The reality behind those Festival rumours

The Festivals link to Covent Garden - but not each other

By BBC News Online's festival correspondent Matt Grant

As the Festival moves into its final stages, the rumour mill starts to work overtime with all manner of odd stories and theories being circulated.

Most are nonsense, but one that stands out is the reputation the organisers of world's largest performing event are getting for not being able to organise a festival in Edinburgh during August.

How so? Surely the Edinburgh Festival remains a massive success, with ever increasing box office receipts and an intact reputation for routing out fresh talent.

Well, yes - but there is a problem. As simply as possible, it is this: the Festival Fringe (the biggest bit totalling about 500 shows with no central vetting) begins on 8 August and ends this weekend - but the International Festival (a far smaller number of quality-controlled highbrow acts) starts later and will continue to run for another week.

Refusing to budge: Festival Fringe director Paul Gudgin

From the average punter's point of view this poses the obvious problem of when to come. The festival season has always ended with an enormous firework display around the Edinburgh Castle.

This is officially part of the International Festival, but the vast majority of those who crowd the centre of the city almost certainly neither know this, nor care. Now, festival-goers have a stark choice - hang around an extra week when not a great deal is going on just to end on a big bang, or forget about it and drift off home with no set finale.

Of course, everyone involved recognises the situation is ridiculous, but that alone doesn't seem to be enough to persuade them to change it. When the Festival Fringe held its annual general meeting this week it decided to stick to its current dates for next year. The International Festival is apparently proving equally obstinate.

What to do? It's difficult to see what the ordinary paying public can do except stop coming, which inevitably will happen if people feel there is less on offer at any one time than previously. Last year, one of the biggest venues, the Assembly Rooms, ran up significant debts by trying to keep its shows going for a full month to span both venues. It is a situation that surely lovers of comedy, ballet, theatre and opera can agree really isn't funny at all.

The Pub Landlord's daughter

On a lighter note, it is a pleasure to be able to confirm comedian Al Murray has both had his baby (with the help of his wife) and been shortlisted for the Perrier award (all his own work).

The Pub Landlord is now the proud father to a baby girl who has been given the name Scarlet.

Her arrival into the world came on Monday night, forcing Murray to cancel two shows, but the remainder of his sell-out run will continue as scheduled.

The winner of the Perrier competition is announced at midnight on Saturday.

Heard the one about the Telegraph editor

A comedy gig in the middle of the afternoon is an assault on the senses, but The Daily Telegraph Open Mic award pulled it off, fooling the crowd into behaving like it was late in the evening with thumping music and dark lighting.

Read all about it: Danny Bhoy at the Open Mic contest

Only stand-in host Chris Addison appeared completely thrown by the experience. "It's two in the afternoon," he wailed when he came on stage.

The contest itself showed a considerable reservoir of comic talent exists, proving recent stories stating British stand-up is dead are no more than another excitable cliché.

But the biggest laugh came when The Telegraphy's deputy editor Sarah Sands got up on stage to present the prize to the winner, Danny Bhoy.

"The Telegraph is a paper with a strong comic tradition," she informed us. As the crowd erupted in hoots, Addison collapsed on the stage behind her.

Playing the fame game

The other accusation being levelled against stand-up comics in recent days is that they are all in it simply to get into television, win novel deals and generally make lots of money.

It is a charge most would probably plead guilty to, but many also recognise simply getting on television is in itself not necessarily the achievement it used to be.

Now digital television offers viewers hundreds of channels. So it is not unusual when you apologise to a performer for not having seen their show to receive the response: "No, well, you wouldn't have."