Ton Up for the Buxton Fringe Blog!

Wait for it folks, this is the 100th Fringe blog post, at least in its current format. Before this, it was hosted by the website of our friends the Buxton Advertiser and it was the Advertiser that first suggested we give people a flavour of what's going on behind the scenes at the Fringe.

From the outset Keith Savage, now our Fringe chair, has proved a blogger extraordinaire - entertaining, gloriously indiscreet, generous with his time and support of the arts, occasionally random (still don't understand the Venues and Mares headline) and hardly minding at all when back in the days of my chairship I'd send him the odd 'vital' correction moments after he'd put cyber pen to virtual paper.

I'd be much happier if he was writing this now as Keith I think has his own following and I've already been told by a committee member that this 100th blog should be something special - no pressure then! Such are the wonders of technology that we can see whose blogs catch the most hits (Keith wins hands down) but sometimes I think it is the headline that really draws people in. Pantastic Dinosaurs Land in the Pavilion raised over 100 eyebrows (or 200 if you consider that most people have two), while A Poem for Buxton and Buxton One of the Best Places to Live drew out legions of loyal fans of our lovely town.

Quite the most phenomenal result however came with the post headed simply John Beecher, attracting over 550 page views, so over five times more than any of our blogs before or since. This remarkable young man from Buxton died tragically young of cancer but is someone who packed a huge amount into his short life, being a historian, writer, actor, tireless Underground Venues and Fringe supporter, twae kwon do medallist and friend to many.

Stats show that the Fringe blog has had over 8,000 hits since relaunching here on Dec 2 2012 and Keith claims that stats also show that China has produced a great number of these?! Answers on a postcard please!

I'm fairly confident we can double that hits' figure and proceed to a celebration of 200 blogs in due course. The reins of the blog tend to be passed fairly freely - former Fringe press officer Steve Walker has done some great ones while (or so Steve claims) Keith was smoking cigars and having his feet nibbled by fish in the Pavilion Gardens. The important thing is that one way or another we'll try to make sure you have something to read up here.

Hope you've enjoyed this nostalgic interlude. Next time we'll be bringing you up to date with a flurry of exciting entries coming in right now to meet the end of March £65 deadline!



Buxton Fringe

Website: www.buxtonfringe.org.uk
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Twitter: @buxtonfringe