3 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Are Oasis' Edinburgh gigs a boon or a curse? The figures don't add up
Ker-ching.
Perhaps we should take that sum with a pinch of salt, though. Here's why: in its Economic Impact Of The Edinburgh Festivals report of June 2023, creative industries consultants BOP Consulting estimated that the Edinburgh Festivals contributed £492 million to the capital's economy.
So does that mean that over the course of three days and three concerts, a mere 200,000 Oasis fans will deliver around a quarter of the total sum it would ordinarily takes three weeks, thousands of shows, tens of thousands of performances and four million potential punters to accrue? It seems hard to credit.
Then again, maybe it's in the food and drink spend that the answers lie. If previous experience is anything to go by, that sum could indeed be considerable. Here's a flavour of the, er, atmosphere in the city in 2009, the last time Oasis visited Murrayfield. 'There were folk spewing up in the street by the afternoon,' reported Haymarket shop manager Ian Barclay. 'You could just tell there was going to be at least some trouble. I saw one guy passed out on a wall near Morrison Street at about 4pm with a sky blue Oasis T-shirt on.'
A local primary school had to close the last time Oasis played Murrayfield (Image: STEWART ATTWOOD) And trouble there was. At least one large fight broke out in the stadium itself – a man was carried out on a stretcher – and overall the event was 'marred by violence', according to one newspaper headline.
Meanwhile householders nearby with a square of garden large enough to defecate or urinate in found more than a few surprises of that variety the next morning. It's fair to say Edinburgh wasn't delighted by the 2009 visit of Oasis and there was a very definite gritting of teeth when the three August dates were announced. And that's before you factor in the mooted travel chaos and the general infrastructure deficits which abound across the Central Belt. 'Can Scotland cope with hosting Oasis and the Fringe at the same time?' this paper asked last year. Good question.
Pull back a bit and you learn it isn't just in Edinburgh that doubts are raised about revenue-boosting big stadium events. A slew of concerts scheduled for Madrid's iconic Bernabéu stadium, for instance, have been cancelled over constant complaints from locals about noise which exceeds legal levels, fans camping in nearby parks, streets being shut off and – does this one sound familiar? – drunks urinating in doorways.
Pull back even further and we can place these issues in a broader movement which is starting to see tourists and tourism – whether cultural or otherwise – as a curse rather than a blessing.
With Oasis fans now older and (hopefully) less prone to falling into drunken stupors miles from the stadium, perhaps the upcoming gigs will be less gory. Perhaps the event will fold happily into the hurly-burly of the festival city and be swallowed up by the tumult. Either way lessons will be learned as the capital continues to assess the opportunities, dangers and reputational demands of its place as a pre-eminent cultural destination.
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Theme park
Still with Edinburgh and its festival, the Fringe programme has just launched and, as usual, there's a host of home-grown talent to enjoy besides the blow-ins from virtually every other country on the planet.
This year's programme features work from 3,352 shows across 265 venues and the good people at Fringe HQ have helpfully provided a list of the key themes for those who haven't yet had a chance to read the programme. Among these you'll find Rebellious Women, Queer Joy, Rave And Club Culture, The Apocalypse and Nostalgia, which I am going to crunch together into this handy phrase: 'The end of the world is nigh, let's party like it's 1988'.
Feel free to come up with your own version.
Glibness aside, those themes and others nod to one of the Fringe's great strengths: how, in aggregate, the subjects people choose to make art about offer a snapshot of the world we live in and the issues which assail it. Sure, when the Fringe rolls around you can stick to easy stand-ups and cheap laughs – but if you want serious commentary on the forces shaping our country, it's there for you in spades and you're doing yourself a dis-service if you don't dig in. As Grace Slick sang on White Rabbit: 'Feed your head.'
And finally
The Herald's music critic Keith Bruce continues his tour of the best the Perth Festival of the Arts has to offer with a review from St Ninian's Cathedral of Puccini's Suor Angelica, performed by Opera Bohemia and the Amicus Orchestra. He was also at the acoustically fine Caird Hall in Dundee for a performance by the RSNO's Artist in Residence Randall Goosby. Elsewhere theatre critic Neil Cooper was at Saria Callas, the latest in Òran Mór's A Play, A Pie And A Pint series. Written by Iran-born singer, artist and theatre director Sara Amini it tells the story of an Iranian girl who just wants to sing – but faces censure if she tries.
