Is Edinburgh Quieter This Year?

After two weeks, I've finally spotted one of our quad posters, on the far side of The Meadows facing away from the road. Still have yet to find the other poster.

Is Edinburgh Quieter This Year?

I’ve read nothing about the Fringe-going visitor population of Edinburgh being any lower than previous years, and I’ve not read any show complaining  about low audience numbers. So, I’ve got to ask: is Edinburgh quieter this year? 

I’ll be the first to put my head above the parapet and say my audience numbers are lower than previous years and the streets look relatively quiet to me.

The Socks’ Superheroes show is not doing badly, and by the standards of a lot of shows I know we’re doing well. I know this anecdotally, from having seen the size of queues going into other shows in my building. But looking at my sales graph, which shows me the Scottish Falsetto Socks sales for every one of their 10 years of shows, I’m looking at crowds that are just that bit smaller than before.

And it’s not as if we’re not going for them. Yesterday (Tuesday) I did the longest stint of flyering so far this year. The passing punters of Bristo Square got five hours of quality flyering from me. They were good (ie the sort of people who look like they go to comedy and theatre), they were receptive (they took the flyers and laughed and said thank you), they looked as likely to come to the show as any punters I’ve seen in my 18 years of Edinburgh flyering. 

I even got to exit-flyer the audience of Chortle Fast Fringe where the Socks had just done a cracking three minute slot. You can’t do better and more efficient flyering than I did on Tuesday 14th August.

But despite all that, Kev F’s Theory Of Flyering failed to be borne out. My theory, established in 2001 and tested every year since, hypothesises that 3 hours of flyering will equate to 30 bums on seats. Celebratory blogs like this one from 2015 show me adding 100 sales in a day through intense flyering. Tuesday’s 5 hours of flyering turned the morning’s figure of 17 tickets sold to a final tally of just 36 tickets sold. 

And it’s not as if we could be suffering bad word-of-mouth. This year’s show is in perfect shape now, with audiences laughing throughout and giving me great direct feedback. I know it’s vain, and could be self-deluding, but I think you know when your show’s good (for example, in 2015, I didn’t feel my show, Minging Detectives, was the best, and in fact found myself apologising for it in conversations with fans a year later). This year I have no such doubts. Superheroes is a hilarious show, and songs like Bechdel Test,  Avengers Reel and Dead Ringer For Superman deserve 4 star reviews on their own. But we’ve had no reviews yet, which can’t be helping. 

And we have crowds that, though lovely and voluble - and seemingly full, thanks to fellow performers getting in with their passes and filling up the back rows - just don’t include as many paying customers as past years. Thanks to the double oddity of having to cancel two shows in week one for family reasons and flyering less in week one because of my cold, our sales graph is deceptively low. But if you close up the two-day flatline on the graph, total sales for 2018 are behind every year except for 07 (debut show) 08 (Return) and 12 (the notorious Olympic year). Remember, just three weeks ago, we were looking at record-breaking advance sales. Suggesting that our core punters are as strong as ever, it’s the passing trade that’s fallen off. 

So, I put the question out there, is Edinburgh quieter this year? Is any other show, which has been here before, seeing smaller attendances than before? Is anyone feeling that the bars are quieter, the streets are emptier, and the punters are staying away?

Or, horror of horrors, is it just us?

UPDATE. 8pm, twelve hours later i've had lots of responses to this blog. As well as conversations on the street with three comedians and two reviewers, all of whom agreed that things were quiet this year, these Facebook comments came in. My further thoughts are below them.

Patricia Silver yes it seems quieter this year

Daphna Baram It is quiet for me but this is my first full run since 2015 and my venue is a bit off the beaten track.

James Worthington We felt last year was much quieter than most, especially than the year previous. Is it dying out?

Dave Flynn I'm a punter at the Fringe, who has been coming here since 2007. I've seen 25 shows so far this year, and I've never been to so many packed out venues before. 

Steve Day I've not noticed it being quiet. The pavements seem, if anything, more thronged than I can remember. I've been delighted with my numbers.

