Fringe benefits

The Edinburgh Fringe is a cruel mistress but, for Irish comedians who have reached their peak on home soil, it can open doors to TV careers and international fame – if they survive it, writes BRIAN BOYD

IN 1947, eight theatre companies had the temerity to arrive “completely uninvited” to the Edinburgh International Festival. They were told there was no room at the Festival Inn and were pointed in the direction of Dunfermline, where there was some free theatre space to be had. Resisting the lure of Dunfermline, they instead staged their shows in improvised venues around the city, and a journalist referred to the companies as “being round the fringe of the official festival drama”.

The Fringe went on to dwarf the more high-art International Festival and has long since become the biggest arts festival in the world. Many household names have graced its stages but it’s an Irishman who now merits a bigger mention in Edinburgh Fringe history than any of the above. Last week it was confirmed that Jason Byrne has sold more tickets at the Fringe than anyone else in the festival’s 54-year history.

The second biggest seller the Fringe has seen? Ed Byrne.

Since his first proper show at the Fringe in 1997, Jason Byrne has sold 162,000 tickets. The main reason he holds the record is because, unlike names such as Peter Kay and Michael McIntyre, he didn’t use the Fringe just for a few years to provide him with a platform for TV stardom: he has returned each year for invariably sold-out month-long runs. On Wednesday he’s back onto the Fringe breach again with his newly minted status as the Fringe’s biggest ever seller.

“When I heard that last week, I just couldn’t believe it: that’s some record to have isn’t it?” says Byrne. “You’re so busy up there you never really look at the numbers in detail but I did know that I was the biggest selling act on the whole Fringe in 2007 and I was almost last year as well except for the fact that John Bishop arrived up and he was in a much bigger venue than I was.”

Byrne first went to the Fringe as a nervous newcomer in 1996 to try his luck in a talent competition called So You Think You’re Funny. “I remember I had to go up to Derry to do the regional heat and Patrick Kielty was hosting that,” he says. “I managed to get through the heat and into the big Edinburgh final. I remember the line-up of that year’s final: Tommy Tiernan was in it, as were [fellow Irish comics] John Henderson and Patrick McDonnell. Tommy beat me by one point in the final. So I came second, and John and Patrick came third and fourth. That was the Sunday night in Edinburgh, and the previous night Dylan Moran had won the big prize: the Perrier.

“I went back, in 1997, to share an hour-long show with Tommy Tiernan and, in 1998, we both did our first solo shows at the Fringe. Tommy won the Perrier that year, and I was featured in a TV programme called Edinburgh or Bust, which sort of threw me into the limelight a bit. The next year, 1999, I sold out my entire month-long run, and over the years since I’ve gone from 150-seater venues to 650-plus-seater venues. I’ve sold out every year: it’s mad. The people in the office tell me I’m always the first sell-out on the Fringe every year. In the last few years I’ve moved up to a 900-seater venue at the Assembly Rooms, and now I hold the overall record!”

Byrne could ignore the festival and pick up huge theatre gigs in comedy-starved London during August, but every year he’s one of the first to turn up and one of the last out of the closing party on the final night. “Edinburgh is my home in comedy,” he says. “It’s the place that made me the comic I am. It’s the hardest place you’ll ever gig. You’re not just thinking about your gig, you’ve radio and TV to do also, and it’s all day, every day, for a month. It’s exhausting, but you get back what you put in. It’s the best training ground for any comic. If you stay in Ireland, you’re only any good in Ireland. Go to Edinburgh and you can gig anywhere in the world.”

Edinburgh is vital for Irish comics, because in a small country, where the national broadcaster has nothing close to the budget of a BBC, you can reach a ceiling rapidly. Once you’ve reached a certain level and have done your own Olympia/Vicar Street gig and been a sit-down guest on The Late Late Show, there’s not much more here for you.

At Edinburgh, a comedian will be seen and judged not just by UK comedy bookers and agents and management teams, who might dangle all sort of interesting and lucrative contracts in front of successful acts, but also by TV and radio producers with the resources to do something meaningful with their talents. And there is an international element, too, with bookers from every comedy festival from Melbourne to Montreal weighing up future acts.

Following his Perrier win in 1996, Dylan Moran went on to television success with the acclaimed Black Books.After Tommy Tiernan won, in 1998, he walked straight into the Channel 4 sitcom Small Potatoes. And a lot of Dara O'Briain's TV success is down to his appearances at the festival over a number of years.

For this year's bunch, potential slots on Mock The Week, 8 out of 10 Cats and any number of TV panel shows beckon, providing a vital entry point into British television, enhancing their touring prospects and burnishing their profile. And you can make a direct correlation between a great Edinburgh performance and later TV stardom: So Graham Nortoncame straight from the Edinburgh Festival (in 1997, when Norton was nominated for a Perrier); The League Of Gentlemen(who won the award the same year) walked straight out of the festival and on to prime-time TV screens. Just as record companies don't sign a band until they've seen them play live, TV producers want to see if a comedian can hack it on stage before putting them in front of a TV audience.

