For years now, many performers at Edinburgh Fringe have spoken about their struggles to afford the sky-high prices for their accommodation each August.
This year, with Oasis’s reunion tour coming to the city for three nights, the cost of securing a room for a month at the biggest arts festival in the world is even higher.
Comedian Marc Borrows says “the ‘Oasis effect’ on the Fringe economy has been catastrophic”.
A flat cost Marc Borrows ‘an extra thousand pounds this year’. Pic: Alexis Dubus
Rather fittingly, his stand-up show this year is called The Britpop Hour.
“It’s an idea I’d had in my back pocket for a while,” he explains. “Then the band reformed and when I saw they were playing Edinburgh I thought ‘yeah, this is the year to do this!'”
While he’s thrilled that the Gallagher brothers are coming to town, it means many performers are taking a financial hit.
“I’ll give you an example, I tried to get the same flat that I’ve had the last two years at the Fringe, a student flat, nothing fancy, and it costs an extra thousand pounds this year.”
Because of the increased demand for beds, newcomer Amy Albright will be sleeping in her red Volkswagen for her two-week stint at the Fringe.
“Costs are even more expensive,” she says. “It’s just not an option for me, so instead I’m living in my car.”
Amy Albright says sleeping in her car saves a lot of money
With blackout blinds and a portable coffee maker, she says it’s actually not as bad as some might think.
“I park just outside of town in a really nice safe area, I use a gym for showers … this saves me so much money … I wouldn’t be able to afford to perform at the Fringe otherwise.”
Holly Spillar’s show Tall Child explores her relationship with class. She was fortunate enough to be one of 180 recipients of a £2,500 bursary from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society.
It is the third year the Keep it Fringe fund has been run, backed this year by a £1m injection of government money.
As Holly explains: “I live month to month on a minimum wage job … and it costs me about five grand to do the fringe.”
Holly Spillar says it ‘costs me about five grand to do the Fringe’. Pic: Jennifer Forward-Hayter
Alongside the grant, she’s also had to take out a loan, which she says will take her two years to pay back.
“It’s a very precarious situation you put yourself in just to be in the room,” she adds.
Chloe Petts – now an established name on the comedy circuit – says the problem needs to be recognised for being less about Oasis and more about a problem that’s been brewing for years.
Chloe Petts says it’s problem that’s been brewing for years. Pic: Matt Stronge
“Accommodation is just totally out of control,” she says.
“If this leads us to further conversations about that, then fantastic but … it has to be a conversation about how it’s totally unaffordable for the average person to come to the Fringe, and I think that’s stopping a lot of people coming up who deserve to be here.”
Scottish comedian Susan McCabe, a lifelong Oasis fan, reckons there’s no point getting too worked up, especially given the siblings fractious relationship.
“We are here every year and they may not even be here for those three gigs … they might have fallen out by then!”
She adds: “It is what it is, at the end of the day … they were the greatest rock and roll band of the 1990s, just let them be.”
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• Amy Albright is performing her stand-up at locations across Edinburgh, including Not My Audience!, on 8 August
• Holly Spillar: Tall Child is at Underbelly until 24 August
• Chloe Petts: Big Naturals is at Pleasance Courtyard until 24 August
• Susan McCabe: Best Behaviour is at Gordon Aikman Theatre until 24 August
• The Britpop Hour with Marc Burrows is at Underbelly until 25 August