James Cook Personal perspective from the 3 shows I do:

1. A kids show at 10:45am - never done one before. Smallest crowd has been 3 families, biggest about 15. Increase on previous years - infinity per cent.

2. Board Game Smackdown. 3rd fringe in the biggest venue yet (100 cap) not uncommon for us to have standing room only and have had to turn people away a handful of times. Increase on previous years: easily 50%

3. A stand up show. Only the second non themed show I’ve done. Had 11 in last night and was disappointed - two years ago I would have been happy with that. Have been getting around 25, 50 at weekends.

Paul Savage Defo quieter.

Mill Goble Definitely quieter on the press front, and when flyering 12-1, 85% of the people I see are other folk doing shows or Spanish tourists. Of the five or so shows I've seen, they've probably been averaging about 35-50% full.

Lindsey Marie Silver There are more meeting places/watering holes this year. I think that’s why it feels quieter out and about.

Alex Petty I’ve not noticed it being quieter. cowgate is heaving and even more dangerous to pedestrians than ever, the mile is packed and venues are reporting increased takings - though a small increase rather than a giant leap. Show numbers around my venues seem to be good overall too from reports I’ve had.

Paul Currie It is apparently according to the taxi drivers .. and they know

Ewan Leeming Anecdotally:

     1/ We're printing a lot more than usual - especially more flyers which generally means people let down by big companies or making last minute change of plans.

     2/ Performers in central venues generally saying bigger audiences.

     3/ Performers in less central areas generally saying lower audiences.

     4/ Niche acts reporting bigger audiences.

Anthony Jeannot Nothing to compare it to, so not super helpful, but in a very small venue, I did not need to flyer this year and had it 70-100% full right through the run. In my first run, if this is what it's like in a down year, I'd love to see it at full tilt.

Andre Vincent (on an independent thread): 

The Voodoo Rooms are not getting the traffic it used to get and they need bums on seats. 

Pete Harris My experience this year is an noticeable increase in punters, probably, in part, to do with the good weather in the first two weeks. 

So, my further thoughts? The people above who are happy with their numbers, eg James, Steve, Alex are in Free Fringe venues (though others, eg Voodoo Rooms, in FF are struggling). Could it be that what punters there are will take a punt on free, but not on paid?

My new theory, conjured up this afternoon, is that a new generation of millennial punters may be used to the concept of "A Festival" as a thing you pay to go to, where you meet friends, you hang out and eat and drink, and you'll watch acts performing for free - a la Glastonbury, Latitude etc - but you don't think of paying money in advance to watch an act.

Whereas, once upon a time, people went to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to watch a range of theatre, art and comedy, they now to go Edinburgh to "be at a Festival". But the seven-shows-a-day punter, with their tightly planned schedule and their deep pockets willing to take a punt on seeing something they've never heard of before, is an ancient beast on the brink of extinction.

Look at Bristo Square & George Square. Hundreds of people are sat at tables, drinking beer and coffee, and eating at a bigger range of street food stalls than ever before - just like they did the previous month at Latitude, Reading and Larmer Tree (is it any coincidence that all those open areas now have mock grass flooring to resemble a Festival in a field?). If someone had come up to them at one of those field-festivals waving a flyer asking them to pay an extra ten quid to sit inside and be performed at for an hour they'd have thought you were mental. Why, they ask quite reasonably, are these Edinburgh nutters breaking the rules of Festivals by doing it here?

So that's my follow up question. Have Festivals ruined the Fringe?

The Award Winning* Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are Superheroes at The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe every night at 10.30pm  until August 26th 

*Winners of the Bath Comedy Festival Lovehoney Best Joke Award 2018

Sellout and script edits

Hooray, at last we had our first sellout of 2018 on Saturday night. It’s taken longer to achieve than any previous year but we finally did it and can hope to do it again.

