Each day this week we will publish a specially commissioned song or poem from a leading festival talent. Today it is the turn of Rich Hall's comic ex-country singer, Otis Lee Crenshaw. Otis, we are told, wrote it after walking into one of those Edinburgh pubs where no one could give a rat's ass about the festival. It should be sung from the point of view of one of the local drinkers.

There's a place I go
Not a quarter mile from here
Where the lights stay low
And we all stare into our beer
Where even if the sun was showin'
Lord you'd have no way of knowin'
So depressin' even Leonard Cohen wouldn't go in there
Where we all say "Fuck the Fringe what's it ever done for me?
Yeah fuck the Fringe, what's it ever done for me?"

And if you come in here
You better keep your mouth shut
Your five star reviews
Don't count in here for much
We're far away from the tourist coaches
We're mean and hard as old cockroaches
No one in here has a buenos noches
Fuck the Fringe, what's it ever done for me? (repeat)

I'm gonna drink my drink
I'm gonna leave real soon
I'm gonna cross that bridge
To the old Assembly Rooms
I'm gonna watch it go
I'm gonna watch it burn real slow
Like I did a couple years ago
When I burnt down the Gilded Balloon
Fuck the Fringe, what's it ever done for me? (repeat)