Welcome to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival! Wave goodbye to your money, sobriety and any semblance of a normal sleep pattern. Say hello to the weird, the wonderful, and hysterical, dry-heaving laughter of a kind that won’t quite translate to the outside world.

Get ready to start spotting your idols just walking down the street, get ready to say ‘no thanks’ to flyers roughly every 30 seconds, and wind up taking them anyway because the person handing you them was funny/charming/in a funny costume/worryingly eager. Primarily: prepared to be completely overwhelmed for choice.

No poster stays up for long before someone posts another over it

The very first time I went to the Fringe, I just dipped in for a day when I happened to be in Scotland. My travelling companion and I almost had panic attacks when we started leafing through the Fringe Brochure (about 1/3 the size of a Yellow Pages directory and stuffed full of tempting offers). In the end, we managed three shows in one day, literally ran from one venue to another to make it in time and managed a pretty full Fringe experience: Debbie Does Dallas: the Musical, the wonderful Aussie musical comedy guys Tripod, and a belly-flop of a gig when we paid £10 to see Phill Jupitas Reads Dickens. It was literally just Phill Jupitas reading some of Dickens’ lesser-known short stories and – on that day – he was in a foul mood. Also: the day cost us £45 each in tickets alone. This was before I knew about the Free Fringe (more on that in a moment).

The great thing about the last couple of years when I’ve been up with a show (mostly just doing the flyering for them) is that way you have a big group of mates up there, and you can learn from each other’s viewing mistakes and benefit from each other’s recommendations. There are more shows at Edinburgh than you’ll ever be able to get through, even if you’re there for the full three weeks with both a millionaire’s budget and a jetpack to get from venue to venue – so choosing how to spend your time is important.

Royal Mile

Lying on the floor in an ‘installation’: my unfavourite flyering technique

This is where is all happens. The Royal Mile is a cobbled, pedestrianised stretch of road which – for the time of the Fringe – will become a gauntlet of street performers, impromptu performances, and a small forest’s worth of flyers. Shows with cool costumes will be flyering in character, improvisers will be improvising, musicians will be singing, and three small Fringe stages will be showing 10-20 minute showcases from a wide variety of shows.

PBH Free Fringe

The PBH Free Fringe is a wonderful institution. It’s been running since 1996, put together by a guy called Peter Buckley Hill (known to many as PBH.) As the Fringe became more and more expensive, the financial risks increased for performers. While headline names from the telly have guaranteed audiences, the vast majority of performers will be lucky if they break even after a run. As the main groups of venues increased their prices over the years, the financial risks of taking a show up to the Fringe also increased. A debt of a few grand isn’t unheard of, and is easily enough to wipe out a small arts troupe. To counteract this, PBH set up the Free Fringe, where performers don’t pay for the venues and audiences don’t pay to enter.

There’s lots of bucket-shaking at the end, but you can see a show and then decide what it’s worth. A good guide: give as many pounds as you would give it stars (out of five). If it sucked – you can just walk out. No obligation. No misgynistic asshole will call. If it rocked your world, give them a fiver (or more!) and buy a book or a CD from the performers. It’s good manners to buy a drink at the venues to make sure they stay with the Free Fringe next year, and to make sure you have enough change at the end. (If you’re broke, you can always just shake the performer’s hand and say thank you.)

Fringe Adventurer’s Cheat Sheet

• Get hold of a PBH Free Fringe guide as soon as you ca.n It lists all the free shows and is arranged by time (not the mind-boggling alphabetic listing of the main programme) so if it’s, say, 3:00 and you want to to see something before your next show at 5:00, it’s easy to flip through and see what’s on.
• Avoid TV names unless you really, really love them. Because their shows are guaranteed to be pricier, and – though it’s not the same – you see them at home on the telly anyway. It’s worth remembering at the Fringe that small audiences don’t necessarily mean bad performances and big audiences don’t mean quality. Go take a punt on something weird and wonderful for cheaps. You might not be able to see it anywhere else.
• Try to get enough sleep. Yes, this runs antithetical to the spirit of the Fringe where there is a constant pressure to do and see everything, and some of the best shows are on late at night, but try to get enough sleep to stay sane, healthy, and up to the task. A couple of times in the past, I’d realise I was finding something intellectually funny but was just too shattered to fully appreciate it. Other times there were slumps and tears. Just… look after yourselves, eh guys?
• Comfortable Shoes. You will be walking up and down a lot of hills, often cobbled, and often in the rain. Get some comfortable footwear, and maybe carry a change of socks to prevent trenchfoot. You don’t want to end up like I did last year, losing a whole afternoon to a trip to A&E to have a swollen, numb, tingly foot looked at. (Nothing broken, luckily, but annoying nonetheless.)

