My god, what an appalling, patronising, ill-informed, load of tosh The Edinburgh Show (spin off from The Culture Show) was last night (BBC2, in the Late Review slot). The Ron Mueck piece was the worst piece of contemporary art “reviewing” i’ve seen for about ten years, surely we’re still not stuck in the idea that “ordinary” people don’t get things that aren’t paintings are we? Or that people think that there is some sort of “secret art club” that you need to be a member of to “understand” modern work? So incredibly patronising. And why send someone to do the show who’d never been to the festival before? Anyone watching the show would either be going or wishing they were, so feedback from a veteran about how this year’s festival compares to past ones would be much more informative than “ooh i don’t like stand-up me”. Also reducing stand-up to three VERY shouty blokes (the joke-free Jason Byrne, the out-dated Brendon Burns and some boring american bloke who is meant to be some sort of new Bill Hicks) is bound to put anyone off it, when there is such a wide variety, even when it comes to one person with a mic shows.
If i bump into Matthew Sweet or Zina Sara-Wiwa in the pleasance courtyard (and considering the ENTIRE show was from there last night, despite there being 200 other venues, i don’t think this will be too hard) over the next five days they will be getting a piece of my mind…
(x-posted to the bbc msg board, i bet i know which one gets more readers, eh viewers?)