Fringe Guidance

Submitted my Fringe Guide Copy form at 7.30 this morning so that's another hurdle I've clambered over. I thought I'd finalised my 30 words yesterday but then Michael said it didn't make it clear that the show is a comedy. I was keen to avoid the sort of overselling that puts me right off other people's shows in the form of inflated claims like "absolutely hilarious" or "funniest show on the the Fringe" which give the audience such high expectations that they are almost guaranteed to come out disappointed. I think such phrases are only allowable if they are direct quotes from reviews, as long as they are genuine and not taken out of context (e.g. if it actually said "this is certainly not the funniest show on the fringe but...."!). I finally settled for "Have men and women always spoken different languages? This whirlwind tour of Space, Eden, Ancient Greece and the Jungle takes a humorous look at the issues. Sophisticated silliness. Aprons. 15+" I asked for Bianca's advice on whether there should be an age limit and if so, what it should be and she reckoned that sexual references including the presence of the words "pr*ck, c*ck and f*ck" would give it a 15 rating if it was a film, so we agreed I should specify 15+. The Fringe Office was very prompt in e-mailing me my proof to check. They have vetoed my capital S for Space, which I was hoping would make it clear it was outer space I was referring to as opposed to theatre space (as I didn't have room in the word count for "outer") and have also corrected my capital J for jungle. They referred to these as "a couple of minor grammatical corrections" which I wasn't too chuffed about as I like to think of myself as the Queen of Grammar (with a capital Q and a capital G). Of course, technically they are right. I do like to invent my own grammatical rules from time to time, which can either be interpreted as creativity or bloodymindedness. So I suppose I have to accept that house style wins over individualism. My final copy is therefore "Have men and women always spoken different languages? This whirlwind tour of space, Eden, Ancient Greece and the jungle takes a humorous look at the issues. Sophisticated silliness. Aprons. 15+"