And, finally, recommended shows

These are on my Edinburgh to-do list on account of how I’ve seen the performers (and sometimes whole preview shows) already and I can vouch for their awesomeness. These are arranged alphabetically to avoid having to pick or choose an order:

The Beta Males – The Space Race

I’ve been a mad fangirl for these guys ever since I saw some little show of theirs in a room above a pub. Huge, howling belly laughs roughly every 10 seconds. These guys are taut, high-energy, dark and twisted, but never go for cheap shots. Blokey without ever straying anywhere near asshat UNILAD territory. Their shows are a series of sketches with an overall plot arc, and their first show I saw – The Bunker – is still quoted in my group of friends with the fanaticism of Monty Python fans. Trailer here. Random awesome YouTube video of theirs here.

Dirty Great Love Story
A two-person love story told through poetry. That explanation doesn’t begin to do it justice. It’s heartfelt, down to earth, sometimes awkward, sometimes hilarious, and with polished flows which will make you pause and go “ooooh” until another line brings you back up cackling. Written and performed by spoken word allstars Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna. Trailer here.

Fat Kitten Improv
I first saw these guys in 2009 and I’ve been hooked ever since. Full disclosure: they are my mates. Fuller disclosure: they’re my mates ’cause I loved them on stage so much I set about getting to know them. Once reviewed as “well-spoken but batshit insane”. Also they’re a mixed-gender team of predominantly huggable lefty feminists and won’t take cheap shots. Except the odd cock joke. (Hee hee. Cocks.) Improvised comedy will be different every time, so if you like them you can keep coming back and always see something fresh. Shout out your own suggestions and see them acted out for your viewing pleasure. Dance, monkeys, dance! Part of the PBH Free Fringe. Sample here.

Lashings of Ginger Beer Time
Like many things at the Fringe, these guys are hard to pin down – so I’ll go with their own description: “Lashings of Ginger Beer Time is a Queer Feminist Burlesque Collective. Combining songs, dancing, stand-up and sketches, luxe Victoriana drag with thigh-high fetish-boots, upbeat musical theatre optimism with 21st-century political rage, this is music hall for the internet age.” Saw them the other week with fellow BadReppers Jenni, Rhian and Miranda and the show really made me laugh. And cry. Like, lots. *shakes fist* *fails to hold grudge* *hugs Lashings people* Taster vids here.

Loretta Maine
Musical Comedy creation of the wonderful Pippa Evans, Loretta Maine is a fucked up Courtney Love-esque singer songwriter. Vulnerability, self-destructive everything, kickass and more than a hint of menace. Her show two years ago, I’m Not Drunk, I Just Need to Talk to You, was a highlight of the Fringe and I’ve had the poster on my wall ever since. Song here. Another one here. Clip of previous show here.

Max and Ivan Are… Con Artists
Two man high energy sketch duo. They share a lot of awesomes with the Beta Males in their format – minimal, inventive staging, a cast of bizarre characters and a high-energy sketch show with an overall narrative. This year’s one is about a band of assassins, and Max Olesker doing his Joanna-Lumley-posh-voiced character makes me feel funny things in my tummy. Trailer here.

The Mechanisms
Musical steampunks in space. “A band of immortal space pirates roaming the universe in the starship Aurora. If you’re very lucky, they might sing you a story before they shoot you.” With a sound defined as ‘Space Folk’ and mad theatrics and kick-ass (feminist!) reworkings of traditional songs and fairy tales. But IN SPACE! Full disclosure: my housemate is in this one. Complete full disclosure: I had to contain my fangirling when I heard their album, because otherwise it could have been awkward. Part of the PBH Free Fringe. Musical preview here.

