on show, the Fringe began to expand rapidly. Under the direction of Alison Moffat between 1976 and 1981, the number of companies performing rose from 182 to 494, making it at that point already the biggest arts festival in the world. Its expansion was driven by its attractiveness to performers of genres that, up until that time, had had few outlets for the kind of material they wanted to perform.
As well as revue shows, the Edinburgh Fringe increasingly became a home for the what became known as the one-man-show, which allowed every actor with an idea they were keen to develop, the chance to turn it into a show and put it on for an audience willing to see something new and untested.
In 1981, a Cambridge Footlights revue called The Cellar Tapes, featuring Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery, with extra material by Sandi Toksvig among others, went down a storm, winning the inaugural Perrier Award. The award, for the best show in the Fringe, had been set up to support young and up and coming talent. It provided the spur needed to draw more comedy acts to the Fringe and soon all of the country’s funniest people were doing their best to be crowned the best act there.
Later winners included a litany of comedians who went on to be top-rated stars. Those who later won the Perrier Award included Armstrong and Miller, Jeremy Hardy, Sean Hughes, Frank Skinner, Steve Coogan, Lee Evans, Alan Davies, Chris Addison, Dylan Moran, The League of Gentlemen, Al Murray, Richard Ayoade’s Garth Marenghi, and Daniel Kitson. In 1995, Jenny Éclair became the first and only female winner for Prozac and Tantrums. In 2005, the Perrier Awards changed their name, later becoming the Edinburgh Comedy Awards.
Throughout that time, although the festival continued to expand, the number of traditional venues didn’t increase significantly. To cope with the rise in the number of acts, a solution was found that became anothe
r facet of what many people enjoy about the Fringe – the reuse of all types of venue throughout the day for a wide variety of acts.
During a typical day at the Fringe, all the major venues will see several performers putting on different types of show. In addition, an extraordinary array of ordinary establishments, ranging from pubs, to small halls, to tents, to basements, will be commandeered and turned into places where shows can be put on. Whereas, in the 1950s and 1960s, there would typically be only one group per hall, today a single performing space would be used by up to seven different shows per day.
As a result of the rise of stand-up comedy, which had gone from being performed in a few select venues in the early 1980s to pubs across the country by the late 1990s, solo comedians were increasingly encouraged to play the Fringe to see if their acts could compete with shows featuring several performers. Tents and marquees, put up especially for the four-week run, began to rival pubs and small halls as the places where people could see high quality acts.
In 2008, when Sarah performed Sarah Millican’s Not Nice, comedy finally overtook drama as the most-performed type of performance genre at the Fringe. Before that point, drama had been the dominant art form.
While there are still hundreds of serious dramas available to see, most people who now go to the Fringe expect to see something that will make them laugh. The number of comedy acts reflects that desire and many of the biggest shows are seen by thousands of people throughout August.
Today, the Fringe has totally eclipsed the International Festival in size and scale. But in creating such a gathering of people interested in performance and arts, the Fringe has become a magnet for those involved in other arts so that the Fringe and International Festivals now share Edinburgh with five other festivals in August every year. There is an art festival, the Royal Military Tattoo, a book festival, a film festival and a television festival all taking place around the same time.
Comedians who perform at Edinburgh now find themselves rubbing shoulders with not just artists and composers, but with TV producers and production company executives – exactly the sort of people they need to meet if they want to make the leap from stand-up to radio or TV.
Lynne Parker, the founder of Funny Women, and promoter of women’s comedy in general, has said Edinburgh is unrivalled in providing a platform for people like Sarah when they are on their way up. She told the British Comedy Guide website: ‘It is expensive, time-consuming and sometimes disheartening but there are lots of reasons to showcase yourself at Edinburgh, which is the toughest kind of “trade fair” imaginable with an unrelenting public to attract and amuse.
‘Getting recognition by winning an award of any kind does help as long as you milk it. The Foster’s Edinburgh Awards is the big ticket. Having a successful sell-out show at the Fringe can help put your name on the map, as much as being nominated for the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Awards. Some acts go back there year after year without even a whiff of an award but still pack in the audiences and gain massive exposure that leads to other work.
‘Miranda Hart was performing in a small venue at the Pleasance when I first went to the Fringe in 2003 – this was her test bed for the material, which has become the mainstay of her hugely successful BBC series, Miranda. She performed until she got noticed – trying out her ideas on Fringe audiences and honing her craft as a writer and performer.
‘The Fringe is rich pickings for talent scouts looking for a range of women to cast in any number of roles, funny or straight acting. The chutzpah it takes to write, produce and present your own show in the world’s largest arts festival is not for the faint hearted. Most acts, not just women, work for years before their big break and the real money comes in from TV and DVD deals, commercial voiceovers, acting roles and sell out tours.’
In the last five years the Fringe has gone stratospheric. In 2008, the Fringe featured 31,320 performances of 2,088 shows in 247 venues. That means in just four years, it has added 600 shows and more than 10,000 performances.
With such a huge range of people taking to the stage and so many jokes told, the competition to make an impact is extremely intense. But the rewards for those who are successful are immense.
