Edinburgh Fringe: Biggest arts festival in the world begins

Thousands of performers from across the world are in Edinburgh for the start of the world's biggest arts festival.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe will see more than 3,000 shows staged across almost 300 venues.

The event is facing competition for audiences over the weekend from the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

But fringe organisers said the international sporting event seemed to be having little impact on the box office.

Several new venues will feature in the August extravaganza, to accommodate the biggest line-up the festival has seen.

A new responsive ticketing method has also been introduced to let visitors create their own calendar of events.

Famous names taking part in the event include Dame Diana Rigg, Jeremy Paxman, Glen Matlock and Clive Anderson.

Space is tight and every performer is treated equally.

There will also be hundreds of unknown performers, many of them amateurs, who will take to temporary stages across Edinburgh over the next three-and-a-half weeks.

There are shows about Scottish independence, the 100th anniversary of the World War One and even the Commonwealth Games.

This year, for the first time, audiences will be able post reviews directly onto the fringe website.