Edinburgh Fringe: Avoiding the flyers is just part of the show

A stroll down the Royal Mile means just one thing – someone will be determined to put a piece of paper in your hand about their show

Flyers are one of the hazards of the Edinburgh Festival

It's also Tattoo time in Edinburgh. Come seven o'clock the tour buses park up in Chambers Street and hordes of eager, but somewhat bemused, tattooists, who are, perhaps, on a organised tour of Scotland, head up George IV Bridge, guided by some raised umbrella, towards the castle. They pause just long enough to pay homage to the Elephant House Café, the alleged birth place of Harry Potter. After the peace of the Trossachs and Loch Lomond, they must think they've entered a parallel universe as a) they are faced with an army of actors doing strange things in the Royal Mile, and b) they are assailed by an army of flyerers. The etymological roots of the word come from who knows where but, in Fringe parlance, it means those folk anxious about getting an audience into the venue for their show handing out leaflets (flyers) to unsuspecting passersby. Actually, surely, no one in Edinburgh in August can be described accurately as unsuspecting?

The flyer is an integral part of the Fringe. It is a handbill, typically in A5 format, adverting shows – times, venues, star ratings, ticket prices or Free Fringe, themes, and so on. To some, it has acquired the meaning of a throwaway handbill. In Edinburgh, this means that the handbills are discarded in the streets which, after rain, cover the pavements in paper mâché. But more than just the noun flyer, it now has acquired additional grammatical functions. Whoever distributes a flyer is a flyerer. The act of delivery is to flyer. So the flyerer flyers flyers. God bless the English language for its facility for assimilation. Returning home on the path to the Meadows today, I might have been flyered, indeed I should have been flyered by the battalions of feverish flyerers faultlessly flyering frigging flyers, but mercifully I wasn't.

However there are many ways of dealing with the flyerers:

a) simply ignore them (rather rude)
b) wear a suit and pretend you're in Edinburgh on business (but you'll look out of place, and be very hot, in a sweaty Portacabin venue)
c) take the flyer, smile and put it in the next bin
d) walk with mobile pressed to ear, engaged in pretend call
e) collect a stack of flyers and walk along with the stack held prominently in your hand and pretend you're a flyerer yourself 
or
f) engage the flyerer in conversation about the show (thereby allowing others to pass by unmolested)

This last is can lead to exciting discoveries. It is to be recommended. Yes, you may pick the proverbial car crash show, but alternatively you may pick a winner. There are two types of flyerer: those promoting their own show and those working for a production company or venue. A good flyerer will make eye contact (although much more difficult to achieve when it's raining and you've got your umbrella up), smile and ask whether you can spare a second. If you agree, you must ask them to describe the show and why you should see it. If they are from a venue and have not seen the show, move on.

When we speak to flyerers who have done good job, we remind then that five minutes spent engaging with people who then invest in the show at £10.00 a ticket, or whatever, is worth more than the 50 expensive flyers that end up in the bin.

By the way, the Tattoo is something you should see but once in a lifetime. We paid our for our tickets in old money in 1970 and have not been tempted back since. Similarly you should only venture down the Royal Mile once (or no more than twice) in any a visit. You can only take so many weird characters sitting, supposedly in mid-air, unicyclists, sword swallowers, escapologists, bagpipe players and 600 flyer floggers in a year