Getting digs at the Fringe can be a real horror story - Vladimir McTavish

This week Gail Porter cancelled her ten-day run at the Edinburgh Fringe, claiming she cannot afford to come up here in August due to the rising cost of accommodation. She is not the first person to arrive at this decision, but she is probably the most high-profile.

Portobello girl Gail Porter was the star host of the BBC's flagship chart show Top of the Pops.

For a number of of years she was one of the most familiar faces on television, presenting children’s TV and hosting Top Of The Pops. Briefly, she was also one of the most familiar arses in television, when a nude picture of her rear end was projected onto the House Of Commons, in a publicity stunt for FHM magazine.

Accommodation in Edinburgh in August has always been expensive. Furthermore, shelling out a fortune on a flat does not guarantee quality. Before I moved here, I stayed in quite a few disgusting hovels in the city during the Fringe.

The first time, when I was in a sketch show, we managed to get an apartment on the High Street right opposite the Fringe office. Great location, but appalling facilities. My room was a cupboard with no windows and zero ventilation.

Vladimir McTavish could have been renting out his spare room to a vampire (Picture: James Hardisty)

However, I could hear only too well, and the racket on the High Street would start very early every morning.

Another year, I paid through the nose to stay in a slum on Forest Road. The only furniture in my room was a top bunk bed. There was no bottom bunk, just a vacant space underneath. There was also a revolting stain on the carpet, like some gruesome crime scene.

A couple of years ago three stand-ups from Dundee did a show together at 10.30am at the Counting House. As if that decision wasn’t stupid enough, they then decided to share a caravan at Silverknowes. That would have been bad enough for all of them, but was much worse for the married one of the trio.

While he was getting up at eight in the morning to take the bus into town to hand out flyers for the show, the two single guys in the group would stay out until 3am and quite often bring random strangers back to the van in the middle of the night.

The noise of rampant love-making would rattle the entire caravan making it impossible for him to get a night’s sleep.

However, if you’re thinking of renting out your spare room, be careful. A few years ago we had a house guest, an Irish comedian whose complexion is so pallid she is almost translucent. We never saw her during daylight hours and she didn’t open her curtains once during the entire month of August.

We used to joke that she could be a vampire. Which was a bit of a laugh until the day she left and we found out that she had covered up all of the mirrors in her bedroom. On reflection, I cannot remember her ever eating garlic.

Last year a comic asked if he could park his camper van outside our front door for the whole of August. One morning while we were eating our breakfast, he emptied his chemical toilet into the downstairs lavatory, which is next to the kitchen.

This year I’ll be performing at the Fringe for the 30th year. It’s not as glamorous as people think.