00:00I'm Jane Bradley, Arts and Culture Correspondent at Scotsman and I'm here at Underbelly a couple of days before the festival starts with Ed Bartlom and Charlie Wood who founded Underbelly 25 years ago this year.
00:14Can't believe it. I don't know where other grey hair all around but it's very it's a big year for us it's 25 years all started in the wonderful bank vault central library and here we are this year with over 150 shows across 24, 25 different venues and shows theatre, comedy, music, circus, everything in between now it's great for that.
00:40So when you started out 25 years ago in the Cowgate did you ever imagine you'd be standing in front of a purple cow with all this going on around you?
00:47100% yes definitely. This was always the plan.
00:50No absolutely not and in fact I think you know a big part of the enjoyment of the last 25 years is that every year hasn't really been planned that far and that far.
01:02we are responding all the time to what we think the audience wants to come and see. We had this mad idea in 2006 to create a giant half the land of a purple cow that we see here now and that I hope entertained people and entered into people's understanding of who on the belly were and their whole enjoyment of the region.
01:26Brilliant. What can we expect from this year's festival? What do you have in line?
01:32Well we've got so many shows. I mean I think that the circus programme is once again a brilliant circus hub. Circa, a real fringe favourites now. We've got Flip Fabric with a brilliant circus company.
01:44We've got Bernie Dita returning. We've got Gary Starr who was here last year just won the Melbourne Comedy Award in Bacow.
01:50We've got a brilliant untapped programme which is the programme that we'd like to really support.
01:56You can't add a subsidised at the Cowgate. There's just all manner of shows and that's the brilliance of this fringe.
02:04Not just Arvin but all of it. And there is nowhere like it on earth and there's only one place to see a purple cow in August.