Other Voices Spoken Word
Oh hai, this is my show. I mentioned it the other week. Put together by the wonderful Fay Roberts and featuring (I’m not just saying this) some of my favourite female performance poets on the scene, I’m chuffed to bits to be part of it. We’ve had some very nice reviews already. Apparently I “delighted the room with poems laced with puns and elegant, elaborate language. By turns comic and poignant, political and surreal, Hannah’s poetry made the audience laugh and made them think, a dangerous combination.” Just sayin’. Part of the PBH Free Fringe.

• The 2012 Fringe runs from 3-27 August.

Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: THAT’S NOT FUNNY!

I love live comedy, honest I do. I spent two weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year and I’ll be there for the full three weeks this year. Some of my best friends are (very good) comedians. However, as a scene: live comedy has a problem. I haven’t been an aficionado for many years, so maybe it was always there – but if recent articles are anything to go by; it seems to be growing. Increasingly, the search for ‘edgy’ material is translating into a scene where the recoil laugh – the I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that laugh – is the only one aimed for. The targets are ‘soft’ – minorities and marginalized groups – and the jokes prod at the same old prejudices. The numbers of times I come home from a comedy gig wanting to dry-clean my brain is rising.

My hackles were finally raised enough to write this article after an especially bad gig I went to recently. A sketch group of white, able-bodied young men performed a series of female grotesques which were so consistently unpleasant that – though cheerily presented – the unmistakable undercurrent to the evening was ‘we really don’t like women much.’ Most sketches involved a member of the group donning a plastic wig to ‘be a girl’ – and every female character was a Lolita, a whore, a woman giving birth or a mother who hated her children. The punchlines ranged from coat hanger abortions to incest to rape to paedophilia. At my table, from about halfway through, we didn’t laugh so much as look to each other for reaction shots and a reality check. This troupe’s final skit was a song and dance number, the ‘Cell Block Tango’ from Chicago, with the words changed to ‘she had it coming’. Had there not been other people on the bill who I really wanted to see, I would have walked out then and there.

The problem is more widespread than just one shit comedy troupe . People more eloquent than myself have pointed out this return to the bad old days. It seems like the decades of hard-earned progress, a basic standard of ‘don’t be a shit to the marginalised’, is being discarded because now it’s apparently ironic. Sexism is increasingly tolerated (after all, everything’s sorted and equal now, so just lighten up, bitch) and other kinds of prejudice are also creeping back, too. ‘It’s not racist, it’s just un-PC, and no one likes political correctness. So, while we’re at it, what about those immigrants, homos, and the disabled, aye?’

Increasingly comedians who get pulled up for saying genuinely unpleasant things (I’m looking at you, Frankie Boyle) have taken this to be their selling point and then upped the ante in general douchery. While Jordan, the gossip-magazines’ favourite glamour model, might seem a fair target, when exactly did her disabled son become fair game, too? Let alone in a joke about incest and rape. I’ll repeat that: an incest-rape joke about a disabled eight-year-old child.

While I’m sure there has always been some truly unpleasant comedy around, its apparent mainstream acceptance is a new trend. The Frankie Boyle joke aired on Channel 4. This worries me because our words do carry a power – they reflect how we see the world, but they also set our standards for what is normal, acceptable, okay. The trickle-down effect has real-world consequences. The rise of the rape joke can be a horrific trigger for those who have experienced it. In increments, these themes – packaged as entertainment – normalise these horrors and dismiss their seriousness.

This is not an argument for censorship – I had fervent arguments a few years ago with Daily Fail-reading colleagues about whether Jerry Springer: The Opera should be shown on TV (yes, yes, a thousand times yes!) – but there is a huge middle ground between Mary Whitehouse prudery and comedy which is getting pretty close to hatespeech. Please, guys: self-regulate a little by engaging the brain.