As well as the overall prize in the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, (formerly the Perrier Awards), there is now an award for ‘best joke’, which often gets as much coverage as any other story from the event. Sarah regularly gets nominated for the award.
Sarah has acknowledged the importance of the Fringe as a honing exercise to make her shows as good as possible. But she says it also helps her improve over time so that every time she comes back, each year is better than the last.
She told the Daily Record: ‘What I like is it shows progression. That’s all you ever want, to just be learning and getting better. It means if the show is rubbish thousands of people will hate you instead of hundreds, so you have to make sure it is doubly good. I don’t want to let anyone down. Tickets are expensive for everybody, you just want to make sure people get their money’s worth.’
But as well as what it offers her as a performer, like many other comedians, Sarah loves what the Fringe offers for punters as well – the chance to see other shows and experience some top-notch laughs.
While at the festival one year, she told fellow comedian Richard Herring during one of his podcasts: ‘It was one in the morning and two little kids came in they said they had tickets to see Daniel Kitson, in my opinion the greatest comedian the UK has produced, and these kids said they couldn’t go, and did we want the tickets, and of course we did. We got there and it was amazing.
‘But during the show, it’s a testament to how good Daniel Kitson is, someone behind us threw up on my friend’s back, fully all over her back. Five people around us got wet wipes out and tissues and just cleaned her up and we stayed. That was how much we wanted to see Daniel Kitson.’
In several interviews, she says she regularly circles up to 80 shows because there are so many she wants to see. Despite that, she usually only manages to see between 10 and 15.
Sarah admits that with all the pressure to do well, Edinburgh can be a stressful place for a performer. With so many performers taking to the stage, not all will enjoy large audiences. Even within the month that shows are put on, audiences for the same act can fluctuate wildly. She admitted to the Edinburgh Festival Guide in 2011, such pressure and stress has left her crying without knowing why, by the time the third week comes around.
In Edinburgh, even the biggest and best comedians can have no idea whether anyone will turn up. But despite her fears, Sarah has always been the darling of the Fringe – and as her star continues to rise, it’s almost guaranteed she always will be.
CHAPTER 19
Performing for Royalty
‘It’s an honour to be performing at the Royal Variety performance – I’m preparing for a very churny belly on the day.’
By December 2010, Sarah was ready to enjoy a welcome break from her exhausting Chatterbox tour. She’d hardly been home since July, and thoroughly deserved some much-needed down time, as well as a long overdue catch up with her friends and family.
But before she could put her feet up, Sarah first had to head to London for a night – because she had just received the best early Christmas gift ever: an invite to perform at The Royal Variety Performance. A gala evening held annually in Britain, the show consists of family entertainment including comedy, singing, dancing, magic and a whole host of other acts. Organised on behalf of the Entertainment Artistes Benevolent Fund, various senior members of the royal family put on their gladrags to attend, and the show is always televised and shown to millions of viewers.
First held in 1912, the variety show is now a British institution, which many see as a Christmas tradition, seeing as it is always held in late November or early December. Sarah felt honoured to be invited to perform, especially when she learned Prince Charles would be in the audience at London’s swish Palladium Theatre. Along with his wife Camilla, he would also undoubtedly b
e in fine spirits – as his son Prince William had just proposed to his long-term girlfriend, Kate Middleton.
The show would be an incredible evening to be part of, and has had a rich and interesting history of performances. When The Beatles performed there in 1963, John Lennon made a statement that has since passed into legend. ‘For our last number I’d like to ask your help,’ he said. ‘Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery…’
Controversially, Stephen K Amos told the 2007 audience that he’d like a show on TV, but that the BBC’s diversity policy meant Lenny Henry would have to die first. Ouch. And HRH herself only knows what The Queen made of Lady Gaga’s 2009 performance… The eccentric pop starlet wore a full-length red latex dress, with a 20ft train, while suspended 30ft in the air – alongside her piano.
So, along with a place in the history books, royal approval beckoned… Sarah was incredibly excited and so were her family, who she immediately rang and invited to the night. ‘To be able to bring those who have supported my daft career for years to the Palladium, feels like a career milestone,’ she told local newspaper The Press and Journal. ‘I’m preparing for a very churny belly on the day. Four of my family are making the trip down and my mam is buying a new outfit “to meet the Queen in”. I’m not sure if she’s realised it’s not the Queen and even if it was, she doesn’t shake the hands of the whole audience.’
But as much as her mum was looking forward to the possibility of touching royalty, Sarah seemed more excited about meeting her music heroes – heartthrobs Take That, who would also be performing on the night. ‘I’m a massive fan and actually squealed when I heard they were on,’ she told the paper.
Even though she had been performing to thousands over the previous few months, nerves suddenly began to get the better of her. ‘The performance is nerve-racking. As soon as it’s over, I’ll then get nervous about the meet and greet. Then I’ll get nervous about the after-show party. Then I’ll get nervous about missing the train the next day,’ she gabbled.
Sarah Millican--The Queen of Comedy Page 17