Best festival in the world Avalon founder Jon Thoday tells Cameron Robertson why he encourages his artists, including the big names, to play the Fringe The Stage 03/08/2000 CAMERON ROBERTSON Along, black table. Sixteen black leather seats. A drinks dispenser. A huge gun-barrel logo featuring an armed, tuxedo-wearing Groucho Marx. Avalon founder Jon Thoday does not sit himself down at the head of the table, but I pray I am not in the seat with the sharks below it. First noticeable thing, as he walks into the large, sleek room in Avalon's west London offices, is that he is wearing a pink shirt - unexpected, considering that Avalon's working methods are continually described by others as aggressive. "We have an absolutely individual policy with managing a comedian. If you see how we manage and promote someone, you will see that it is tailormade for the artist, " states Thoday, in deep monotones, unaggressively. Since Avalon was formed in 1989, Thoday seems deeply aware that a lot of promotion - at the Edinburgh festival, or anywhere else - does not result in a quality act. "In the old days, you could go to Edinburgh, not bother to rehearse your show, have it ready in the middle of the first week and still have a success. You can't do that now. It's got more competitive and the public want to know they are going to see something good." Avalon starts work for Edinburgh in November. The artists start warm-ups and writing in January. After premiering material in Edinburgh, they do London spots and a UK tour to recoup the money it costs to put on the show. "We put on 12 to 15 shows each year and we have about one a year that flops. I don't believe anybody else comes close to that, " surmises Thoday. Avalon now has four outlets: artist representation, promotions, production and publicity, such is the business that comedy has become in the UK. And that includes the Fringe. Thoday's interest in stagecraft began when he produced musicals and new writing at Cambridge University, where he dabbled in sciences. "We had a theatre company at Cambridge that combined talent from the town and the university, which nobody had ever done before. The university was a bit snotty about anybody else. But I thought I could do this properly, and that grew to become successful. What we have always tried to do is the best entertainment. And that was what I did at university." After losing money on a musical which led to the point of not knowing how to make a living, Thoday stumbled on to comedy. He had spoken to Spitting Image writer Steve Brown about presenting another musical, but Brown was looking for a new agent. "He asked me to represent him and he was our first client. Interestingly enough, 11 years later he wrote Spend Spend Spend." Thoday struck up a business partnership with Richard-Allen Turner after being impressed with the former college entertainment manager's haggling over proposed bookings. They grew to exploit the old adage of actors' agents not knowing how to handle comedians' interests. "We came along at the second wave of alternative comedy, " recalls Thoday. "The first wave was political, which we weren't really interested in. Our generation was Harry Hill and Simon Munnery. The actors' agents didn't seem to be interested in or understand comedy. A comedian can act, but most actors can't be comedians." He plays down the notion that Avalon has evolved into an agency - now with an office in Los Angeles - that has too many comedians to represent them ably: "We still have relatively few clients. Agents often have 100 or 50 clients. We have got 28. Our ratio of client to staff is something like three clients to one member of staff and it's never really been different to that. No one in the industry is close to that. Managers don't have more than eight artists, individually, and we work as a team together, which again, many agents in this country don't." Avalon used its well-honed publicity unit to scream from the rooftops at last year's festival, when it emerged that its client and twice Perrier Award nominee Al Murray had been deemed ineligible for future consideration of the accolade, after playing a middle-scale London venue earlier in 1999. He was regarded therefore to have star status and excluded. Thoday was angry at the decision, and predominantly the timing: "For somebody to be told four days into his run in Edinburgh that he wasn't eligible, it wasn't acceptable. We knew other people who had played the same venue who hadn't been disqualified." He suggests that the rules should be set in stone by the brochure deadline in May to avoid any repetition, and also suggests that someone should not win it twice. Did he think Murray would win, following reinstatement? "You never know who is going to win. I thought Simon Munnery should have won the Perrier about five years ago." Thoday again emphasises that the act determines what the act does. "If we think what they want to do is bollocks, we'll tell them. Our company is based on writer-performers. For me, The Harry Hill Show on TV