Comedian will carry on camping to cut Edinburgh Festival costs

Lee Kyle says camping for the Edinburgh Festival is 'not as grim as it sounds'

Accommodation shortages in Edinburgh push festival performers further out of the city, a comedian who has booked almost a month on a campsite has said.

Lee Kyle, from South Shields, will return to Scotland's capital with his tent for his show at the Festival Fringe in August.

He will travel into the city every day for his lunch slot at The Pear Tree.

It was inevitable that many performers would be priced out of the festival, Lee said.

Accommodation costs in August have been creeping up in recent years and are set to get worse after a change to licensing requirements for self-catering properties in Scotland.

This year short-term lets available in August include one bedroom flats with a monthly rate of £10,000 and a three-bedroom flat for £34,000.

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Speaking on BBC Radio Four's Today programme, Lee said the cost of camping had gone up this year but was still a difference between £450 and "many thousands" for staying indoors.

"My accommodation is something that I've started over the last few years, partly because something fell through at the last minute but in terms of affordability what I do is I stay in a tent for a month," he said.

"It's not as grim as it sounds," Lee said. "It's not like festival camping. It's a nice place with lots of facilities but it's not how I would choose to spend a month, although arguably I have."

He said pricing poorer people out of the festival as costs soared was "inevitable".

"In years past I may have done the Edinburgh Festival without a second thought and now it's becoming less tenable," he said.

"You may get paid by a venue but on the whole you're more likely to pay a venue and end up owing various people rather than them owing you.

"It's not necessarily set up to make comedians money."

However, he said performing at the festival had been "worth it for me creatively".

"It's a cost/benefit analysis in some ways," Lee said. "I've not been one of those acts who's been spotted and fast-tracked to stardom. But that's also not why I went."

Some holiday let businesses, who are bringing a Judicial Review against Edinburgh council's implementation of the new laws, said they would have a "disastrous" impact on the festivals in coming years, with even less accommodation available for performers and visitors.

A temporary exemption scheme to allow more properties to be rented out during the festival has been described as "unworkable".

The Scottish government said their scheme was developed in response to residents' concerns about the impact of short-term let properties such as Airbnb rentals on their communities.

Gavin Webster says it is "difficult to quantify" any benefit of going to the festival

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who is president of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, announced a new £100,000 fund to help performers put on shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe earlier this year.

But the price of accommodation will also hit ticket sales if fewer punters stay in the city.

Comedian Gavin Webster, who is based in Newcastle upon Tyne, said the cost of putting on a show was increasing and with the price of accommodation it was "difficult to quantify" any benefit of going to the festival.

"It is a good thing to do artistically," he said. "In the long term you do get a lot of jobs out of it and you're taken seriously, but in terms of the cold hard facts accountancy-wise, anyone would look at a comedian going up to Edinburgh and say 'what are you doing, why aren't you just earning money elsewhere rather than spending time paying venues for the privilege of performing for three-and-a-half weeks in Edinburgh and ending up with a big bill."

He will also be staying outside the city centre during the festival.

"I'm staying in a flat down the bottom end of Leith near Ocean Terminal, and that's costing me a little more than [camping], but not a fortune," he said. "I know of several people that are now going out in the surrounding towns, maybe down in Musselburgh or Portobello."

Many Glasgow comedians now just commute daily to the festival rather than decamping to the capital for August, Gavin added.