Just spent the weekend in Edinburgh, enjoying the first weekend of the Fringe festival. Unlike last year, when as a Fringe-virgin I planned and booked tickets in advance, this year I simply turned up.
Found that a great way of spending the day was to try out the Free Fringe: well over 200 shows all through the day. Had a great deal of fun picking and choosing, and working out how to make best use of time. The shows themselves were surprisingly good, and I was more than happy to drop some 'beer money' into the pots at the end.
However, it all got me thinking what a typical fringe attendee was? As I looked around me, in the audience, in the Pleasance, on the Royal Mile, I wondered who had come to Edinburgh in the first place. Arts students? London journalists? International travellers?
Some statistics: around 400,000 people attend the fringe each year, around 1.8m tickets are sold. There are nearly 20,000 performers.
I wondered how many people showed up to Edinburgh from outside the UK without even knowing it was on. How many arty Londoners travel up for their summer every year? Are a lot of tickets sold to Fringe performers, who create a show simply to fund their trip to Edinburgh?
I have no answers. But this weekend I saw people from all over the world, heard accents and languages of all kinds spoken, and Edinburgh was basking in the glory of it all.
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