Beyond the Fringe

There is a tacit agreement among film festival regulars that if one planned the route carefully enough it would be possible to leapfrog from one event to another, criss-crossing the globe attending festivals large, small and everything in between.

High on the list would be Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), the event famously described by writer/director John Huston as “the only film festival worth a damn”.

I’ve been a visitor to EIFF since the 1990s, which, considering it has just notched up its 67th edition, makes me a relative newcomer. Under the stewardship of director Chris Fujiwara, the event has gone from strength to strength.

Explorers of the festival scene who fancy a break from movies might like to experience the underground delights of the stand-up comedy clubs. One of the best and most popular is The Stand, on Queen Street. Modestly sized, modestly priced and possessed of a reputation that attracts the comedy cognoscenti (both audience and comics) it fairly crackles with energy and invective-laced laughter.

The bill during my visit included newcomer Evelyn Grubb, who succeeded in completing her set, and Bruce Clark, a word-perfect veteran who had the audience eating out of his hand. The secret in enjoying a typical Stand performance is to lurk near the back; sit too close to the stage and you become part of the act whether you like it or not…

Late-night drinkers are faced with an assemblage of watering holes. Two good ones out of the many that pepper the maze of early Victorian streets that make up the Old Town are The Captain’s Bar, in South College Street, and The Royal Oak, on North Bridge.

In the former, the Scots burr is swamped by a dizzying array of accents as tourists from Italy, Japan and the United States (to select just three) sample local brews and fare.

In the latter, acapella song and freestyle guitar and violin-playing is encouraged in a packed downstairs bar where sexagenarian former punks rub shoulders with septuagenarian flower children and where a nervous amateur tries, fails, tries again and succeeds in delivering an impassioned if out-of-tune rendering of his favourite song. Cue much warm applause for sheer guts amidst a heady atmosphere of mutual support and admiration.

Emerging into the new dawn of an Edinburgh day means making some tough decisions. Scottishness in Art 1750-1980 or the Mary, Queen of Scots exhibition? Arts hub Summerhall or Coming into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Condé Nast? There are arguably more galleries, exhibition spaces, live music, theatre or comedy venues within walking distance of one another than perhaps any other city in the British Isles.

And during festival season – which pretty much lasts all year save for two brief breaks – Edinburgh is a magnet for culture vultures.

This year’s Edinburgh Mela offers bhangra, jazz and world music all on one bill. It runs from August 31 to September 1 at Leith Links. Regularly attracting in excess of 27,000 visitors – kids go free; adults pay £4 – it stays close to its South Asian origins whilst simultaneously presenting acts from Cuba, China, Africa and the US. One of last year’s highlights was a hip-hop band from Brooklyn. This year’s must-sees include dance group The Orb following their Glastonbury link-up with Ghanaian drummers Kakatsitsi.

The Fringe represents the Daddy of all festivals. Last year it presented 2,800 shows; this year it will be six per cent bigger and boast a line-up that includes Steven Berkoff, Dad’s Army star Ian Lavender in a stage version of The Shawshank Redemption, Tig Notaro, David Baddiel, Downton Abbey star Elizabeth McGovern with her folk/country band Sadie and the Hotheads, new John Godber comedy Losing the Plot, starring Steve Huison, and the return of Alexei Sayle as a viable stand-up act.

It is impossible to visit Edinburgh and not be sucked into its gruesome, violent past. Nighttime Hidden and Haunted tours are popular with visitors eager to wallow in tales of hangings, quarterings, bloody murder and bodysnatching.

My tour was led by Craig, a rangy youth with a nice line in lurid detail whose practised delivery managed to utterly terrify a Spanish mother and daughter, particularly when our route took us beneath the streets and into dank, underground candlelit vaults, on Blair Street, where the 21st century collides with angry ghosts.

Almost 200 years after the fact the grave-robbing deeds of Burke and Hare continue to lend Edinburgh an air of menace and dread. Nowhere is this more in evidence than in the Edinburgh University Anatomy School.

In 1828 anatomist Robert Knox was the most popular teacher/surgeon in Edinburgh with more than 500 students. But Dr Knox had insufficient corpses to offer up for dissection.

Enter William Burke and William Hare, who upped the supply of bodies to the anatomist by smothering the weak, the infirm and the elderly. Both men were eventually caught, Hare turning Queen’s Evidence to save his skin.

Burke was sentenced to be publicly hanged and dissected, and his bones put on public display. Hanging alongside an eye-boggling collection of body parts, life-size torso sections cut by band saw, and death masks (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Marat, Napoleon) is Burke’s skeleton. More than 180 years later he’s still serving his sentence.

Getting there

Tony Earnshaw travelled by rail to Edinburgh via East Coast Main Line and stayed in the Apex Waterloo Place Hotel, close to Edinburgh Waverley Station.

Edinburgh hosts 12 major festivals throughout the year. Alongside the Mela, the film festival and the Fringe, they include the Edinburgh International Book Festival. For more details and help with planning a visit go to www.edinburghfestivals.co.uk