Edinburgh fringe event organisers urged to capitalise on Oasis and AC/DC gigs
Organisers of Edinburgh fringe events have been urged to be “pretty smart” and capitalise on the decision by Oasis and AC/DC to play gigs in the city midway through the festival.There was surprise and irritation when it emerged the bands would be staging four concerts at Murrayfield stadium in mid-August when the world’s largest arts festival is in full flow.Tony Lankester, who recently took over as the Fringe Society’s chief executive, said fringe companies should see the concerts as an opportunity rather than fret about downsides.About 75,000 fans are expected for each concert – three by Oasis and one by AC/DC, putting the city’s trains, buses and trams under even greater strain, with visitors competing for already scarce and expensive hotel beds.Lankester, who previously ran South Africa’s national arts festival, said fringe venues should tempt Edinburgh residents who may “want to hide” when the concerts take place with discounted tickets or free wine.
Venues could also tempt Oasis and AC/DC concertgoers with “morning after” performances in the city with free bacon rolls and coffee, he suggested.“What we don’t want to happen is for the local audience to hide that night,” he said.“There’s some pretty smart marketing type things that I think venues could be looking at.The fact is that it’s not going away.Why not be completely opportunistic about it?”This year’s fringe, which runs from 1 to 25 Augustand takes place alongside the international festival and book festival, is expected to involve about 50,000 performances at 265 venues.
Lankester said the strength of the programme, which includes themes such as rebellious women, the apocalypse, queer joy and rave culture, showed artists were as hungry as ever to perform despite global crises and tensions.“What excites me most about the programme, is the signal that it sends is of an industry in healthy shape,” he said.For the first time, five shows from US performers are being underwritten by donors to the Keep it Fringe funding strand launched in 2023 by the Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the fringe’s honorary president, to support new, marginalised or innovative acts.Lankester said he had numerous conversations that “reaffirmed for me what I knew coming into this job, that there’s a lot of love and joy around the fringe.It’s something that people absolutely want to preserve, protect, engage with, be part of.
It’s still on an incredible number of people’s bucket lists,”He said he was talking to major brands about the potential to become headline sponsors of the fringe for the first time, to bring in extra revenue for performers and venues at a time of intense pressure on public funding,He said those discussions were at an early stage, but indicated it could involve a bank or beer brand,No sponsor would be allowed to rebrand the fringe, but their investments would help the festival to improve its finances,Sign up to The GuideGet our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Fridayafter newsletter promotionIn her last newspaper interview, Shona McCarthy, Lankester’s immediate predecessor, accused political leaders of consistently neglecting the fringe and failing to adequately invest in services, transport and infrastructure such as mobile phone services.
Lankester said he “stood by” everything McCarthy had said.Her “enormously valuable” intervention had fuelled action and more responsiveness in the council, the Scottish government and other agencies, he said, adding: “The message landed.”Lankester is lobbying Edinburgh council to devote at least £1.1m of a new visitor levy on hotel beds to supporting the festival, and is in talks about strengthening the city’s ailing mobile and wifi services, as well as improved rail services for non-residents.The visitor levy will come into force in July 2026, but hotels will begin collecting it on all bookings made from October this year.
“What we don’t want to happen is for that money to sort of disappear into a black hole and for no benefit to be felt by the people [who] drive a big chunk of that revenue,” he said,
Weight loss drugs linked to higher risk of eye damage in diabetic patients
Weight loss drugs could at least double the risk of diabetic patients developing age-related macular degeneration, a large-scale study has found.Originally developed for diabetes patients, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) medicines have transformed how obesity is treated and there is growing evidence of wider health benefits. They help reduce blood sugar levels, slow digestion and reduce appetite.But a study by Canadian scientists published in Jama Ophthalmology has found that after six months of use GLP-1 RAs are associated with double the risk of older people with diabetes developing neovascular age-related macular degeneration compared with similar patients not taking the drugs.Academics at the University of Toronto examined medical data for more than 1 million Ontario residents with a diagnosis of diabetes and identified 46,334 patients with an average age of 66 who were prescribed GLP-1 RAs
Housing bosses press Rachel Reeves to unlock more funds for affordable homes
Housing bosses representing 1.5m social homes across England will press Rachel Reeves to reclassify affordable housing as critical infrastructure spending, amid a battle between the chancellor and Angela Rayner.There is deep dissatisfaction with the level of funding for social homes in the spending review due next week. Rayner, the housing secretary, is one of the last remaining holdouts in negotiations with the Treasury over departmental spending settlements.The Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government has been battling for more funding for the affordable homes programme as well as trying to preserve cash for local councils, homelessness and regional growth initiatives
Millions in west do not know they have aggressive fatty liver disease, study says
More than 15 million people in the US, UK, Germany and France do not know they have the most aggressive form of fatty liver disease, according to research.Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) – the formal name for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease – occurs in people who drink no or minimal amounts of alcohol whose liver contains more than 5% fat.About two-thirds of patients with type 2 diabetes are thought to have the condition, which is also associated with obesity, heart and circulatory disease.Approximately 5% of adults globally have the most aggressive form of MASLD. Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) causes fibrosis (scarring) and can lead to cirrhosis and is linked to greater risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and liver cancer
I thought it was being gay that made my life so difficult. Then, at 50, I got an eye-opening diagnosis …
I spent far too many years lonely and angry, thanks to schoolmates who called me ‘weird’ and bosses who dismissed me as ‘hysterical’. But was it my sexuality that put their backs up – or the autism I am still coming to terms with?My earliest memory is of feeling different. I’m gay, and grew up in the 1980s, in a tough, working-class town in the north of England at the height of the Aids crisis. My gayness was obvious in the way I walked and talked. I was bullied at school, called a “poof”, “pansy” and “fairy”; other children did impressions of me with their wrists limp
Contraception warning over weight-loss drugs after dozens of pregnancies
Women using weight-loss drugs have been urged to use effective contraception after dozens have reported becoming pregnant while taking the medication.The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has issued its first alert to the UK public regarding contraception and weight-loss medications after it received 40 reports relating to pregnancies while using drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro.Ozempic and Wegovy, which both contain semaglutide, work by mimicking a hormone called GLP-1 that triggers an increase in the production of insulin, slows the rate at which food is digested in the stomach and reduces appetite.Mounjaro, which contains the active ingredient tirzepatide, also acts on a second hormone involved in appetite and blood sugar control. Although these have been referred to as “weight-loss injections”, not all are authorised for weight loss
People with cancer face ‘ticking timebomb’ due to NHS staff shortages
People with cancer face a “ticking timebomb” of delays in getting diagnosed and treated because the NHS is too short-staffed to provide prompt care, senior doctors have warned.An NHS-wide shortage of radiologists and oncologists means patients are enduring long waits to have surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy and have a consultant review their care.Hold-ups lead to some people’s cancer spreading, which can reduce the chances of their treatment working and increase the risk of death, the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) said.NHS cancer services are struggling to keep up with rising demand for tests, such as scans and X-rays, and treatment, created by the growing number of people getting the disease.Evidence the RCR collected from the heads of NHS cancer centres across the UK and the clinical directors of radiology departments shows that delays to potentially “life-saving” care occur because of “chronic” workforce gaps
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