Lily Savage, The League of Gentlemen, Fleabag and a host of telly sensations started out on tiny stages at the extravaganza. In its absence, who will be next?
Paul O’Grady’s first night at the Edinburgh fringe did not go according to plan. He made his festival debut in 1991 as Lily Savage, the chain-smoking, peroxide tram-wreck from Birkenhead, and found himself sharing a dressing room: “I was in with Stomp, an
Actor doing a play about Dylan Thomas and another one doing Tommy Cooper,” he says. “Oh, and a juggling act.”
Pandemonium ensued during the fire-eating segment of O’Grady’s midnight show at the Assembly Rooms. “A stripper up north had taught me to fire-eat,” he explains. “But I set off all the alarms and the place had to be evacuated – every act, every room, all the audiences out into the street. I wanted to crawl under a rock. I was mortified.” In fact, it was the best thing that could have happened. “There I was in full drag, and someone asked me to pose with the fireman. The photos were on the front page of all the papers and the place was jam-packed after that.”