Greetings from Edinburgh, where the air is full of love and seagulls. Mostly seagulls. They soar, they sweep, they swoop above the Old Town, the New Town, the castle and the cathedral. They are everywhere. They strut down the Royal Mile, tourists and rickshaws scattering to make way for them. They descend from on high to attack your bag of chips as you sit at your lunch table in the Assembly Gardens. They are fearless and fabulous and huge. They are herring gulls mostly, with wingspans of up to 5ft (seriously) and lifespans of up to 20 or 30 years (oh yes). I love them, with their beady-eyed authority and mocking squawk that asserts with every piercing cry: ‘I have been around for 30 million years or more and belong here quite as much as you do.’ There are Edinburgh city councillors who take a different view, regarding the scavenging birds as a predatory nuisance and an economic threat, but happily calls to cull the gulls are getting nowhere. The birds are protected by law and while the Edinburgh gull population is booming, elsewhere in the UK numbers have fallen sharply over the past two decades, dropping from just under four million to 2.55 million – exactly the same number, incidentally, as belong to China’s People’s Liberation Army. Let’s get our threats in perspective.
Never mind the birds, Edinburgh’s human population is booming too. The Scottish capital’s regular base of about 530,000 residents is swamped in August with a million and more visitors arriving this month for a raft of arts festivals, most notably the Edinburgh Fringe, which this year features 4,206 shows playing in 299 venues across the city. There are some 30,000 participating performers and crew up here. I am one of them. Every day this month at 4 p.m. I take to the stage (a converted university lecture theatre) and, with my co-star Harriet Jaine (a generation my junior and also the producer of my podcast, Rosebud), we strut our stuff, singing, dancing, telling stories and, we hope, raising a few laughs. We don’t take a day off, which most other Fringe shows do. When Harriet found out about this, she was not amused. She belongs to the generation that talks about work-life balance – a concept much overrated in my opinion. I belong to the generation that remembers Noël Coward and his line: ‘Work is much more fun than fun.’ That’s only true if you are lucky enough to do fun work and the work I do – performing, podcasting, playing Just A Minute, writing books – is interesting and varied. I love my wife and children (naturally), but I love my work just as much, if not more. When I die, I will certainly wish I had spent less time at the beach and more time at the desk.
In Edinburgh I am unique. I am the only performer here not walking around holding a bottle of water. The young have become hydration obsessives. I am not sure this non-stop water consumption is as healthy as it is cracked up to be. The other day I was with Dame Mary Berry, 91, and she was telling me about her mother, who drank a small glass of water at lunch and another small glass (alongside a larger glass of wine) at dinner. Mary’s mum lived to be 105.
My Edinburgh show is inspired by my podcast, Rosebud, in which I talk to famous people about their first and formative memories. Dame Mary has been one of the most popular guests. We seem to specialise in great dames. We have had them all, from actress Dame Judi Dench to engineer Dame Maggie Aderin. Dame Elaine Paige was on the other day and, when I quizzed her about her relationships, she said: ‘Work, not love, is the great affair.’
Almost every one of our guests to date has attributed their success or achievement to hard work. And keeping at it. Sir James Dyson was emphatic that it is failure that leads to success. Persistence, resilience, endeavour – that’s what you need. Our podcast’s third birthday falls on 1 September and, without fail and without break, we have produced two to three episodes a week since we began. Now I come to think about it, despite her work-life balance protestations, Harriet hasn’t had a week off in three years. She had planned a brief summer break with her family, but now she is here in Edinburgh with me, every day, on stage at 4 p.m. Yes, work is much more fun than fun.
Gyles Brandreth and Harriet Jaine are in Up Memory Lane! at the Gordon Aikman Theatre, George Square, Edinburgh until 31 August.
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