The Many Names of the Edinburgh Festival

As promised, an explanation of terms...

August in Edinburgh has many names but the primary two are The Festival and The Fringe. There are actually several festivals that happen in August in Edinburgh. Perhaps the most august is the Tattoo. The military tattoo is the last that happens in Britain and it happens at Edinburgh castle throughout August. It is to blame for the fireworks which explode every night and twice on Saturdays. I quite enjoy fireworks - explosions, pretty lights, what's not to love? Those with sensitive pets in the city, especially in the centre, are not so keen.

Other minor festivals include the jazz festival (which has started earlier than August in recent years in order to re-energise) and the book festival (minor only in comparison to the other festivals - George RR Martin was at the latest one).

Then there is the International Festival. Nowadays this is not what draws people to the city but it is where the Festival became the behemoth it is now, because it is the festival the Fringe grew out of. The International Festival drew people from across the world to perform officially in Edinburgh. On the back of the crowd drawn by the combination of the International Festival and the Tattoo other performers began to come into Edinburgh and hire out their own venues to play to those crowds, this became the Fringe.

While the Fringe was originally about fringe theatre performers as the medium of stand-up comedy grew it became more about that and nowadays, while theatre etc. still thrives, the vast majority of acts are stand-up comedy.

That brings us to the present day. The Festival is how locals refer to all of the festivals at once, essentially it is another word for August and if, somehow, the months of the year were to be named by an empire based in Edinburgh rather than Rome then August would be Festivus. The Fringe is the part of The Festival that most (if not all) of the shows I have seen and will see are a part of - more exciting, if truth be known, than The International Festival that spawned them and the part of The Festival that truly attracts the misfits and lunatics that inspire this blog.