Why on earth am I playing the Free Fringe, a man like me, who has been on the telly and drunk with Barry Cryer reduced to holding a bucket out at the end of my gigs. Oh the ignominy.

Actually, I chose to do PBH’s free fringe through a combination of friendship with this Don Corleone of altruism, some form of socialism of the heart (copyright Billy Bragg) and just a general interest in doing something a little different from playing the officially sanctioned venues.

THE FRINGE 2009! Follow SSP's coverage here!

Perhaps because I started going to live comedy when I was a young teen observing the exciting world of alternative comedy in dishevelled cellars on broken chairs that the idea of the fringe means something to me.

Maybe I am just a Luddite who refuses to accept the vital role of market forces and share options in the exciting business opportunity world of stand up comedy.

I dabbled in the free fringe last year, filling in for people’s days off with some Book Clubs, science shows and my new stand up show, and I liked it.

Not only were the audiences appreciative, but, without any prompting, they put money in buckets so that I could annoy bar owners all night by paying for rounds in loose change.

When I played the Assembly Rooms, in the back of my mind lurked the knowledge that this audience have paid good money, maybe even too much money, to watch me sweat and gesticulate about Robert Mapplethorpe, Bonobos and Hull. The sense of self loathing and general shame if I felt the show wasn’t good enough on certain nights dogged me like a lugubrious ghost.

So this year’s shows are free. Despite this, I won’t be lazy or laurel seated, it doesn’t matter what the size of the audience is or type of room, I still want to perform my best (that Protestant work ethic has not been eradicated from this Atheist).

The joy of the free fringe (and the £5 Fringe where I am also greedily putting on a show) is the sense that it is a fringe.

It shall feel more like the days when I watched Eddie Izzard and Owen O’Neill in a homeless shelter that had briefly become home to art and poets. Where the homeless went for August I don’t know, I think they might have been performing an all booze version of 12 Angry Men on the Royal Mile.

The Fringe should be about experimentation and joy, but as long as audiences and performers are both risking financial ruin by their visit, then the Edinburgh Fringe or Comedy or Whatever Festival can only grow evermore into a very expensive shop window where comedians throw money into a sluice in the hope that Mike Bigtime from Bigtime TV will appear, cigar in hand and mouth, and make them the face of Saturday primetime.

Happily, some sort of new alternative is on the rise, there shall be wheat and there shall be chaff, but it shall continue to shake things up, hopefully to the point of rollercoaster excitement, but occasionally to nausea too.

By next year though I won’t be bothering to do any of this nonsense, the midlife crisis will be over and I shall be greedily pawing for booze commercials and corporate awards events for the makers of thumb screws and testicle hammers, just like all the other proper comedians.

Robin Ince is appearing as part of the Free and Five Pound Fringe, for more information check out his myspace page...

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