Fantasy Fringe

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Fantasy Fringe 〰️

We’re excited about the Edinburgh Fringe, but it’s clear it needs to change. A lot of people have a lot of ideas, but nothing has really happened yet. So we decided to ask the comedians themselves: in your fantasy, what would the Fringe look like? It might have been a mistake.

John Tothill has completely uncontroversially been given £300m by the Fringe Society. Unrelated, he’s booked a holiday to Greece in the middle of August and decided to channel £300m into moving the Fringe to Greece.

I was shocked by the amount of abuse I received on Twitter when it emerged I had been given a £300 million budget by the Edinburgh Fringe Society to spend entirely as I choose. It just goes to show that people really will find anything to complain about online.

No one appreciates more than me that this money ‘could have been spent elsewhere’ [sic], that ‘this was a wasted opportunity to do a huge amount of good’ [sic] and that I am ‘just a 26 year-old alternative comedian with no experience administering a budget and no understanding of what the term “sic” means in academic writing’ [sic]. Well, reader, serious financial and policy-driven experience I have not, but a Grade 8 in Clarinet, half a Bronze DofE and a damn good attitude I have in spades. When you think about it a little bit but not too much, that’s all one really needs to redesign the Edinburgh Fringe in one’s own Ozymandias-like image. Sick.

The first problem I encountered this year when organising the Edinburgh Fringe was that I had already booked a two-week holiday in the middle of August to go to Crete, which is a tiny Greek island only I know about. This presented a bit of a head-scratcher, since the Fringe usually happens in the month of August. I assembled a team of scientists (who were not NOT dogs I dressed up in lab coats if that makes sense) to figure out a solution. The scientists were useless. They offered no intelligent conversation and spent the whole day looking out the window waiting for their mums to come home. Thus it fell to me to brainstorm three possible options to solve my problem:

Cancel the Crete holiday.
Move the Edinburgh Fringe festival to July.
Dismantle most of the venues in Edinburgh and ship them, brick by brick, to the sunny island of Crete, so I could still perform my show AND have my hollibobs.

I won’t patronise you by going through the pros and cons of each option. After all, you didn’t elect me to flounder around and get nothing done. In fact, you didn’t elect me at all. I got the money because I slept with every single member of the Edinburgh Fringe Society at the same time (genuinely platonically, like how you would sleep together if you were all scared in a thunderstorm). But to cut a long story medium, Pleasance Courtyard, the mac ‘n’ cheese van on George Square and (in case I want to climb it when I have a day off) Arthur’s Seat are currently in transit to Mediterranean Europe.

I have had no choice but to get to Crete early for when the container ships arrive. I have assembled a crack team of builders (who are not NOT owls in hard hats if that makes sense) to help me reassemble the bricks and soil when it all gets here. So far the builders have been useless. They’ve eaten my whole holiday’s supply of mice and have done nothing but gain a reputation for wisdom across a surprising amount of folklore. I’ve got myself an Ouzo and am hoping everything works itself out. Let’s make this the best Edinburgh Fringe we’ve ever had.

John Tothill: The Last Living Libertine runs at Pleasance Courtyard from August 2-27th, 8.30pm. Tickets here

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