But for every Jason Byrne in Edinburgh there are hundreds of broken, dispirited souls who have spent the year building up to doing a one-hour show, saving their pennies (it costs a minimum of €10,000 to put on a month-long run) only to live in fear of what is tremulously known as Black Monday. It is the most magnificently horrific spectacle you will ever see in the arts world.

Black Monday refers to the second Monday of the Fringe. By that date, a performer will have 10 nights of shows completed. If pretty much nobody has come to any of those shows, the venue owners will approach you on the night of Black Monday, smile pitifully at you, buy you a drink and suggest you pack up and go home so they can use the venue for an act that might just sell two or three tickets a night.

You see people, some of them medium-sized names and seasoned circuit acts, who have been crushed emotionally, financially and psychologically by the Fringe. With so many acts in attendance and so much competition for an audience, unless a comedian’s show “gets heat” in the first week (by dint of review or word-of-mouth), they are metaphorically taken out and shot. And there’s no more poignant sight than an act in tears on the platform of Waverly Station, waiting for the midnight train (the overnight is cheaper) back to London with their hopes, dreams and bank balance destroyed by the most ruthless festival in the world.

Neil Delamere is currently preparing for this year’s Edinburgh. It will be his fourth festival and he has built up an audience, moving over the years from a 50-seater venue to an 80-seater to a 150-seater. “For me, having an audience there is all important,” he says. “I remember my first ever run in 2004, and on the last night my agent bought me a box of chocolates as a ‘well done, you’ve completed your first ever Edinburgh’ gesture. I decided to share the chocolates with the audience at my show that night. Put it this way: I didn’t need to disturb the second tray of the chocolates.

“Earlier on that year not one person had shown up for one of the nights so I decided to cancel that performance. But there was a misunderstanding with front of house and a grand total of four people eventually arrived in. That show was like doing comedy in the Prohibition era: it was as if stand-up had been made illegal and we were doing something naughty. It was one of my best ever shows. The audience were all actors and I got them all up to do their party-piece monologues. A fantastic memory.”

The nightmare early years have paid off for Delamere. “I see it as an investment in my career,” he says. “Doing Edinburgh makes you bulletproof. A few years ago, my first gig after getting back from Edinburgh was MC-ing a show in Bray. I did 50 minutes without material. I was that sharp after Edinburgh. You can’t buy that, anywhere. What is heartbreaking, though, is trying to break through.

“Typically audiences will only want to go to see an act they already know about or an act that is getting five-star reviews. I’ve seen the most brilliant ever comedy shows at the Fringe get completely ignored because the glowing review was never published. I know of one act who got the Scotsman in during the first week, and it was a five-star review, but it didn’t appear in the paper until the last day of the Fringe. The act was distraught but kept saying, ‘Well, at least I can use it on my posters for next year’s show.’ ”

The financial cost and mental anguish deters a lot of acts. The Ballymun comic Eric Lalor has done one-off shows on the Fringe in the past but this year is opting to do his first month-long run on the Free Fringe. There is no admission charge for any of the shows on the Free Fringe (audiences can pay their own price, if they see fit, at the end of the show) and the acts aren’t charged for the use of the venues. “I wanted to do a full run at Edinburgh, just to get the monkey off my back. But, being a full-time comedian now, I weighed up the pros and cons of doing the Fringe or the Free Fringe and the latter won handsomely, purely because it’s the most cost-effective way for me to do it. Doing Edinburgh is so important to me. Anyone I’ve ever known who has done it has come back a better comedian: that’s my sole motivation. I know I’m going into the lion’s den.”

'It's a horrible place' at Edinburgh

Paddy Courtney ran away from an accountancy job to join the Edinburgh Fringe circus. “I’m never going there again,” he says. “I’ve seen comedians have breakdowns on the Fringe. If there isn’t one already, I would strongly advise a counsellor of sorts to make themselves available to any performer during their run . . .

“I haven’t performed there since 2002. It’s a horrible place as far as I’m concerned . . .

“I left my job as an accountant, in 1998, on a Friday in July, and the following Monday I started the first night of my first ever Edinburgh show. The decision to quit a fancy full-time job to pursue my dream of being my own boss at spinning yarns was made all the easier when I had my show produced by Karen Koren of the Gilded Balloon. Basically, I was guaranteed a wage every night, and she paid for my accommodation, too, and the accountant in me saw it as a great deal . . . The cost of performing an Edinburgh show is huge, financially and mentally.

“As a comedian it is a right of passage to perform there and something that you must have on your CV. It’s like a tour of duty and, like the old Vietnam vets would say, you just don’t know man, because you weren’t there man. I’ve seen comics leave these shores as the best of friends and return as sworn enemies because the evil of Edinburgh has invaded their souls.

“As the years pass, the fond memories I have of the five years I spent performing there from 1998 to 2002 come to the fore and the bad ones disappear.

“I’ve had some of my best and worst gigs at that festival and my advice to any comedian would be to work.hard and keep working hard and know that it only lasts for a few weeks. And keep off the booze.”