The two days off have really distorted my beloved graph, and the cold that I’ve just got to the end of drastically reduced the amount of flyering I’ve been able to do. That, coupled with a suspicion that week one in Edinburgh was quieter overall than past years, mean that we’re really letting the side down as far as record breaking sales are concerned. But last night the voice had returned in full and I was able to perform the show as it should be done, albeit with the usual prop cockups, which we seem to turn to our advantage.

The show itself, which is what it’s all about, is now in cracking shape thanks to a script edit and slight rewrite I gave it while I was in Kibworth. It had been sagging halfway through, and now it flows. Here’s the final running order we’ll be sticking with, with notes:

Wayne/Ditko/Flash - lots of audience rapport in opening

I’m A Sock

Award winning/ Emmy - most people don’t get this gag, but sod em

Cosmopolitan

Bob Kane

Wonderful World song

Motion Capture

Scottish superheroes

Maguffin

Batman & Joker

Audience suggestions - getting some good adlibs at this point, from asking the audience to suggest the most obscure superheroes they can. Hit & miss obviously, but more hit than miss to date.

Bechdel Test song

Joker phones Harley - now has running gag with different teeth, v good

Brother 1 - this was the biggest bit of the script edit. For first 7 days of run, Brother wasn’t appearing till later and spoiled the flow. Now it keeps up momentum & goes well.

Racist Brother song

Nursery Rhymes / Faraday / Sagan

Helium / Wonder Woman - now work well as quick throwaways

Whose idea was this?  - nice exchange, inserted in previous rewrite, binds together narrative

Avengers - Iron Man/ Thor / Cap America - now includes start of Thanos

Avengers Reel song

Ang Lee -  thrown in as an addendum during this changeover, much better

Fantastic Four - now it works. Moved to better position in show, with third or 4th rewrite making the character work with the gags

Joker phones Ivy

Brother 2 - moved to earlier than before, again works better

Tyson / Origin

Superman - I’ve found, if we’re over-running, this is a good sketch to edit on the hoof. Could lose the Kents entirely without doing damage. Obviously at its best when we do it all.

Dead Ringer song

Superman v Joker

Harley/ Ivy/ Superman

Fallout / Brother 3

All By Myself

Finale - on final rewrite this now works. Lost all the puns, made Wonder Woman’s part funny, and (on a suggestion from a punter on Twitter) included a callback to a character whose powers were being underused. Sorted, a good & satisfying end.

That Sold Out board, rewritten and getting our full name in this time. Appreciated.

And I must throw in an extra mention for the audience-in music which is getting good laughs too:

Holding Out For A Hero (verse 1)

Silver Surfer

DC

Black Lightning

Tubthumping

Holding Out For A Hero (verse 2 & 1 again) - this is as far as we’ve got so far, the audience is always in by now. On a quiet night we’ve got them all in by the time DC starts.

Still waiting for those first reviews. We’ve had 19 comp tickets issued, 8 of whom have already been in. I don’t know which of those was reviewers (because I deliberately don’t ask) but surely some must have been. We keep watching the skies for stars.

Neath notes July 17
Harrow rewrite July 6
Ludlow rewrite June 28

Brighton rewrites May 28 (when show still had Spiderman song, and Daredevil)

Brick Lane rewrites April 28 (still had Steed & Mrs Peel song, and string of Awards gags)

Glasgow rewrites March 16 (when two audiences reacted differently to such quickly-dropped material as The Brexit Men and gags about Schroedinger and Boron)

Leicester debut & first rewrite February (when, can you believe it, half the show was Christmas material? Such a long time ago!)

The Award Winning* Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are Superheroes at The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 1st to 26th (not 8 & 9)

*Winners of the Bath Comedy Festival Lovehoney Best Joke Award 2018

Looking After Mum - 2 days away

Mum visiting Hev and me in Edinburgh in 2016

On Wednesday morning I flew down to East Midlands airport and took Earth’s cheapest hire car (£12, about which later) to Kibworth, to join Jude in looking after Mum.