is a show which is built in his image, is original and is about as good quality as you can get. Fantasy Football was an original television show. We spend more time telling our comedians not to do TV, actually, because I feel it can damage people." This is a surprising statement because TV obviously means exposure to millions in one evening compared to 200 people in a comedy club. But Thoday continues to be very wary of potential pitfalls. Tim Vine, a very talented comedian, we agreed, did not do himself any career favours by accepting an offer to host a mediocre quiz show during Channel 5's early days. Thoday declines to enter a discussion about Channel 4's dot. comedy, which featured Avalon's Chris Addison. I believe that Addison, along with National Lottery host Terry Alderton in particular, should work in shows where the format does not restrict their talent. Anybody remember the manic Brendon Burns being suffocated by an autocue on The 11 o'Clock Show? "The point is that when you're a good comedian - this is the bad bit about Edinburgh, something we spend a lot of time avoiding and one of the reasons we get slagged off by the broadcasters - is that they all want your clients to host TV shows or be TV presenters. It doesn't mean somebody shouldn't go that route - some are good at it and some aren't - but there is a balance. You can be wooed by telly too quickly. We try and make sure that if the comedian is wooed by telly, they go to a good show. Which still doesn't mean it always works." Avalon advises its acts to return to Edinburgh, even when fame strikes: "We did Unplanned, with Frank Skinner and David Baddiel, in Edinburgh. We didn't think it was going to be a TV show, they just thought to try it out for a laugh. We've always encouraged our artists to keep going back to Edinburgh - even once they have become names - because then they can try out new stuff and warm up for tours. We really like Edinburgh." I get the impression that Thoday regards the festival as the catalyst that made a success of Avalon. "Edinburgh is by far the best festival in the world. It is really important for acts because it is the only place in the world, if an artist wants to do something relatively easily, where they can get someone to lend them money or to try something out. If it works, then it will go further. It is the only place in the world where you can do that. "The concentration of the Press in Edinburgh means you will get noticed. If you get noticed, the public will come and then the industry comes. If you did the same thing in London, it would take you six months before anybody from the industry came; you couldn't begin to afford it. " Criticism of no mercy marketing measures such as producing the Official Avalon Comedy Festival brochure, that hugely resembles the Official Edinburgh Festival Fringe brochure, cuts no ice with Thoday. "It's completely in the spirit of the Fringe, " he insists. "The reason people complain about it is because we thought of it. "I don't see it does any harm. Even though some people don't think it's funny anymore, we do. I'm sorry if people get upset about it. I'll do everything I can to support the Fringe but equally we will do everything we can to promote our shows." He also dismisses pundits who claim that Avalon's young talent showcase, The Comedy Zone, is not producing the big stars it used to. "Quite frankly, what people say about the Comedy Zone is what people have said about Footlights for the last 30 years, that it's no good anymore. Rightly or wrongly, there has been a writer or performer who comes out and becomes a star. But to be honest, it is unlikely it will take less than five years for someone to become a star." In 1995, it featured double BAFTA Award-winner Dave Gorman, so that's about right. "But I'm not saying we always get it right either." Whatever happened to the Bastard Son of Tommy Cooper? What would Thoday do if he was appointed Fringe director? He laughs, then replies: "Apart from making sure the adverts in the Fringe guide are in the right sections, I'd make sure it stayed the same." He pauses. "But there could be more press about the Edinburgh festival around the world to show how good it is. I go to the States quite a lot and the image of the festival could have some work because it is an absolutely brilliant thing. "There is no artistic control that stops people doing things and I don't think that's properly known. I tell people about it in America and they can't believe there are all these people putting shows on. "Sometimes I think the UK doesn't know what it's got." FACT FILE Avalon: Established 1989 Senior management: Jon Thoday, Richard AllenTurner, Rob Aslett, James Herring, Sara Geater Artists represented: 28 Staff: 40 (not including production wing) Edinburgh 2000 Stars: The League Against Tedium (alias Simon Munnery), Dave Gorman, The Boosh Dependable acts: Lee Mack, Chris Addison Newer talent: Dan Antopolski, Tony Law Clients not performing this year: Frank Skinner, David Baddiel, Harry Hill, Jenny Eclair