Edinburgh Festivals Diary: The Australians counting themselves at this year's Fringe

For the many Aussie performers in Edinburgh for this year’s festivals, their trip away means they will miss their country’s census, which runs every five years.

As a result, veteran Australian producer Linda Catalano has launched her own census - of all Fringe performers. She has issued a shout-out to all Australians working at the festival to take part.

She said: “This August, while Australia counts itself in the Census, so are we. Nobody's ever counted Australia's creative workforce at the Fringe (as far as we know). So we're counting ourselves.

“The Australian Edinburgh Fringe Census 2026 is a simple, independent snapshot of who we are, what we're doing here and how we're making it happen.

“Performing, producing, crewing, programming, reviewing, scouting, hustling, learning however you're here, we want you counted.”

Australians can have themselves counted here.

Puzzling lunch for comedy industry

At the annual Edinburgh Comedy Awards lunch on Sunday, the significant news that veteran director Nica Burns announced her succession plan, appointing Emma Brünjes as executive director to take the event into the future, was overshadowed by a more serious problem.

The annual quiz was this year a crossword puzzle made up of the “best questions” from previous years, which left even the most seasoned award-proclaimed “movers and shakers” of the comedy world scratching their heads. They left a lot of blank answers, and also struggled with surprisingly tricky jigsaw puzzle left for each table to solve.

You’ll be pleased to hear that my table, made up chiefly of the important people at the Stand Comedy Club, as well as comedy promotor Hils Jago, worked hard and managed to put in enough pieces to figure out it was an historic photograph of the event when it was known as the Perrier awards, featuring a very slim looking Al Murray and a youthful Ed Byrne.

Nica Burns and Emma Brünje | supplied

Both were so tricky that most people had to leave to return to their day jobs before either could be completed.

Meanwhile, on the subject of comedy, congrats to Edinburgh’s own Connor Burns, who has a new comedy hour being released on 1 September, following a sell-out full run of his new show, Flow, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Gallus, recorded this year at Glasgow King's Theatre, will be available on on Amazon and YouTube.

CORRECTION (not really)

After receiving a cease and desist letter in relation to Saturday’s Edinburgh Festivals Diary from Underbelly big boss Charlie Wood, who at one point claims to have studied law before moving into the upside down cow industry, I am happy to clarify that his business partner, Ed Bartlam, could apparently - at least at one time in his life - sing.

Mr Bartlam claims he has the backing of stars including Jessie Buckley, Eddie Redmayne and comedian David O’Doherty who will testify as to his musical prowess - and that he just, for some reason, chose not to demonstrate it to its full potential during his absolutely atrocious performance at the Underbelly launch last Wednesday night.

He also insists he was part of well known 2002 Edinburgh University boyband Five Alive. However, as recordings of said boyband’s music only exist on a Minidisc and no-one outside of Glasgow’s National Archive for the Moving Image owns a Minidisc player any more, there is no concrete proof of this.