Edinburgh and its Hogmanay festival represent a modern-day case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Aidan Smith

I’ve got a great idea for a book. The Strange Case of Dr Edinburgh and Mr Hogmanay.

If Edinburgh is supposed to put on an authentic Scottish Hogmanay, why are the revellers served gluhwein? (Picture: Danny Lawson/PA)

The former is a respectable citizen in a place full of them, living a quiet and blameless life which might seem ever so slightly boring but he and indeed the many like him are always tucked up in bed well before midnight to be rested for the next day’s endeavours.

The latter is a party animal who lives for the last night of the year and likes to invite his friends – as many as 250,000 of them, from all corners of the world – to help him whoop it up.

The mass cavorting does not happen in Rio or Sydney but on the very same streets trudged by Dr Edinburgh, who suddenly no longer recognises his home town.

What do you mean my plotline sounds familiar? What do you mean I’m ripping off The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Okay, but mine is a true story rather than the fevered imaginings of Robert Louis Stevenson. And what can I say but clearly great minds think alike: our protagonists are one and the same person.

Just like Stevenson, who while residing in the capital’s New Town would sneak out under the cloak of darkness to hang around the drink-sodden and debauched Old Town, Dr Edinburgh has always been fascinated by those who seem to be having a whole lot more fun than him.

There was this other hedonist – Mr Festival – who danced around in a wacky costume in a manner at odds with the city’s image. (Douce, perjink, scrimps on knickers and the offer of tea – choose your favourite description). But then he climbed back into the dressing-up box and wouldn’t reappear until the following summer.

So one evening Dr Edinburgh, having pepped up his Ovaltine with something stronger, got to thinking about what a party in the middle of winter might be like. It wouldn’t last long, just a few days. It would celebrate a great Scottish invention – not hollow-pipe drainage or soor plooms or indeed the Bank of England but Hogmanay. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot as far as many Edinburgh residents were concerned. First it was too big and too mad. Then, numbers restricted, it was too pricey and too tacky.

Why was Sir Walter Scott, commemorated in marble in the drop-dead gorgeous heart of what he called “mine own romantic town”, being required to look down on stalls sloshing Bavarian gluhwein at city-breakers when there was probably a “replica German market” which Sid could have visited in Sidcup, Steve in Stevenage and probably the bloke from Dorking didn’t have to trek this far north either.

Why was a fat Santa on a zipwire whooshing past the statues of great Enlightenment thinkers? Surely if the shindig was being marketed as world-leading, which it was, then visitors would be entitled to expect authenticity and a unique experience.

Locals stopped recognising not just their own city but their own Auld Year’s Night. Now, I can make no grand claims for Auld Year’s Night, Embra-style, before the current clamjamphrie. We are not Rio or Sydney or, jings, Glasgow when it comes to hosting.

My generation of Scots grew up intrigued by Hogmanay when bundled off to bed by our parents, then squirmed at the hoary heedrum-hodrum heucheramas on TV, then squirmed at the first permitted sips of Crabbie’s green ginger wine, then ventured onto the streets with Agnews carry-outs only to be knocked back from every houseparty, then ventured to the Tron only to be knocked out by flying bottles (this happened to me), then rang out the old at smug-married soirees… then – at last, pressure gone – brought in the new at breakfast on 1 January having bundled ourselves off to bed before the bells.

That’s my Hogmanay history and – go on, admit it – yours is not too dissimilar. So it’s been strange these past few years, as images of fireworks over Edinburgh Castle have shot round the world, to have folk you meet for the first time assume you must have drunk Oliver Reed and John Belushi under the table, viewed the Rat Pack as lightweights and needed to call a cab for Ernest Hemingway and Miley Cyrus when they flaked out early.

Maybe this won’t happen anymore because there won’t be fireworks anymore. Underbelly, who’ve been responsible for this orgy of unEdinburghness – with the last days of the year in the capital resembling the last days of Rome where instead of chariots you were at risk of being mown down by wheelie bags – have reached the end of their contract.

The city council are seeking fresh ideas, less overcrowding, less bevvying, a greater spread of events to outlying areas with more local businesses benefiting – all things critics have been demanding for some time.

The Underbelly impresarios have always been referred to as “London-based” and “Eton-educated”, the inference being they’re about as attuned to Scottish life and culture as David Cameron and Boris Johnson have ever been. But if Hogmanay starts to take on some proper Edinburghness, will they or any producers like them want to take it on?

Covid has forced its cancellation over the past two winters – thus sidestepping the question of whether it’s okay to snog a stranger in the #MeToo era – but its return will thrust the event right back into the long-running arguments over the festivalisation/Disneyfication/banalisation of the capital.

Do we want the city preserved in aspic or swimming in gluhwein – or is there something in between? Dr Edinburgh or Mr Hogmanay…?

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