Edinburgh audit 2018

Hev bought me a mug with a Dalek as a Tunnocks teacake. And here we see my Edinburgh haircut, and the new Socks t shirts which, along with the Superheroes comic, sold quite well at the Gilded Balloon shop for the first time.

Another enjoyable Edinburgh comes to an end, with a month having flown by. My show was good, the audiences liked it and so did I, though they didn’t come in the numbers I would have liked (see below). Obviously the month was coloured by illness. That of Mum, which saw me leaving town and cancelling shows for the first time; of myself, which saw me getting a cold on day two so having to do shows with next to no voice and drastically reducing my flyering in the first week; and that of Hev, which she doesn’t want me to tell you all about, but has caused her a lot of trouble with her diet and, whisper it, included a visit to the Infirmary. We’re on top of things now, Mum’s in a care home and Hev’s slowly figuring out what she can eat, but these things certainly made the month memorable in lots of the wrong ways.

We saw lots of art, which was disappointing (as detailed here) and only two shows (as has become the norm, a dreadful state of affairs for which I feel stupidly guilty). I didn’t pull a single late night in the Loft Bar and did very little socialising or networking. I flyered, I performed, I sewed sock eyeballs back on and, in fact, made a whole new pair of Socks halfway through the run, I made no videos, and I felt good about my show, while actively planning next year’s. The subject will, I think, be the circus and music hall.

More than anything, this month leaves me head-scratching and over-analysing more than I have for many years. Why? Because my sales tanked and I can’t work out why.

As recorded in July, my advance sales before the Edinburgh run started were at record-breaking levels and everything was looking good. Then we had the major problem of Mum being not well and me having to leave Edinburgh for two days, coupled with me getting a cold on day two, both of which seriously affected my ability to flyer, and obviously removed two nights from our run. But then, as recorded in the second week of August, once I returned and got up to speed with flyering, I was finding it wasn’t working. And, though the city went from unusually quiet to its normal levels of busy, my flyering continued to be ineffectual.

In 18 years of promoting Edinburgh shows, I have never found flyering to be so unsuccessful. The old “Rule Of Flyering”, that one hour’s flyering equated to ten bums on seats, is out of the window. I have done five hours of good flyering in one day, and only see half a dozen sales added by the end. As you can see from the graph, whereas every year from 2013 to 2016 ended up with almost exactly the same total sales, this year has ended much lower, just about equalling the Olympic year of 2012. It would have been higher with the two missing days back in there, but not much. What has gone wrong?

To investigate this problem, I’ve looked at my blogs for the last eight Socks Edinburgh shows, seeing how many days were spent doing Comic Art Masterclasses (and thus unable to flyer), how many reviews I got, and other significant media coverage:

2009 - some reviews inc 4 star Scotsman, lots of classes, on GMTV & BBC Edinburgh - 2nd biggest sales ever

2010 - 6 reviews, Scotsman interview, included in 2 Top Tens, on Culture Show, on One Show, no classes - biggest sales ever 

2012 - 11 reviews, 2 shows a day, Olympic year - after a year off sales plummet from last time 

2013 - 9 reviews, 12 days classes & caricatures, Sitcom Trials - sales reach good level 

2014 - 3 reviews, 12 days classes, Newsnight & Edinburgh Extra - sales equal last year 

2015 - 6 reviews, 8 days classes, noted successful flyering, 3rd week slump - sales equal last year 

2016 - 7 reviews, 0 days classes, sales hold up 

2018 - 1 review, 4 days classes, flyering ineffectual, after a year off sales holed below the waterline 

I have no answer to this question. I take small consolation in hearing the horror stories of other acts, one of whom I spoke to said that, if she got 7 people in on her final night, she’d have been seen by a total of 100 people all month. That puts my moaning in context (I’ve been seen by over 1300, and am only moaning cos last time I was here that figure was 1600).

Things that used to be a novelty at Edinburgh and have now reached saturation:

Silent Discos

10 foot high posters of comedians

Drag queens with beards

Musicals about Brexit or Trump

Rain

So, as we head home, and struggle to remember The Hot Summer Of 2018 which seems years ago now (it ended the second we arrived in Scotland) I look forward to a busy week of schools, beginning Tuesday. I’ll update the notes below when I have a chance to research other peoples’ Edinburgh stories. Here’s to next year.

Other stories:

Edinburgh Fringe crowds grow by nearly a million in a decade - The Scotsman
(Article includes Fringe up 9% on last year, up 52% on 2009; Space sees 11% increase on last year; Official Festival slumped by £500,000 on last year's takings)

Andy Quirk's financial breakdown of his two Free Fringe shows - with graphs!
Reflections of a First Timer by Julian Lee
Underbelly's record breaking 2018 figures
Pleasance's record breaking 2018 figures
Comedy Guide's overview of all the Edinburgh Fringe 2018 stories (a good round-up of things I missed all month)

Comedian Sian Docksey's financial breakdown on her Free Fringe show (from which this is just one slide):

Shappi Khorsandi on the politics of reviewers

Brendon Burns announces he's retiring from Edinburgh

Brett Goldstein's stats (via @brettgoldstein)

The Award Winning Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre were Superheroes at The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 1st to 26th 2018 and will be on tour into 2019.