Leila Navabi: F*ck the Edinburgh Fringe Festival - it’s time for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Fantasy Fringe

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Fantasy Fringe 〰️

Images: Collective14 Imagery

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.

Leila Navabi reports on the final collapse of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and its replacement by a much more hirsute alternative, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The original embodiment of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival had become completely inaccessible at its unfortunate, messy culmination in August 2022. Social and economic injustice reaching fever pitch on the backdrop of overflowing bins permeating the Scottish breeze with decay forced artists everywhere to rethink the model. Even the most middle-class magicians, aristocratic acrobats and county-dame comedians threw in the towel in protest of mounting costs and inequities towards those wishing to showcase their work.

But all is not lost. This year, 2023, the city of Edinburgh will be hanging up its hat on the arts front and will instead be home, throughout the whole month of August, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival! No, not the one we all know and love/hate, but a more literal incarnation.

Attendants from all over the globe will hit the city to showcase their fringes. From side-fringes, to feathered, to frosted tips; we can expect to witness trims of all styles and sophistications on the cobbles this Summer.

Gertrude Fridge, of Bolton-on-Swale said: “Honestly, I’ve been thinking about getting a fringe for years and this really was the push that I needed to make it happen. I love my new haircut and I can’t wait to share it with the world.”

Leila Navabi, who was due to be making her debut this year with an incredible, genre-defying hour of punk musical-comedy about the monopolisation of minority identity said: “Originally I was a bit sad because I had worked really hard and felt really proud of my show. I was excited to share it! But now I’ve got this fringe, I actually no longer feel the need to be validated by strangers applauding and revering my art. I get all the affirmation I require from the smiles that come my way when people see me parading around with this quirky cut!

There had been a mass concern prior to the original festival’s cancellation about the absence of any awards for comedy due to lack of funding. But the new Edinburgh Fringe Festival is thrilled to announce, exclusively to LMAOnaise 'the Fringe Awards', sponsored by fringe aficionado Claudia Winkleman.

Chair of the awards, Nica Side-Burns said: “We are honoured to be celebrating the best of bangs through these awards, and who better to sponsor us than the queen of fringes herself”.

Claudia Winkleman said: “I can’t wait. I love my fringe. Glad it’s caught on for the rest of the world at last.”

Leila Navabi: Composition runs at the Pleasance Courtyard (The Attic), August 2-27th, 9:45pm, tickets here.