Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Mark Thomas on money, changes and starting again from the bottom.

There is an old joke on the comedy circuit - “They say you play the circuit twice in your career. Once on the way up. Once on the way down. Great to be back.” 

And here I am, back again. 

Last year I performed a play that won six awards, toured the UK, did five weeks at the Adelaide Festival and is nominated for a New York run… and I am totally skint. It turns out there is more money in Birmingham City Council than there is in theatre. So I have two options; Homebase or the comedy circuit. A lifetime of mucking about and waking up late has ill prepared me for the world of commission-based retail. So back to the circuit it is. 

“I’ll do 100 gigs in four months and get myself match fit for an Edinburgh run. The Fringe,” I thought, “that’s the place to make some money.” 

So in Rocky Balboa style I started on the bottom rung; new material nights, open spots and free gigs. There are loads of these gigs quite simply because there are loads of performers. When I started 39 years ago there were maybe 100 of us, comedy was more of a leaderless cult than an industry. Now go to any UK city and you are never less than 15 feet away from a comedian working on a tight five.

Performers tend to think their era was the golden age of comedy but that’s from memories borne in youth and alcohol. Each and every age is the golden age, or none at all. Though you do tend to notice the changes if you have been a way for a while.

The cost-of-living crisis was always bound to have an impact on performing and the free gigs are the most obvious example of that. These gigs are much better than expected, the standard of new comics is really high, and the night is free. Win/win.

Less people drift in and out than you might expect and are remarkably courteous to new acts and material. This is one of the great enduring things about the circuit; very very few come to a gig to see people fail. Everyone wants the night to work.

A lot has been written recently about comics “working the room”, chatting to the audience asking them where they are from and what they do in the hope of eliciting a few laughs. Personally, I am not a big fan of having to complete a census before someone tells me a joke.

BUT, comics have always done this, it is not new. What is new is in the filming of it for click bait on the socials. Most comperes, with a few wonderful exceptions, work the room and there are more bad comperes than good. But hey, everyone has got to learn somewhere.

Expectations have changed, that is the big difference. People come to see what they have seen on social media or the telly. Audiences know what they want and what they are going to get. In the ‘80s, a big reason to go to cabaret was not knowing what you were going to get, people went to see stuff you couldn’t see on the telly. That is the bit I miss.

Going to a comedy night and finding someone like Steve Murray the Teddy Bear Torturer who guillotined teddies and put them on a wheel of death. Or seeing John Hegley doing 20 minutes at the Comedy Store. In 1987 the phenomenal singer Barb Jungr was the first woman to win the Edinburgh Perrier Award alongside Michael Parker and Arnold Brown, and she is now an internationally renowned artiste. Would the circuit have space for her now? I don’t know.

Mark Thomas: Gaffa Tapes, The Stand Comedy Club (Stand 1), 6:30pm until 25 August.