Stunts and the Art of Celebrity Maintenance
Today’s Independent features a story about stunts at the Edinburgh Festival, mentioning me and a number of other Edinburgh stuntsters, notably Malcolm Hardee. The article uses a number of the stunts that made it into my online and on the streets #Twithibition, as well as a number of more recent stunts and is a good, brief guide to the great stunts of Edinburgh past and present.
“PR expert Mark Borkowski , who is a veteran of the Fringe, has a record as colourful as Hardee’s, having been responsible for launching the extreme, chainsaw-juggling, circus group Archaos on an unsuspecting Edinburgh public in 1991. In order to promote their show, the troupe were pictured sawing a car in half on the Royal Mile and leaping over parked cars on motorbikes on the mound.
“Later in the Nineties, Borkowski took on the Jim Rose Circus, which provided the PR another opportunity to wind up the press and the authorities. Among numerous well-documented occurrences, Rose discovered a forgotten by-law that allowed sheep herding up the Royal Mile before 6am and duly obliged. Some of his flock entered the council offices before being herded out again, a not-so-sheepish gesture of anti-authoritarianism.
“This year, [the publicity stunt is] a craft that will be celebrated by a new award called the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award. Already being considered for this award is Shed Simove, the Ideas Man, whose publicity material will over the next three weeks be printed on lavatory paper and put in toilets all around Edinburgh. ‘Pooblicity’, as he calls it.”
To read the full story, click here. To follow my #Twithibition, click here and search the site for #twithibition. For more information on the stunts recorded in the #Twithibition, click here.