Edinburgh Fringe only for the wealthy, says Richard Herring

The comedian Richard Herring has said he will not perform at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe due to concerns that spiralling costs are pricing out audiences and performers.

He said the high cost of accommodation in the city meant “only people with a fair amount of wealth can attend”.

“It should be for everyone, as it felt like it was back in 1987 when I first went there,” added Herring in a blog.

City of Edinburgh Council and the Fringe have been asked for comment.

A slump in ticket sales for some Edinburgh Fringe shows last year was blamed on accommodation costs, train strikes and the cost of living.

And some performers stayed in tents or campervans as they could not afford to pay for somewhere to stay in the city.

Herring found fame in the 1990s with comedy partner Stewart Lee. They met at Oxford University before going on to create cult BBC sketch show Fist of Fun.

Herring now hosts a successful podcast, RHLSTP, in which he interviews comedians and celebrities.

A regular fixture in Edinburgh in August, he says he has performed at the Fringe 27 times over the last 35 years.

But in a recent blog, he said that although he was pleased with his show, he found last year’s Fringe “quite upsetting and stressful”.

He said he ultimately took the decision not to return to Edinburgh this summer for the sake of his mental health, but he also spoke about the festival as a whole.

Accommodation costs were prohibitively expensive and performers with smaller audiences were likely to end up in thousands of pounds worth of debt, he added.

“It just felt wrong and I didn’t like the atmosphere or the fact that the 18-year-old me would have been unable to attend under these conditions or at least have had to do so under even more unpleasant circumstances than sleeping on the floor of a Masonic Temple,” Herring said.

Herring praised the Fringe for helping him improve his work, push his career forward, make friends and find others to work with.

He said he still believes it is the best festival in the world and was “responsible for so much that has been good in my life”.

But he added: “Being able to go back every year to improve and experiment has been key to the limited success that I have enjoyed. If we lost money we were likely to get a job from the Fringe that would pay back some or all of the debt.

“Nowadays I just don’t think it’s possible for anyone without a rich mum and dad or means of their own to come back year after year and the explosion in the number of acts means the chances of it leading directly to more work are slim.”

He called for action from the City of Edinburgh Council and Edinburgh Fringe bosses.

Herring is not the first comedian to highlight some of the problems of the festival.

In The Fringe, Fame and Me, Frankie Boyle – another Fringe regular – describes the festival as “kind of an elitist festival”.

“I always think of the Edinburgh Festival as being this very middle-class thing, as I think a lot of Scottish people do. But even middle class doesn’t quite cover it.

“A lot of these people, your standard fringe act, they’ll have gone to public school, they’ll have gone to Oxbridge.

“If you’ve done that and then you get your own TV show or whatever it is, you’re not in the middle of any kind of experience of the average British person, you’re part of an elite.”

New rules have recently come into force limiting the number of Airbnb-style lets in the city in a bid to tackle a housing shortage.

Landlords need planning permission to let out a property, which is not their main residence, as a short-term let.