a scaffolder by day and increasingly popular stand-up on the Scottish scene by night<\/a>, explained why the Fringe was beyond the means of a great many ordinary working class performers.<\/p>\n![\"Comedian](\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg)
Comedian Matt Black.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven at the best of times, for me to go and do a show at The Stand in Edinburgh, travelling there and back in a day, would cost me \u00a3100.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s before you include the cost of taking a day off work.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people at the Fringe are paying nearly \u00a33,000 for the cost of the venue, flyers and posters, and then there\u2019s travel, food and accommodation on top. It’s crazy – simply unaffordable for many of us.<\/p>\n
\u201cA few years ago, my fellow comedian Joe Sweeney did a show down there and he drove back and forth from the Highlands every day.<\/p>\n
People can obviously pay a bit less if they are local, but while I would have liked to have gone to the fringe this year, I came up with the idea of just taking the fringe show around a few Highland towns during the time of the fringe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Costs can exclude audience members, too, so Matt hopes the comedy tour will bring something new and different to those places.<\/p>\n
Tom Cairns<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you say to someone you do stand-up, people often ask \u2018oh, have you done the fringe?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThey like what they hear about the Fringe but have maybe never been, so we\u2019re aiming to take a bit of that to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephen Clark<\/p>\n
Guests on the tour will include Highland talents Rude and Good (Rab Mulheron & Joe Sweeney), Hazel Urquhart, Adam McLeod, Iain Duncan and Michael Herd.<\/p>\n
Matt has been instrumental in starting up Inverness Comedy Club, initially at the Market Bar and more recently at Tooth and Claw, with shows every month or two.<\/p>\n
The next will be on August 29, with the Glasgow comedian Al Thompson joining the fun.<\/p>\n
Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here<\/b><\/a> to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Highland comedy trio (from left to right): Tom Cairns, Stephen Clark and Matt Black. Heard the one about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,5554,1102,4884,19434,1501,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-287052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-community","10":"tag-edinburgh","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-inspire-me","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114906449419556740","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}