2: Quis recognitores recenset?

It’s 9am, Tuesday 30 July 2024. The foreshocks of the 2024 Edinburgh Festival are now palpable, even if that’s principally down to some last minute construction work on the latest (literally) venues.

Years ago, an acquaintance –?we drifted apart; it happens –?objected to me reviewing the Fringe. He suggested I was on some kind of self-aggrandising ego-trip, believing my opinions were better than anyone else’s just because they were being published by a publication of relative note.

I really hope that wasn’t the case, then or now. Yes, at their best, I aim for my reviews to be possibly more reasoned, informed and comprehensible than other people’s—that my 40-odd years of theatre-watching and published journalism means they’re useful to people. Especially the performers who, guaranteed, will read them—even if they say they don’t!

But “better”?

I still miss a website called Fringe Pig which started publishing anonymous reviews during the late 2010s—not of the numerous comedy acts turning up in Edinburgh each August, but critiques of the people who reviewed them. Essentially, they presented themselves as the answer to: “Who reviews the reviewers?” (The answer, admittedly, was seldom kind.)

Although I wasn’t keen on their semi-pseudonymous use of soft toys, I felt Fringe Pig provided a useful service, thought that’s perhaps because I received a relatively rare positive – dare I say effusive –?review.

The contributor considered that I review “consistently, explain[s] things simply, and criticise[s] softly. This is the holy trinity of reviewing. […] More importantly, in a few short sentences I actually understood the gist, the action and the atmosphere of what Cockburn saw.”

It’s the most positive feedback I’ve ever received during my entire journalistic career, though it does raise one inevitable question: shouldn’t everyone be doing that?