While planning for this, my first Edinburgh 2012 blog, it struck me that I'm not in Edinburgh and I won't be for the next few days. However, I thought it might be nice for me to do a bit of research into the beautiful city and the history of the festival.
I decided to see how Google could help me. Google, by the way have their motto, 'don't be evil' emblazoned on the wall of their offices, which always reminds me of President Obama's motto 'Don't not be President after the next election'. Google in the end made up for wrongly and illegally using their power as a search engine to endorse their own products ahead of those of their competitors, and gave me this gem of a quote about Edinburgh.
"Edinburgh is my favourite city. We'll be doing a lot of children's theatre and galleries."
Though this is more eloquent than they are, this is in fact not one of Carol Ann Duffy's poems... it is just something she said once. Incredibly of the seven quotes about Edinburgh that exist on the internet that was the least boring one.
Anyhow, regardless of Ms. Duffy's enlightening word-expulsion I remain entirely intent on seeing no children's theatre during my stay in Edinburgh because I am an adult and not a moron.
Another quote I came across, this time from one of Edinburgh's most brilliant minds David Hume was,
"Truth springs from argument amongst friends"
Something that when David Hume said to me, I responded "No it doesn't", unfortunately he had no idea how funny I was being as he was 200 hundred years too dead.
Unfortunately, the Edinburgh Festival has become a place where the majority seem unwilling to have any argument. Lots of my comedy contemporaries say to me that they would happily appear on 8 Out Of 10 Cats even though we are all aware that it is bad for the community, many of them, despite their intelligence and talent would also be willing to neuter their comedy in the balls just so they might tread the disgraced stage of the Apollo whilst McIntyre watches on from the wings, smoking a $100 bill and wanking. Some already have.
The Edinburgh festival was for a time a refuge for the young, experimental and intelligent to explore the art and to have the argument. The argument that David Hume found so beneficial is a slight bit different to the one to which I am referring - the friendly argument between the performer and the audience. The glory once lay in challenging the audiences' minds or hearts or both... Now we just take their money and in return tell them what they already knew.
It is the corporisation of the Edinburgh Festival that has ruined it as it has so much else. Companies want to make money, art is not their concern, so the management companies want the comedians that they sign to be TV-friendly, which roughly translates as bum cack.
There are two types of TV-friendly comedian; there is the sort of one that goes on The Roadshow and Panel Shows, they are the rarer kind because you can't be a complete moron and do that, and then there are your presenter comedians, they are everywhere, I call them haircut comedians. I might have been one myself had I not regurgitated bile every time I thought about being on MTV.
The hair cut comedians are usually signed to Avalon or some such morgue at the age of nine and given £20,000 to produce a show and to remain in debt to their own agent till time ends. Thus, Avalon never lose money as they will make that back out of said comedian's future earnings - they remain in the black whether or not their client gets that part in BBC3's Nothing, Fingering, Morons and Booze. Only the artist loses, never the company.
Nothing in Edinburgh is real anymore, it is a luminous cartoon nightmare. I feel it is my duty to argue with it, to perhaps extract some truth, to make perhaps one change. A start might be a new motto for the walls in the offices of Avalon. I don't know what, I think I'll Google it.
Alfie Brown: Soul for Sale @ The Edinburgh Fringe
2-26 Aug @ 18.25
Underbelly