Making an entrance — Sam Burnett

I passed a van on the motorway earlier that had such a weird slogan emblazoned on the side that I thought about it for easily the next 10 miles. “Your global partner for entrance solutions” it said. Does it mean doors? Is that an entrance solution? Certainly if you’re on the outside a door would be an entrance solution, if you were stuck inside somewhere with no sense of egress about proceedings you would find yourself looking for a global partner for exit solutions.

It gave me something to do, it’s been a long journey. Scotland is really far away, who knew? I was up there for the last wispy smoke trails of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Is that its pedigree name? It’s such an amorphous thing with no one in charge, I can’t get my head round it. There must be some blandly marketed entity at the centre of it all, with the Official Fringe sponsored by some sort of global partner for entrance solutions.

I’ve never been up to the Fringe before, and it’s all anyone in comedy can talk about for six months of the year. I’ve kind of hoped I could just tick along without ever having to step foot near it – I have an instinctively contrary nature that hates anything that everyone else likes. And the Fringe is no longer on the fringes, it hasn’t been a punky outsider for at least three or four recessions. All comedy roads seem to lead through the Scottish capital.

I went up to see the shows of some people I know, and it was both desperately enticing and tremendously off-putting at the same time. I’ve got the pencilled outlines of a show I’d like to work on buried deep in my comedy notebook, and I can really see the attraction of taking something like that to somewhere like Edinburgh. But at the same time it’s this huge sink for hopes, dreams and your life savings. And why would anyone put themselves through that if they didn’t have to? If I did find it in me to go to Edinburgh myself, perhaps I would have to find some sort of organisation with globally gained expertise in making a splash, but I wouldn’t even know where to start.