A SPECIAL REPORT
The Press Accreditation for this year’s Edinburgh Fringe appeared in our office e-mail inbox recently. We are again heading to the biggest arts and entertainment festival on the planet in August. Mark Ritchie writes;
Last time around I made two short and entirely separate visits to Edinburgh during the month-long Fringe of the Edinburgh Festival in 2025. This was entirely due to the sheer expense involved. Most of the hotel prices are blood curdling for a publication such as this one, where we are forced to being as frugal as possible in order to balance the books.
Over the years, I have learned many of the tricks involved in saving money in the Scottish capitol. Here are just a few.
Avoid pubs and restaurants on The Royal Mile.
Use the university and/or local authority operated facilities, many of which are aimed at performers and press.
Plan to attend venues and see shows/events within strolling distance of each other.
Use public transport where possible. It’ll save you a fortune!
Last time around I bumped into a former work colleague at The Stage, Paul Vale, who still writes reviews for that publication. Both Mr Vale and myself, along with hundreds of other journalists, have to be careful with money. The different between Paul and myself is that his expenses are presumably being paid in full by his employer and my former exployer, whereas I am my own employer.
Edinburgh Fringe supremo Susan Russell recently wrote to attendees with some great and happy news. Cameron Duck is now in post, helping with media enquiries. Cameron has returned to working at The Fringe, after a successful spell during The Fringe of 2024. The media centre last year was situated in the Grassmarket area and speaking for myself, I always find the assistance media people receive invaluable.
My original point was the cost of attending and covering The Fringe. We do reasonably well with download sales from the event, but as it was vital to get the reviews online as quickly as possible and we have to make them free to view for website visitors, I am sorry to say we barely covered our costs.
On the plus side, covering The Fringe lends us a certain gravitas as a publication and perhaps even more importantly, I just love going there! My favourite area is around the University and the Square, which is such a wonderful meeting place. Just about all of the university facilities are converted into venues for comedy and other types of live shows.
Another real favourite area of mine is a collection of venues around The Pleasance theatre and the tiny little performance spaces attached to a pub called The Pear Tree.
There is fun around just about every corner and street. Admittedly some of the venues work better than others, but that too becomes part of the fun.
Some amazing talent has been unearthed at The Fringe over the years. However, some people claim that the cost of putting shows on and staying in Edinburgh can be prohibitively expensive, which can make The Fringe appear rather elitist. In my view, the benefits surely outweigh this criticism.
For many of the very young performers, after The Fringe their lives follow different courses, far away from the entertainment industry, but we can be sure that many Edinburgh experiences will last a lifetime.
