Why Kneecap and Bob Vylan are just repeating an old Edinburgh Festival Fringe trick

We are right to be outraged by the slaughter in the Middle East but stunts by publicity seekers do not help.

This is the topic of my latest column for The Scotsman (published on 8th July 2025).

Watching the debacle involving talentless punk band Kneecap unfold last week, I was reminded of the regular pantomime of set-piece publicity stunts during Edinburgh Festival Fringe that the organisers obviously thought novel but which were anything but.

The challenge for second-rate Fringe performers was always the same, how to get publicity and audiences in such a crowded field of real talent. Inevitably a few came up with an age-old solution – ‘controversy’.

Insert some obscenities, religious profanities or, better still, nudity into your act and you were halfway there. Then discreetly leak the outrage to a willing journalist and sit back. Sex and scandal sells newspapers but to stand up the story some official ‘shock horror’ was required, so the next move was to get a gullible mouthpiece to express outrage. There was always a ready supply of such innocents, local councillors, churchmen or self-appointed moral guardians, who could be counted upon to be suitably outraged.

That was the easy bit, the next part was harder. To really get maximum publicity, there had to be an official reaction so ‘The Authorities’, usually the police, had to be drawn in. Breathless reports would follow. Tales of debauchery, obscenity, and moral danger: ‘What were the police going to do about it?’

The hope was for photogenic police raids, arrests, public court appearances, followed by confected fury about the suppression of free speech – all calculated to secure that most precious of showbiz commodities: ’publicity’. Full houses would be guaranteed, and names made.

Except that the police had seen it all before. We didn’t want to be duped by what were obviously stunts. Our usual response was to chuckle and hang up the phone.

I was thinking about these wholly predictable stunts when watching the wall-to-wall national news headlines about that unremarkable Irish punk trio who had somehow managed to persuade all and sundry, including the Prime Minister, to take the bait.

A group of performers whose name is based on a method of torture, kneecapping, is not well disguised. Acts like theirs may be obnoxious but I doubt they win many converts unless, of course, we provide the heady oxygen of publicity.

Unfortunately that is exactly what happened with Kneecap. The Prime Minister’s suggestion that they be cancelled from Glastonbury ensured that their gig went ahead to record crowds, and predictably another low-talent, rap-punk duo performing on the same stage jumped on the bandwagon.

Named after Bob Dylan, a Jewish singer-songwriter, this duo led an antisemitic chant, supported by an overheated and largely befuddled crowd. So far so predictable, and right on script the police have been called in to investigate the whole sorry mess.

Little will come of it but, if perchance some charges stick, then the offending performers will be martyred – job done, maximum publicity, way beyond their talent. The truth is that these people are more like Fringe publicity seekers than activists.

http://www.scotsman.com

We are right to be outraged by the loss of life in this latest turmoil in the Middle East, but reacting to publicity stunts demeans us all and brings our justice system into disrepute. We should be careful not to rise to every bait. Ignore them, and they will go away – they really will.

This article can also be viewed by clicking www.scotsman.com.