Lloyd Evans joins the hopeful hordes seeking fame and fortune in Edinburgh
Wonderful, Edinburgh. Isn’t it magical? The artistic world has descended on Scotland’s magnificent capital for three weeks of self-expression and glorious creativity. Or so everyone wants everyone else to think. When people speak of Edinburgh they reach whoopingly for a peculiar grammatic mode, the puerile tense. Delightful, daring, courageous, uplifting, inventive, risk-taking, inspirational, sublime. Yes, maybe. But take off the kindergarten dolly-goggles and you’ll find other qualities, other adjectives, lurking. Vain, greedy, embittered, jealous, self-obsessed, megalomaniac, drunk, stoned and bankrupt.
This is the true Edinburgh. The pilgrims aren’t here to participate in an exuberant outpouring of artistic excellence. They’re hungry. They’re mean and low. They’re after stuff. They want notoriety and success. They want TV contracts. They want to multiply, by a factor of several million, their current quotas of wealth and attention.
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