Alex Salmond explains why his chat show won’t be appearing at the Fringe
Alex Salmond has explained why he has ditched his plans to appear at this year’s Edinburgh festival fringe, saying there was not enough time to prepare a new show.
In April the former First Minister said he planned to bring his Alex Salmond Unleashed show back to Edinburgh after making his fringe debut last year.
Mr Salmond’s show was unveiled at last year’s fringe amid a blaze of publicity. The performance took the form of a chat show and the guests included the then Brexit Secretary David Davis, the comedian John Bishop and the independence supporting actress Elaine C. Smith.
The show hit the headlines when Mr Salmond was accused of making a sexist joke. The First Minister said: “I promised you today we’d either have Theresa May, or Nicola Sturgeon, or Ruth Davidson, or Melania Trump, but I couldn’t make any of these wonderful women come.”
There was then a drum roll and Mr Salmond quipped: “To the show.”
Since then Mr Salmond taken the show around the country. He has also been widely criticised for broadcasting The Alex Salmond Show, on RT, the Kremlin-backed television station formerly known as Russia Today. In April, Mr Salmond said: “I can confirm that we are planning to bring a new show to the Fringe in August.”
Yesterday he explained his absence from the world’s largest arts festival but added that he intended to bring the show back to Edinburgh next year.
Mr Salmond said: “Since we only completed the tour of last year’s Show at the end of this April, we weren’t able to prepare the new production in time for this year’s Fringe. However, we fully intend to be back in Edinburgh next year with a very different style of production.
“The Unleashed tour finally ran to 30 shows from Gala to Inverness, played to over 10,000 in audiences and raised £36,000forcharitiesandgood causes in Scotland and internationally. This success was greatly helped by the four stars awarded by The Scotsman reviewer Kate Copstick.”