Learn the not so cunning art of Festival Fringe self-promotion - Vladimir McTavish

Georgie Grier received lots of support on social media after her one-woman Fringe show only had one audience member.Georgie Grier received lots of support on social media after her one-woman Fringe show only had one audience member.
Georgie Grier received lots of support on social media after her one-woman Fringe show only had one audience member.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the Fringe started this week. Once again, it’s that time of year when performers will do anything to get their faces in the papers.

There is no stunt or photo opportunity too stupid or demeaning, as long as someone in the media mentions your show.

And, as ever, there are the traditional hoax stories. Why let the truth get in the way of a nice bit of self-promotion?

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This year’s most ridiculous story made its way on to the BBC News website before the Fringe had actually started.

A comedian claimed to have thought his show started on Wednesday and turned up twenty-four hours too early for his opening night. He took a photograph of himself looking glum in an empty room and sent it to the BBC.

Amazingly some reporter at the BBC was actually gullible enough to fall for the nonsense.

This follows a trend established over the past couple of years where comedians will get media coverage for having one person at their show.

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One performer last year took a selfie of herself shedding crocodile tears because she only sold one ticket for her show.

The BBC published the picture, the story went viral and the rest of her run sold very well.

This followed on from a genuine story in 2022 when my friend Robin Grainger only sold one ticket for his first performance.

Comedy critic Kate Copstick was in the venue to review the next show, saw Robin’s audience of one leaving the room, and wrote an article about it, which ended up being shared worldwide.

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Small audiences are nothing new. I know loads of people who have played to one person.

My smallest audience for a solo show was two. At the end of the show, one of them bought a copy of my live DVD, which I was selling at the time.

To this day, that remains my highest-ever per-capita video sale.

Back in the late eighties, I was in a four-person sketch show. We once did a gig at an arts centre in Burnley to an audience of one. There were four times as many people on stage as in the audience.

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We did two forty-five minute sets with an interval in the middle. The guy actually came back for the second half.

As this way back in the pre-internet days, we couldn’t post this story online in the hope it would go viral. The only person who knew about us having one person at the show in Burnley was the one person at the show in Burnley.

Press hoaxes are as old as the Fringe itself. Back in the early nineties, the late great comedian Malcom Hardee actually wrote his own review for The Scotsman.

This was back in the days when the paper employed whole squads of temporary freelancers to review shows during the festival, and was long before copy was filed online.

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Malcolm made up the name of some imaginary journalist, under which he wrote a glowing review of his own show, giving himself five stars.

He dropped it through the letterbox of The Scotsman offices, and two days later they actually published it.

That’s much wittier than claiming you turned up a day early for your show.

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