Nothing will fill the hole the Edinburgh Fringe will leave in comedians’ hearts

For the first time in 70 years, this gigantic adult playground has been closed amid the horror of Covid-19. No amount of online comedy will compensate for it

For comedians, the summer months go “May, June, July, Edinburgh, September”. One year, I actually heard a comic friend say, “I’m having a year off. For Edinburgh, I’m going travelling.”

The careers of so many comedians you love (and of the ones you hate) are made at the Edinburgh Fringe. Nothing is more exciting than the year you have your “breakthrough” show. For me, It was 2006. My show was a hit and took me out of the club circuit and to the dizzy heights of touring medium-sized art centres, where I have happily remained.

Few things are more joyous to a comedy nerd than blagging a ticket to a show everyone is clamouring to see. When other comedians clutch your arm, look into your eyes and say “you have to see this show,” then by hook or by crook, you see it.

It was 1997 and everyone was fizzing about a young chap called Johnny Vegas. I was young and new back then, and fluttered my eyelashes at some bigwig to get a ticket to Vegas’s sold-out show. I stood in the queue – coincidentally behind Omid Djalili, which added to my giddiness – clutching my golden ticket. After that Edinburgh run, Johnny Vegas became a huge star.

For the first time in 70 years, this gigantic adult playground, the world’s biggest arts festival, has been cancelled amid the horror of Covid-19. Even in happier times, the Fringe is not perhaps the healthiest place to be. All that boozing and herding of humans into dank rooms which host perhaps 10 different shows a day. Many a performer is felled by the “Edinburgh lurgy” once the Fringe is over and we let down our defences. After our own shows, we pile into others’ or take part in raucous, late-night mixed bills.

Inevitability, most of us fall into one of the after-hours performers’ bars. Nights spent in these temporary boozers have been among the best and worst of my life. No matter how many years I do it, climbing the spiral staircase of the Gilded Balloon, up to the Tower and its infamous Loft Bar, will never be without a tinge of excitement at the night ahead. In my younger days, I bounded up those stairs like a demented puppy, eyes shining, tail wagging, ready to throw myself into the cacophony of comedians. Far too many nights in a row, we’d stumble back to our digs after a night at the Loft with the sun peeping out at us.

It already feels strange thinking about the amount of hugging and kissing and talking with tipsy faces close to each other we did. I sit here in lockdown dreaming of the day when a red-faced, sweaty, drunk comic can again honk delightful nonsense into my ear at two o’clock in the morning.

The after-hours socialising is a huge part of the festival for travelling comics who find ourselves in the same city as our friends about once a year. I don’t know where else in the world I would have ended up in a group of nattering people in the middle of the night; among them Jenny Eclair, Christian Slater and a Hula Hoop champion from Buenos Aires. You never know who you are going to meet in Edinburgh, what company you will keep.

Now the festival is cancelled, thousands of shows are homeless. Many comedians are taking shelter online. Yet it’s been tricky for me to figure out online “content”. I don’t think I’m very good at it: whenever I post on Instagram, I lose followers, which is, I’m certain, the opposite of what’s meant to happen. It took me an hour yesterday to figure out how to turn on the microphone on my laptop to guest on Brett Goldstein’s excellent podcast Films to Be Buried With. What I have always loved about stand-up is how fuss-free it is. All you need is a space, a microphone and your mojo.

For what it’s worth, my own Edinburgh show this year was called My Inner Stormzy. Perhaps I will eventually learn to podcast it, but first I’m going take a moment to reflect – on all the fresh talent we’ll miss out on, the old friends we won’t revisit, the reviewers we won’t be able to slag off, as we hold tight and ride out this fearful storm.