Fighting the good fight - the Fringe Festival

There's been a lot of fuss over the Fringe's new comedy festival. That's a positive thing, says Andrew Eaton

A WHILE ago, some colleagues and I spent an enjoyable lunch trying to think of the ultimate headline-guaranteeing title for an Edinburgh Fringe show. It needed to be something that would grab attention immediately, ideally shock people, but mainly just arouse curiosity, in a "how on Earth are they going to make that work?" sort of way. Something like Jihad – The Musical, or Jesus: The Guantanamo Years (both real Fringe shows). A famous name would probably help, or at least the suggestion that fam

This being the Fringe, of course, reality swiftly topped fiction. This year there is an actual Fringe musical called Kiddy-Fiddler on the Roof ("sex, slander and outrage – all through the medium of song!") The title contains no reference to celebrity, which is a slight disappointment, but it has an offensive pun, so that's OK. Expect outraged headlines any time now.

The joy of Fringe launch week has always been in discovering all the new, frequently desperate ploys that Fringe folk dream up to get the public's attention. But there is a world of difference between a good PR stunt and a good show. Will Kiddy-Fiddler on the Roof actually be any good? I am not holding my breath.

This week, I have been feeling much the same way about the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. The launch of the Fringe's new "festival within a festival" has got everyone talking. It has also had a level of negative publicity generally reserved for shows with titles like Kiddy-Fiddler on the Roof.

For the Assembly Rooms, the Gilded Balloon, the Pleasance and the Underbelly, the Edinburgh Comedy Festival is, in theory, an opportunity to highlight all their comedy programmes more effectively, particularly in London. What they hadn't considered, it seems, is how self-serving – arrogant, even – the idea would appear to other comedy venues not included in this very official sounding new festival – particularly The Stand, the heart of Edinburgh's stand-up comedy scene, 12 months of the year.

That venue's boss, Tommy Sheppard, is a formidable self-publicist, and has spent this week busily painting his venue as the plucky outsider, full of Fringe spirit, taking on the corporate giant (whereas, in fact, the venues in question are smallish operations that struggle to survive like everyone else).

The move has also created bad feeling at the Fringe itself. The Comedy Festival, it seems, wants to have its cake and eat it. It is presenting itself as a substantial, independent festival in its own right, yet it still wants the PR benefits of appearing in the Fringe programme alongside all the other shows. The Fringe, obliged to treat all its venues even-handedly, cannot make a public fuss about the obvious unfairness of this. But Fringe director Jon Morgan was conspicuously distancing himself from the Edinburgh Comedy Festival this week, missing its press briefing on Wednesday and barely referring to it in his own press launch yesterday.

The Scotsman is, of course, the Assembly and Pleasance's media partner, and proud of it. Indeed we are giving away the four venues' new joint brochure with some editions of the paper tomorrow (we are also giving away the full Fringe brochure next Saturday). But we too have concerns about the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. Will the non-comedy shows at the big four venues suffer as comedy becomes the focus? Is the new brochure going to confuse audiences and hurt smaller venues? (Its critics would argue that this is exactly its intention). Is this the beginning of the break-up of the Fringe itself, given that the shows in the Edinburgh Comedy Festival amount to a substantial percentage of the Fringe's programme? These are things that need close scrutiny in the next few months, and we will not shy away from criticism when and where it's appropriate.

One worry is that, in serving their own interests, the big four venues could potentially generate the kind of headlines the Fringe really doesn't need at a time when it faces more competition than ever from rival festivals such as Manchester. There are few things the London media love more than a story about Scots who seem unable to run things without squabbling among themselves. (The Scottish press cannot resist it sometimes, too.)

And how do you get headlines at this year's Fringe? So far, it looks like the most surefire tactic is to attack the Edinburgh Comedy Festival. Both Tommy Sheppard and comedian Doug Stanhope have been at it this week. Many others will surely follow. It's a good story, after all – the underdogs battling the power of the Man.

But the Fringe is more complicated than that. One of the odd paradoxes of Edinburgh in August is that it is a ruthless, survival-of-the-fittest environment that depends entirely on people's goodwill to thrive. Every year, vast numbers of performers from all over the world descend on the capital. A huge number will leave broke and disappointed, yet more keep coming back. It's the excitement and the buzz of the place, the feeling that everyone is full of passion and positivity about what the Fringe stands for – creativity, discovery, innovation, exchanging ideas.

The Edinburgh Comedy Festival has touched a nerve because, superficially at least, it seems to run counter to that Fringe spirit. It looks like powerful people throwing their weight around at the expense of others. The big four venues would tell you this is nonsense, that they struggle too, hence this pooling of resources. But if this sounds hollow to some, it is their own fault.

The Edinburgh Comedy Festival, in the end, reminds me of one of those Fringe shows with a really eye-catching, headline-grabbing title. And the thing is, those are often not the shows people are still talking about at the end of August. The Fringe, you tend to find, is at its best when it sneaks up on you.

In terms of venues, that means a balance of power that constantly shifts, such as when the Underbelly emerged from nowhere to become a big player. Another reason the Comedy Festival has touched a nerve is that it feels like an institution staking its claim to be the establishment. But the whole point of the Fringe is that it's anti-establishment. It is subversive. It's the Fringe, after all. This is going to be an interesting summer.