Residents could be offered a discounted rate for every show as a reward for putting on the festival - Susan Dalgety

Entertainers perform on the Royal Mile during the opening weekend of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe - Maybe the city's residents could be offered a discounted rate for every show as a reward for putting up with the inconvenience of late-running buses, packed pavements and the general mayhem that is Edinburgh in August. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

He’s definitely a five-star politician, full of empathy with a hint of steel. He may well be a Prime Minister-in-waiting.

Next up, I was bored by a play billed as controversial, but which turned out to be deadly dull. TERF is a drama about author JK Rowling and her views on women’s rights. The script was clunky, or as one professional reviewer described it, “a messy slog”.

Thank goodness then for Donal Vaughan, a messy – but very funny – Irish man whose shows about science are aimed at children, but which this grandmother found both absorbing and hilarious. I can highly recommend his Crazy Gadgets show, and I am sure his other performance Messy Mayhem is just as much fun, though I am not sure I want to be in the same room as a vomiting unicorn, so we may well give that one a miss.

And yesterday, I spent an absorbing hour at a show about Alice Hawkins, a working class suffragette, all the more poignant because her great-grandson told the tale.

But August in Edinburgh is also very expensive. Classical music fans can expect to pay £70 for a decent seat in the Usher Hall. TERF, which is on at the Assembly Rooms, was £15 a head. And I had to pass on several children’s shows because they would have cost around £80 for five us to be – hopefully – entertained for an hour. At least Donal Vaughan’s shows are in the Free Edinburgh Fringe Festival programme, under the Pay What You Want category, which meant it was affordable.

There are several schemes offering local residents cut-price admission to shows at both the Fringe and the International Festival, but they are limited in their scope.

I know there are huge demands on the public purse, but it would be great if all Edinburgh residents were offered a discounted rate for every show, from the sublime to the ridiculous, as a reward for putting up with the inconvenience of late-running buses, packed pavements and the general mayhem that is Edinburgh in August.