I cancelled two nights of shows in Edinburgh, for the first time, because of the ominous sounding news about Mum that came in last weekend. She’d had another fall, which it turned out was one of four last week. This time she was taken to hospital, and this time Mum was pretty sure she didn’t want to go back to Windmill Gardens. 

As the most recent prognosis showed that the cancer has spread to her brain, and thought the recent course of radiotherapy had only finished the previous Monday, it was clear her condition wasn’t getting any better. Dizziness has caused earlier falls, and now it was physical weakness that was to blame. She is having too much difficulty walking, and even getting in and out of bed, to be left unattended. And so, while she is physically alert and totally compos mentis (a phrase that, can I just say, autocorrect will not tolerate, whatever device I’m writing on! Mum has been composed mantis and compost mentos in recent messages), she’s ready to go into a care home.

So, while the first half of Wednesday was spent with Jude and Mum waiting for an ambulance to take them from the Royal Infirmary in Leicester to St Luke’s cottage hospital in Harborough, and me getting on with work at Windmill Gardens (I script edited the show, changing the running order to great and successful effect), the later afternoon saw us getting Mum settled in at St Lukes, and discussing with nurses and various practitioners what our options were. We lined up three care home visits for Thursday.

Jude has been magnificent, doing far much more in this process than I’ve available to do, and possibly capable of. The arranging of the care workers who’ve been tending to Mum at home for the past month or so has all been Jude’s doing. And though I’ve taken on Power Of A Turkey (it’s what we call it, allow us our moments of levity) and taken charge of the money for funeral arrangements, Jude’s sorted out the paying of the bills so far. Her job is such that she’s able to work away from the office for great lengths of time, and has been spending every night in Kibbie going through mountains of email in her role as Whatever The Hell It Is She Does at Ealing Council. (She must have told me 50 times by now, it genuinely never sticks).

Mum visiting her alma mater Edinburgh College Of Art, for the first time in 60 years, August 2016

Thursday morning we went to visit Mum, who’s sleepy and wanting rest, but is her normal mentally alert self beneath the sluggishness. We learned more about the difference between CHC and FNC (forms of care funding, neither of which Mum is sick enough to be eligible for now) and spent a lot of time just chatting. We did marginally well in providing Mum with TV shows to watch. She has a Hudl, a downmarket tablet thing which I find really hard to operate, onto which I downloaded an Eastenders and a Poldark (she watched the Eastenders and informed me “I don’t like bloody Poldark”). I’d also brought with me my old iPhone 5s onto which I’d loaded two earlier Eastenders, a Casualty (which she watched), the movie Florence Foster Jenkins (which we left her watching on Thursday), and Poldark again (I didn’t know at the time!). Unfortunately she has no wifi in St Lukes, so unless some kindly nurse has the time and the inclination, and can get their heads around the working of the iPhone (easy) or the Hudl (nightmare and with less capacity than a wristwatch) and can take it to somewhere with wifi to download more show for her, she’ll just settle for the TV in the room, which she’s sharing with an equally quiet women of a similar vintage.

I realise I’ve devoted more column inches to Mum’s TV viewing than her medical condition. Which is how it should be. We’re all three of us quite resigned to the inevitability of the situation and frankly Mum doesn’t want anyone going over and over it when you can’t change anything. What we could do was sort out a nice place for her to stay.

And, hopefully, we’ve found it. Subject to an assessment next week, when they decide whether she’s in the right state to go there (and everyone so far thinks she is), Mum should be going into Kibworth Knoll. We looked at three places of which the Knoll was by far the best. One, in Harborough, as a residential and nursing home, which was too clinical and more than Mum needs right now; and one, in Kibworth, was a bit of a joke, being run by a well-intentioned but not very professional couple who were entertaining but not for us.

