Brian Logan said the fringe is not a posho fest, and the claim does not survive his answers to reader questions about class, cost, and who gets to take part. He also said the fringe still has a wide mix of acts and audiences, even as Edinburgh festival time keeps raising the price of being there.
“I bow to no one in my distaste for private education and the poshification of things,” he wrote. “But I really don’t recognise the description of the fringe as a posho fest.” That distinction matters because his argument is not that access problems are imaginary; it is that the label fails to explain how the fringe actually works on the ground.
Brian Logan and the fringe bubble
Logan described the fringe and festival as a bubble, then pushed the point further: “It is.” He said the mix of artforms and experiences piled atop one another is part of the draw, and that his own work as a comedy reviewer is improved by being able to visit the book festival too. For readers trying to judge whether the event has narrowed into one social class, his answer is less a denial of pressure than a defence of the structure.
He also said comedy should be considered within a wider arts and societal ecology. That is the sharper part of the response, because it shifts the argument away from a single venue or a single audience type and toward the whole system of performers, reviewers, and festivalgoers who make the fringe operate each August in Edinburgh.
Manchester or Bristol
Asked whether comedy should move somewhere else, Logan answered with a line that cuts through the relocation fantasy: “It might be sensible. But who wants their comedy to be sensible?” He did not sell Manchester or Bristol as fixes; instead, he treated the idea as a misunderstanding of why the fringe matters in the first place.
The practical case against a move is simple. The fringe is not just a comedy lane; it sits inside a denser mix of arts events, and Logan said that layered setup is part of what makes it special. Strip out that arrangement, and you lose the collisions that make discovery possible for audiences and reviewers alike.
Access, cost, and stage variety
Logan did not brush past the pressure points. He acknowledged huge problems around access and the costs of visiting Edinburgh at festival time, and he said more work is needed so a wider range of people can attend and present work at the fringe. That is the real operational issue for readers: the conversation is not about whether costs exist, but about whether the current structure keeps enough room open for newcomers, low-budget artists, and first-time audiences.
He also said there is already great diversity onstage and in the audience, which is why the “posho fest” charge lands as too blunt for him. One useful way to read that is as a split between cost barriers and cultural output: the former can be severe while the latter still remains broader than the stereotype suggests.
Logan said the best comedians do not settle for the base levels of comedy, or they reinvent, conceal, or re-engineer them, and he pointed to recent fringe examples including Elouise Eftos. His own line is easy to find in Edinburgh in August, which is the practical takeaway for anyone who wants to press the argument in person: the debate over class and access is still live, and the man answering it will be there to keep it going.
