This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.
During the 80s and 90s, the only politician you’d find getting involved with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe would probably be local Tory councillor Moira Knox.
Though her involvement was to provide regular comment to the press about the depravity and filth brought to the capital by the world’s largest arts festival.
Performers and producers would go out of their way to attract her ire, garner some publicity and boost ticket sales.
Times have changed.
If Councillor Knox was still with us in 2023, there’s every chance she’d have her own one-woman show in the Pleasance Dome.
“It's swarming with politicians, the festival these days,” the journalist Steve Richards says.
Just before we speak, he’s been emailed by Alex Salmond and David Davis asking if he’ll be a guest on their show.
“My first day there and their last day so I don't think I'll be able to do it.”
Humza Yousaf is guesting on a couple of different shows, so too will Angela Rayner and Penny Mordaunt.
And of course, the biggest row of the festival so far came when the Stand attempted to cancel a show with Joanna Cherry, before sheepishly reinstating it. It's now completely sold out.
Edinburgh audiences clearly have an appetite for hearing from politicians and hearing about politics.
Richards, one of Westminster’s most respected pundits, has been coming to the Fringe since 2012 with his Rock'n'Roll Politics show.
“I think people yearn to make sense of it all,” he says.
A regular on our TV screens, he believes the enthusiasm is in part because discussions on the radio or TV are so brief.
“The reason I'm doing this is because whenever I was asked on Newsnight or the Today programme there'll be some huge theme like does independence have a chance without Nicola Sturgeon, and there'll be three of us pundits on and the total duration would be three minutes.
“You can't make sense of anything.
“So I do think there is a kind of appetite for trying to seek some kind of sense of what the hell's going on and why.”
The show is semi-improvised, with the content directed by the audience. There is no shortage of things to talk about. It has he says, been a “world of wild, oscillating, change” since he last took to the stage in Edinburgh.
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“A year ago, when I was doing the show, Johnson was still Prime Minister, but Truss was looming.
“We did a lot on Truss. And when I say we, I'm not using the royal we, the audience and I delved into Truss and Sunak, but none of us knew that Truss would be gone well before the start of this festival.
“And meanwhile, every year since she became First Minister, I’ve been able to say ‘look, the state of Westminster politics is insane, and everything has changed but as ever, Nicola Sturgeon is still first minister.’
“I can't even say that.”
Depending on the audience's mood, the show, he thinks, could look at the fall of the former SNP leader, or discuss if Rishi Sunak is doomed or the fate of Sir Keir Starmer.
“The shows are determined by the characters and the dramas erupting around us. There will be more by the start of the run in Edinburgh. That's for sure.
“We've got three big by-elections coming up in the UK. Scotland has got a huge by-election election coming up at some point, I think the most important in Scotland for 50 or 60 years.”
“It's basically a political journalist on stage," he adds. "It's a political column on stage, but the audience help to write the column with me and the live event turns, I think, into a much more layered column than you can write in a newspaper.”
He’s keen to point out that the show is not satire or Question Time.
“I’m not trying for a fight or just taking the piss out of politicians. Others do that very well on the Fringe. Some do it very badly on the Fringe. That's not what this is about.”
That said, a few years, the show did include a brief, very exaggerated impression of the then Speaker John Bercow.
“Order order. Look at me, I'm the centre of attention,” Richards would roar.
It always went down well. It went down especially well on the day he looked up and saw Bercow sitting in the audience.
Richard's wife now often texts if one of the many politicians floating about the Fringe is in the audience.
Last year, an American couple attended every show. At the end of his run, the veteran journalist asked the pair if they thought the show had helped to explain why the UK was in this mad period politically.
“Nope,” they answered.
“You can't help but try.”
Steve Richards Presents: Rock'n'Roll Politics
11:00
Aug 13-26
theSpace @ Symposium Hall - Amphitheatre
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