At the Fringe

My first memory of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is of seeing, with my father, John Cairney's one-man show about McGonagall. in the former church at the top of George IV Bridge. Perhaps (though probably not) the production that Robert Garioch mentions in the first of his Twa Festival Sketches:

I wes passing a convertit kirk -
- Whit's that ye say?
A convertit kirk, plenty o' thaim about;
the kirks yuistae convert the sinners,
bit nou the sinners convert the kirks.
Weill oniewey, here wes this convertit kirk
wi bills stuck owre the front
and folk queuin up to git in
to hear the Po-etic Gems
o William McGonagall.
One the pavement outside
there wes a richt rammie gaun on,
folk millin about, ken?
And in the middle o this rammie
wes a man that wes gittin Moved On -
- Whit fir? -
He'd been sellin broadsheets
o poems, Gode help him!
o his ain composition.

(Robert Garioch)