Implicated by Walter Tottle, performed by Nick, Kev and Noddy, written by me & Nick, filmed at The Knoll, 1981

The bonus about the Knoll is that it’s where my childhood best mate Nick Tyson used to live. Between 1976 and 1983 I spent many a long hour there, from doing sleepovers and rehearsing with the band - our first rehearsal room The Mission Hut was in the garage building which is now a two storey house - to filming pop videos. In the low-tech classic Implicated (1981, above) you can see the central staircase, which is still there, and the main lounge which still survives, and glimpse the fifteen foot long stained glass skylight over the central balcony, most of which is now covered by suspended ceiling, the balcony converted into rooms and corridors. The back garden where we filmed half the video, and the video for Take The Wires Out (1982), has long since been built over by an extension as long as the original house, and more. So Mum’s going to be living at Nick’s, ain’t that perfect?

Again, the second longest paragraph of this diary is about my old pop videos, rather than Mum. What can I say? You knew I was a shallow egoist before you took me in.

Mum’s happy with the Knoll decision, which was ultimately hers, so while I scooted off home to Edinburgh, and Jude will be going back to the Family in London for the weekend, she’ll be back on Monday to tend to Mum and the transfer, while I’m liaising long distance with various people. Now, did I mention I got a hire car for £12?

Now I know why Green Motion cars at East Midlands Airport are having to hire cars out at twelve quid a time. They are impossible to return the car to. Their office is at the Hilton Hotel, a 10 minute drive from the airport. This was easy enough when I was picking it up, I was met by a man in a van at the airport. But on returning the car one suddenly finds that the roads are being rebuilt and, certainly in my case, satnav doesn’t know where the new roads are. So the turning for the Hilton, which looks really clear and goes left off the M1, isn’t there any more. After overshooting twice, I found myself in a panic at missing my flight, being talked-through on the phone by the poor guy at Green Motion, who’s clearly having to do this with every other customer, then as soon as I dropped off, leaping into the waiting van to be driven to the airport. In future I shall pay the extra to ensure I get car hire which picks up and drops off at the airport. At least they sign-post airports when they move the roads.

Second longest paragraph again, all about me. I’d better stop now before we forget Mum is supposed to be the subject. Here, let’s enjoy a few more photos of her visit to Edinburgh back in 2016.

"One of the guiltiest pleasures you’ll find at the Fringe" - Scottish Daily Mail

This lovely box out review/preview is in today's Scottish Daily Mail. How about that? Hev spotted it first online, and then we went out and found it in print. Thankyou the Scottish Daily Mail, we look forward to that boosting our numbers and no mistake.

SCOTTISH FALSETTO SOCK PUPPET THEATRE: SUPERHEROES

Scottish Daily Mail 8 Aug 2018

THERE are some incredibly talented, internationally renowned puppet theatre companies to be found at the Fringe, but to my mind you can’t beat this dose of homegrown comedy. The socks’ profane, hilarious and ribald shows have previously tackled Shakespeare and space, minging detectives and even the Socky Horror Show. Now, the focus is on superheroes, making this a surefire cult hit – and one of the guiltiest pleasures you’ll find at the Fringe. Will you laugh your socks off? 

Gilded Ballon** Teviot, until Aug 26

The Award Winning* Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are Superheroes at The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 1st to 26th (not 8 & 9)

*Winners of the Bath Comedy Festival Lovehoney Best Joke Award 2018

** Sic. Yes, they spelled it Gilded Ballon. Ssshhh.

The Fall & Rise Of The Voice - Show survives Edinburgh cold

Wow, I even managed to take a Sock selfie before the show, the first time there's been time for that in the frantic 15 minute handover all week.

After the miserable diatribe yesterday, this is just a quick post to say I have cheered up. It was the cold, the common cold that is, that was making me excessively depressed and casting a shadow over my view of the world.

My shows have been hard to do with the croaky, and almost nonexistent, voice caused by the cold. It’s been:

Weds (Day 1) - fine and fab

Thurs (Day 2) - fine, but starting to feel burning around throat

Friday (Day 3) - swollen throat, hard to swallow. Groggy with cold, lots of sleeps. Performed fine

Sat - Class during day, strained voice. Voiceless at 7.30, nursed voice carefully, it held out through show beautifully

Sun - Voiceless through day, again nursed voice carefully, meaning less flyering, show went perfectly

Mon - Thought voice would be okay, as it had come back during the day. But by night the falsetto was still “split” and reedy. This was the hardest show to do, almost inaudible at times. I was very drained and depressed afterwards.

