Every day my inbox fills with stories of panic, madness and despair. The Edinburgh Fringe is upon us and the publicists are firing off emails begging critics to cover their shows. If the festival is a national X-ray, this year\u2019s image is shadowed by emotional frailty and a distinct sense of humour failure.<\/p>\n
The brochure is full of performers advertising their mental disorders (ADHD, OCD, PTSD, and so on), as if they were badges of achievement. The chair and chief executive of the Fringe say that the festival means \u2018giving yourself over to the (safe) hands of our performers allowing yourself to be swept away by their creativity\u2019. The word \u2018safe\u2019, in brackets, assures nervous visitors that their mental wellbeing won\u2019t be jeopardised. Clearly the aim is to cosset audiences rather than to stimulate or amuse them. As for making them laugh, that seems a distant memory.<\/p>\n
The Fringe once had a sense of freedom and danger. I used to head for a cramped little basement just off the Royal Mile where comedians performed from noon until midnight. No tickets. A bucket was passed around at the end of the show. Every hour, a new comp\u00e8re arrived with half a dozen mates from elsewhere on the Fringe and they delivered 60 minutes of chitchat and verbal swordplay. Often this involved singling out members of the crowd for good-natured abuse. Anyone with a sensitive temperament or, heaven forbid, an emotional disorder stayed away.<\/p>\n
There were no rules or special protections other than the criminal law. I was there in 2010 when a comedian lost patience with a drunken heckler and headbutted him to the floor. As the bleeding victim was carried upstairs to a waiting ambulance, the next performer was called to the mike. She was an American with a delicate southern accent. \u2018Good evening, Edinburgh. I just stepped over a pool of fresh blood to reach the stage. Is that normal in Scotland?\u2019 The building still exists but it specialises in fine dining these days.<\/p>\n
Back then, the Fringe specialised in monologues about mass murderers and war criminals. An actor would dress up as, say, Hitler, Stalin or Jeffrey Dahmer, and deliver an hour of bad-taste jokes to a crowd of unshockable punters. That genre seems to have expired. And yet right now the world stage is full of controversial and even monstrous characters who are ripe for mockery. The satirists seem uninterested. Westminster barely features at all. No comedian has targeted Keir Starmer or any of his scheming colleagues around the cabinet table. Last year\u2019s Liz Truss impersonator hasn\u2019t returned. No one wants to attack Trump, Farage, Zelensky, Bibi or Macron. The festival has lost its satirical teeth.<\/p>\n
\nClearly the aim is to cosset audiences rather than to stimulate or amuse them<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Another casualty is the joke of the Fringe award whose sponsors, U&Dave, have withdrawn their support. Last year\u2019s winner suggests that the pool of talent had all but dried up. \u2018I was going to sail around the globe in the world\u2019s smallest ship but I bottled it.\u2019 Not great. But it\u2019s better than the winner from the previous year. \u2018I started dating a zookeeper but it turned out he was a cheetah.\u2019 What a mess. Compare it with the winner of the inaugural prize in 2008. \u2018I can\u2019t believe Amy Winehouse self-harms. She\u2019s so irritating she must be able to find someone to do it for her.\u2019 The author Zoe Lyons would face a barrage of condemnation if she aired a quip like that today. There\u2019s an old Fringe joke about the BBC that has never been nominated for an award \u2013 for obvious reasons: \u2018It was a different era, the 1970s. The sex offenders\u2019 register was called the Radio Times.\u2019<\/p>\n
The one-liner may be passing into history. The culture of backchat or verbal jousting, which breeds quickfire gags, is under assault from many directions. Puritans denounce repartee as \u2018banter\u2019 and they consider it a form of \u2018toxic masculinity\u2019. Working from home has put an end to the informal games of one-upmanship that used to amuse staff in offices or after hours in the pub. And people are simply too scared to launch a mocking barb at a colleague in case it results in a lawsuit or a summons to an employment tribunal.<\/p>\n
A few critical voices have suggested that the demise of the one-liner has coincided with the ascent of female comedians who lack the epigrammatic powers of men. Mae West might dispute that: \u2018I used to be Snow White but I drifted.\u2019 So would fans of Nancy Mitford and Dorothy Parker. Even Marilyn Monroe was adept at crafting a decent gag: \u2018I\u2019ve been on a calendar, but never on time.\u2019 The Fringe alone isn\u2019t responsible for the death of the one-liner but it might do more to help.<\/p>\n
Most of the best comedy that the festival now creates is in response to its own restrictions. What perhaps marked the beginning of the end for the Fringe \u200bwas the outbreak of humourlessness and stupidity that led to the cancellation of Jerry Sadowitz\u2019s show at the Pleasance in 2022. The noted satirist of racism, sexism and homophobia was accused by the venue of racism, sexism and homophobia. \u2018We will not associate with content which attacks people\u2019s dignity,\u2019 declared the venue\u2019s press release. But attacking people\u2019s dignity was Sadowitz\u2019s whole shtick. As comedian Richard Herring pointed out, \u2018To complain about him being offensive is like asking the actor who plays Macbeth to be arrested for murder.\u2019<\/p>\n
\nTo remove \u2018content that attacks people\u2019s dignity\u2019 is to suppress almost every joke ever made by anyone<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
In this climate it\u2019s little wonder that the festival\u2019s one-liners have become so weak. To remove \u2018content that attacks people\u2019s dignity\u2019 is to suppress almost every joke ever made by anyone. Jokes hurt. That\u2019s why they exist.<\/p>\n
The spirit of cancellation, meanwhile, continues apace. A long-running show, Jew-O-Rama, has been pulled because of \u2018staff safety\u2019 concerns. The same fate has befallen Rachel Creeger\u2019s show, Ultimate Jewish Mother. And Philip Simon\u2019s solo effort, Shall I Compere Thee in a Funny Way?, has also been cancelled. He was informed that his views conflict with Banshee Labyrinth\u2019s \u2018stance against Israel\u2019s government and actions\u2019. This venue is a dank, underlit cavern tucked away in a cobbled side street and yet it addresses the world as if it were a permanent member of the Security Council.<\/p>\n
Perhaps there\u2019s a simpler explanation. A pub that sells fun to youngsters is vulnerable to changes in fashion and to boycotts orchestrated by online activists. Less harm will be incurred by cancelling a couple of performers than by risking an embargo that could lead to long-term financial damage. Understandably the venue wants to present this commercial decision as a high-minded desire to establish peace and justice across the world.<\/p>\n
It shouldn\u2019t be like this. Censoring comics harms the Fringe\u2019s reputation. A casual observer may conclude that the festival is engaged in a war against comedy, which in turn looks like an attack on the human spirit. Laughter is as natural as saying \u2018ouch\u2019 when you stub your toe. It\u2019s an emotional response to suffering, to tragedy, to being alive. \u2018Nothing is funnier than unhappiness,\u2019 says Beckett in Endgame \u2018It\u2019s the most comical thing in the world.\u2019<\/p>\n
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is on until 25 August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every day my inbox fills with stories of panic, madness and despair. The Edinburgh Fringe is upon us…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,107313,2197,1102,31356,10841,4884,113559,712,2764,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-310835","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-cancel-culture","10":"tag-comedy","11":"tag-edinburgh","12":"tag-edinburgh-festival-fringe","13":"tag-festivals","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-jerry-sadowitz","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-theatre","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310835","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=310835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}