Ahead of the Free Fringe Benefit next Tuesday, Emma McAlpine talks to founder Peter Buckley Hill about how it all began and why the future of the Fringe is in free.
Peter Buckley Hill
For audiences and performers, going to the Edinburgh Fringe is an expensive business. Tickets can cost up to £20 a show and factoring in travel expenses, accommodation, food and drink, you’ve spent at least a few hundred quid in one weekend. For the comedians, who need to hire a venue and spend a month there; multiply that number by ten.
In 1996, folk musician and comedian Peter Buckley Hill (or PBH as he's better known in comedy circles) saw a way to reverse the commercialisation of the Fringe. Fed up with the vicious cycle of rising venue costs contributing to escalating ticket prices and dwindling audience numbers; he decided to set up his own free festival alongside it: “The whole thing works in a very moneyless way, we get the places free, we pass them on to the performers free and the performers pass them on to the public for free. The venues are happy as long as the bar bill is covered, and if they’re not, then they don’t come to us the following year.”
It seems a win/win set-up for all involved: the audience can see a free, quality-controlled show (optional contributions can be made afterwards) and as PBH puts it: “The comedians are much better off with us financially as well. Otherwise, you have to go to a space booker, hire the venue and pay a flat hire rate with ‘charges’ for various services. In exchange you get a small percentage back from the box office. I have known people on deals which wouldn't have yielded them a profit even if every seat for every performance had been sold! No one quite knows where the money goes but one thing is certain: it does not go into the pocket of the artist who makes the show happen. That artist will make a loss from anything between £5,000-£15,000.”
The FF is growing each year in size and poularity. Last year, it held 176 shows in 19 venues and this year it’s added non-comedy genres like theatre and spoken word. But it hasn’t all been plain-sailing. In the past, several promoters PBH recruited to help, turned against the ideals he strove so hard to put into practice: “Someone I won’t name actually attempted to boot me out of my own venue unless I charge the public on the grounds that ‘it wasn’t fair to other comedians’. Then the really big crisis came when I let an organisation help with administration. They stole three of my four venues, and now have their own free festival with a very similar name to mine. But they don't control quality. We try very hard to control quality because the public need to recognise that free doesn’t mean rubbish.”
Indeed, plenty of respected comedians take part in the FF, including erudite liberal Robin Ince: “2009 was the first year that I did a proper run on the free fringe and many thought I was foolish and insane for leaving the comfort of the established venues for the ignominy of the free fringe. Would I appear to have fallen from whatever plinth height I had reached? And what would "THE INDUSTRY" think? Bah, all nonsense, I performed three new shows a day and had more fun than I have ever had on the fringe before. I could barely smell the ego and paranoia that takes over from the smell of the Edinburgh breweries for the month of August.”
Robin Ince
Last year, PBH was awarded the panel prize at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, for embodying the ‘spirit of the fringe’. Having established and supported the FF out of his own pocket for the last 13 years, the panel could not be accused of making the wrong decision (as they were in 2008, when they presented the award to 'all performers for taking part').
Ince agrees: “Peter has taken on an immense task, ensuring quality and good rooms to play. It is a return to the idea of the fringe as a place for experimentation and fun. It has also seen a return of the fringe goer of yesteryear. The middle aged couples who used to traipse the Edinburgh cobbles with a cagoule, a heavily annotated fringe brochure and a walking stick were priced out. Now they're back, putting money in the bucket, having a great time and also helping make the free fringe a happy reminder of the past and the possibilities of the future.”
Next week there will be a FF benefit in London, because while it may be a moneyless experience for performers and artists, it costs Peter around £5000 a year in travel and admin expenses. "The benefit idea came from Sean Lock. I barely knew him and in one of the late night performers bars one year he came over and said "I admire what you’re doing let me headline a benefit for it.” This year's gig has a spectacular line-up, with names including Stewart Lee, Brendon Burns, Kevin Eldon, Robin Ince and Lucy Porter: "Because we the Free Fringe aren’t about money - I want it to be the best possible gig it can be if we’re charging people for it. There will be no comedy rubbish on the line up at all - everyone on the bill is excellent.”
The Free Fringe Benefit will be held at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Tuesday 19th January.
Click here to buy tickets
Photo credits: Jon Appleyard
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