Tues - thought voice was okay, started fine, but got weaker as show progressed, croaking by the end

So I’m grateful in part for these two days off to go and see Mum, as it will serve the secondary purpose of letting my voice recover. And can I say a special thanks to the act I hand over to after my show, Grant Buse, who has introduced me to a fantastic thing called Singer Spray. I've only had a couple of scooshes of it, administered by Grant before my shows, but it was what enabled me (and the Socks) to hold out for half of Tuesday night's show. He's been in Avenue Q, so he knows a bit about preserving a falsetto voice. Thanks Grant.

If anybody saw the problem shows from Saturday to Tuesday, and thank god I didn’t record any of them, you might have spotted that the cold affects certain parts of my falsetto range. So on Saturday and Sunday, though I was able to articulate words clearly, there were bits of songs that I had to change the key of or speak. 

For example in the Avengers Reel, a medley of seven different songs all in different keys (a version of which you can see here*) the Socks have to reach some quite low notes (low for them, normal for a regular voice) and those are the notes that the cold choked off most. Come the second halves of Monday & Tuesdays shows, most singing notes had become pretty feeble.

When we return on Saturday, I aim to be in full voice. And, you never know, we might capture something on camera.

The Award Winning* Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are Superheroes at The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 1st to 26th (not 8 & 9)

*Winners of the Bath Comedy Festival Lovehoney Best Joke Award 2018

* The keys have all been changed since this version, and a verse dropped, cos too much was unsingable even under normal circumstances.

Benedict Cumberbatch Stole My Act - Chortle

This, on Chortle, as part of their Big Ask questionnaire: (read the other comedians' much funnier answers here)

Benedict Cumberbatch stole my act... literally!

The Big Ask: Who is the best person you've met at the Fringe

Benedict Cumberbatch. He stole the Socks. At the bar of the Gilded Balloon he inadvertently started walking off with the bag that had the moist and smelly post-show Sock puppets in, thinking it was his friend's. Had a very enjoyable half hour chat with pre-fame 'call me Ben'.Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre: Superheroes, Gilded Balloon, 22:30

The Award Winning* Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are Superheroes at The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 1st to 26th (not 8 & 9)

*Winners of the Bath Comedy Festival Lovehoney Best Joke Award 2018

Flatlining - Is this the year that Flyering stopped working?

Look at that graph. Isn't that the most miserable thing you ever saw? Probably not, cos it's not your show. But having had to cancel two shows (for family reasons, going to England for 2 days) my sales line temporarily nosedived as people got their money back. And then today's uptick? Well, it simply doesn't compare with previous years.

Could this be the year when flyering stopped working?

When I took my first show to the Edinburgh Fringe, The Sitcom Trials way back in 2001, I discovered how flyering worked. More precisely I discovered that flyering did work.

It was a revelation to me to find the streets were full of punters, all in town in order to see shows, and all you had to do was persuade them that yours was the show they wanted. That year’s show had a breakeven of 30 punters per day, and I found that three hours of flyering would bring in the said thirty bums on seats.

This became known, if only by me, as Kev F’s Theory Of Flyering. 3 hours of flyering equalled 30 bums on seats. As recently as 2015 I tested it out under laboratory conditions (okay, I recorded a couple of days flyering and leaped to some vague conclusions), and it seemed that the theory still held true.

That very first flyer, from 2001. (An overstickered version, cos we had lots left over. That year I also discovered you only need 10,000 flyers, and I'd printed 25,000.)

I also demonstrated how not flyering would lower sales when, in 2002 and 2012, I made the same mistake twice. I did two shows a day. And, since I have always been single-handedly responsible for my own promotion, I was able to do half as much flyering per show and, lo, each show sold half as well as previously.

