At the Edinburgh Festival 1

For the next ten days I'm in Edinburgh performing at the largest arts, music and comedy festival in the world.

It is an especially brutal marketplace with the supply of shows far outweighing the demand; there are literally thousands of shows being staged.  They range from Joan Rivers to the 125th iteration of the Cambridge Footlights Review that gave rise to John Cleese and Peter Cook; and from serious, experimental theatre in purpose-built venues to stand-up comics in dingy rooms with a single mic.

Over the next few days I'm going to try and make sense of the stand-up comedy scene up as a market.  Being a stand-up is pretty much the ultimate n=1 proposition; you create and deliver your own product and your personal brand is your biggest asset.

Early on your personal style counts for far less than a proven ability to perform for a certain amount of time.  Strangely, the promoters who put the shows together are more concerned about the length of a show than it's content so comics must prove themselves able to be able to work to a time-based demand.  We're asked if we can do a 'tight ten' (ie a solid ten-minute routine that will work for most audiences) with no questions whatsoever about the content of the set.  Getting a reputation for 'not sticking to time' can be fatal for a newer comic.

Most promoters book acts solely on the basis of time and then leave it up to the comics themselves to worry about if their sets are too similar in topic matter or even if they're right for the audience in question.  It is within these strictures that all but the ultra-talented have to work to build their brands.

We had an audience of 16 last night.  The Festival average is 4.