The Edinburgh Festival is due to kick off in a weeks, and yesterday tickets went on sale for the Fringe events in August

Or rather they didn’t, as the computer systems went down.  Computer says “no”?

Where’s The IT Crowd when you need them?  Did you try turning it off and back on again?

“No tickets have sold on the web today. Phone and counter sales are also operating slowly.  We don’t have any information on whether it will be operating tomorrow.
“It’s really disappointing, but we are doing everything we can to sell tickets as normal, if not quicker in the future.”

The Fringe sold 1.7 million tickets last year.  If they don’t sort things out soon, it will be a lot less for 2008.  This year’s event includes over 28,000 performances, 17,000 artists, and spans 261 venues.

Sounds like a way to spend summer - ticket or no ticket.

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Where do I start with this one?

15 Years ago British comedy was edging towards a remarkable heyday; Blackadder had finished, Fry & Laurie’s sketch series had hit comedy fans squarely between the eyes, and new writers such as Charlie Higson were forging careers providing gags for newcomers Reeves & Mortimer.  Meanwhile on Radio One we had The Mary Whitehouse Experience, in which David Baddiel, Rob Newman, Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis worked in a bizarre duo of double acts in a format which soon translated to BBC Two.

All of this lead to the astonishing declaration in the New Musical Express that “Comedy is the New Rock n Roll!” with Newman & Baddiel going on tour and performing at Wembley, a move that was soon echoed by Charlie Higson and the rest of The Fast Show.

Comedy supergroups were all of a sudden the norm, and things were getting just a little bit bonkers, frankly.

Since those heady days, Little Britain has been on tour to audiences rivalling Newman & Baddiel, but it wasn’t really meant to be this way, was it? 

I can’t help but feel that as important as live comedy is, nothing is as important to the future of British comedy as the shared experience of watching the funniest series as a family or social group.  It seems that nowadays people have very particular funny bones, and this is only because comedy became “cool”. 

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