But this year I’m struggling. Today, for example, I’ve done nearly four hours of flyering and my sales for tonight - on 2 for 1 day, which I’ve sold out almost every year - are stuck on 53 (a sellout being 90). They were 53 before I’d given out a single flyer and they’re fifty bloody three after two bursts of pretty bloody good flyering.

My technique remains the best. Everyone gets The Snap, they get the smile, they get a witty sales line (be it “this is what you’re looking for”, “they’re on at 10.30”, “they’re selling out but you might squeeze in tonight” etc), and they take the flyer. More people take my flyers than take anyone else’s flyers. I see it all day every day, and it’s been a source of pride for the last 18 years.

Except that in all those previous years the proof of the pudding was in the eating, and this year it’s not. The flyers aren’t turning into ticket sales.

Maybe it’s my mood - I am exhausted with the cold, and with having to cancel two shows to go down and see Mum, and the whole Mum situation is obviously very depressing - but I feel like I’ve never before encountered so many resistant punters. The Royal Mile has always been a bit of a waste of time, with such a high proportion of tourists being Tattooies and day-trippers, who don’t even know the Fringe exists and have no intention of going to any show of any sort even if they did. There have always been lots of Tattooies, but their lot was usually leavened by the Fringegoers who would coalesce around the Fringe Office box office queue. That queue is now a distant memory.

The Fringe box office queue on the High Street, as it appeared in the halcyon days of 2010

With the growth of online ticket buying, and the profusion of cross-venue box offices (for example the Underbelly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance & Assembly all sell each others tickets), there is now no reason for the queue at the Fringe Office to be a focus any more. It used to be the greatest place to flyer. A few years ago, when everyone started flyering the queue (something which had once being the province of a small few of us) the stewards cracked down on it. But you could always spot the likely punters on their way there. Now you can’t.

My flyering strip of choice is the stretch around the Gilded Balloon, where there is a healthy flow of punters. But two factors have made that less effective year on year. One is the profusion of other flyerers - there are more than I have ever seen along that stretch. The other is the resistant punters. I feel like I have been told “no thanks” more than ever. There are more people going past who have already bought their tickets for another show, or aren’t going to any shows anywhere.

I have a feeling that more people have decided what they’re going to see before they get here - as recorded last week, I had near-record high pre-sales before we arrived in Edinburgh - and they’re less susceptible to being whipped into my show by me and my bits of cardboard. Could it be that the battle is won, by all those shows with big agencies whose PRs have got them coverage in the national press months ago, long before August starts? I also have paranoid doubts that people may be looking at the flyer and thinking it’s a kids show (I was warned against having cartoons on the flyer for this very reason, back in the spring). Or am I simply losing the race to other more attractive acts? Sorry, it’s possible to get very maudlin and introspective when you let Edinburgh get to you, and it rather looks like I’ve let it get to me this week. (And my god is there anything more depressing than a Sold Out board that’s packed with act after act, and you’re not on it? I’m making myself more miserable by thinking these things out loud).

I will continue with my tried and tested method of old. But if my experience of this past few days continues, and I am incapable of getting good sized audiences into my room on a regular basis, then I will have to reconsider this promotional method in future. Let’s be honest, I’m not getting any younger and it’s knackering!

Oh yes, and those bloody posters that I paid extra for have done bugger all. I haven't even seen the damn things yet! Mental note: Do not spend money on big posters in future.

(It’s an hour later than when I started this blog. I check back on my sales. It’s 8.35pm and they’ve crept up to… 53)

UPDATE: In the end, sales of Monday's show ended up at 63*, after two minutes of last minute "they start soon" flyering. Could it be that was the most effective flyering of the day?

The Award Winning* Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are Superheroes at The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 1st to 26th (not Aug 8 & 9)

*PS For the record we sold fewer on the first Monday in 07, 08 and 09, but this was our worst result since then. Tuesday, also a 2-for-1 day, currently stands at 54. Let's have another go shall we? (To be continued)