Some would argue that if I don’t like this brand of comedy, I just shouldn’t watch it. To some extent they’re right, and I do try. When I saw a poster in Edinburgh for a standup show called ‘The Lying Bitch and the Wardrobe’ (I see what you did there) I had a pretty strong inkling that this wouldn’t be my kind of thing and I didn’t go. But on a mixed bill (as almost all small live comedy gigs are) there’s rarely any warning what each person will do – so while you might have gone along because you recognise one name that you like, there is no disclosure until you’re hearing it that the third act, Joe Bloggs, will be your prejudiced asshat for the evening, berating you all with a microphone for at least ten minutes.

Oh, and you paid to see this.

I don’t think anything should be off-limits – but some topics are so unpleasant (not to mention increasingly over-mined) that if a comedian wants to tackle them they will need to be so damn funny, so ingenious, original, tactful – that 80% of comedians just shouldn’t bother. Needless to say, the 80% that aren’t up to speed don’t get this, and the 20% that can do it well often have better things to do than prod triggertastic subjects and tired old clichés with a great big stick. They’re off crafting material that makes you belly-laugh (and think) rather than just titter nervously in disbelief.

As my friend James Ross, who runs the consistently wonderful Fat Kitten Improv group and the Better Living Through Comedy night put it: “From a purely technical standpoint, shock humour suffers acutely from a law of diminishing returns: the audience build up a resistance to it, and that alone would be good reason to limit its use.”

I think the thing which is missing (besides originality) is a measure of basic empathy. In the increasingly desperate search for ‘dark’ and ‘cutting edge’ material, comedians forget that a lot of their lazily-picked targets are people. Real people. People with feelings and also (self-interest alert, guys:) people who go to comedy gigs.

The rising amount of ‘ironic’ misogyny is not creating a particularly friendly environment for a certain 50% of punters. Last year I went to the Comedy Store to see twelve different comedians being filmed for The World Stands Up. I wasn’t entirely sure if the person who’d invited me along had intended the evening as a date or not, so it was potentially awkward already. Then, as the evening unfolded, four out of twelve comedians used ‘bad fellatio’ as the bedrock of their sets. One standup spent his whole set mocking his wife for not pleasuring him correctly. In the narratives that we heard that night, women’s main role was as dispensers of sexual favours – and we couldn’t even do that right. Thanks, guys. I haven’t been back to the Comedy Store since.

For another example, I was once out with a group for a friend’s birthday when a standup did a set about making a mess in the disabled toilet and blaming it on a disabled person. While he wasn’t to know that birthday girl, sat in the front row, had cerebral palsy, why did he think this would be a good topic in the first place? How many times has he encouraged the able-bodied to laugh at this disadvantaged minority’s expense?

Example of good standup! Catherine Semark performing at Edinburgh Fringe. Photo by me.

This isn’t an argument for ‘nice’ comedy. Some of my favourite comedians are pretty darn dark and twisted – Bill Hicks, Dylan Moran, and I heartily recommend London sketch group The Beta Males – but the ‘type’ of twisted is crucial. Jokes are about status – people use them every day to agree boundaries of what’s acceptable, and with that comes a certain amount of responsibility. When activist comedians such as Mark Thomas or Kate Smurthwaite use humour to mock people in power for making bad decisions, that’s something very different to a middle class standup laying into ‘chavs’ for ‘talking funny and drinking cheap booze’.

Anger and humour are very often interlinked, but where you aim that anger makes all the difference. Aim it ‘up’ at deserving, more powerful targets and it’s subversive, it can hold people to account – satire has a long and proud tradition. Aim that anger ‘down’ at the underdog and it’s tired, old and – frankly – it’s bullying.

• Hannah Eiseman-Renyard is a short, fat, ginger four-eyes who nonetheless loves live comedy. She works as an editor by day, a writer/performance poet by night, and on the weekends she fights crime. She’ll sleep when she’s dead. Hannah runs the Whippersnapper Press, a web-publishing site for short, innovative and funny creative writing. She is twenty-five and lives in North London with her three grandchildren and thirty cats. Her turn-ons include moss, handicrafts and Bohemian clichés.