Alexander McCall Smith is one of an array of big names including Richard E Grant, Irvine Welsh and Caitlin Moran who will be plugging books at this year’s Fringe by the Sea festival. Here the creator of 44 Scotland Street, The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency and many other beloved novels talks to Ashley Davies about one of his new books, The Perfect Passion Company.
How did you meet the love of your life? Through mutual friends? Online? Reaching for the last jar of mini pickles in Aldi? Or perhaps you’re still waiting for that life-changing encounter, and are wondering how, when or indeed whether it’ll ever occur.
Alexander McCall Smith is intrigued about the ways in which we find our significant others, and will be discussing this universal topic when he comes to Fringe by the Sea. One of his latest books, The Perfect Passion Company, is set within an Edinburgh introductions agency, where those looking for love can seek expert help.
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“I thought it would be a very good vehicle for bringing in lots of stories about various people, their histories and their hopes and aspirations in the context of something that people are very interested in, which is love and friendship,” he explains. “This is maybe the most important aspect of many people’s lives. I think the way in which people find or settle upon the person they propose to spend their life with is extremely interesting.”
As well as, naturally, observing the lives of those he encounters, McCall Smith’s research has included delving into psychological studies on how people choose their partners.
“It’s fascinating. People ask whether marriage bureaux still exist and they do,” he says. “There are not many of them these days, but they advertise tailored introductions in the back pages of magazines. There are still people who don’t want to meet somebody online.” At this point he recalls an amusing example of online dating dishonesty, which involved the man’s supposedly recent photograph showing New York’s Twin Towers in the background.
Alexander McCall Smith is intrigued about the ways in which we find our significant others in his new book
Speaking on Zoom from his lochside home in Argyll, 15 hours after having completed the second book in this series (it’ll be called Looking for You), he clearly relishes thinking and talking about how love begins. Going through the Times of India’s marriage advertisements is a source of great pleasure for him, and he’s read a lot about the ways in which such consent-driven arranged introductions can lead to stable and successful unions.
“These subjects have all sorts of moral dimensions, which I look into in these books. How we treat others is a subject of great interest to me in my novels,” he says.
He’ll also chat a little about The Great Hippopotamus Hotel, the latest in his Botswana-set No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, which will be out in September, and The Conditions of Unconditional Love, the newest Isabel Dalhousie novel.
You’d be forgiven for struggling to keep up with the output of this avuncular and prolific 75-year-old who always has ideas on the go and shows me a handful of notebooks that are packed with thoughts. He has written at least 100 books, more than 80 of which are novels, and has another poetry collection coming out next year.
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Look out too for a stand-alone novel called The Winds from Further West, due out in August. That one’s about a public health academic who is wrongly accused of making a disparaging remark about people whose living conditions are difficult — something that results in him leaving Edinburgh for Mull.
It was inspired by “a very dark time for freedom of speech”, as McCall Smith puts it. “We’re living in times of acute division and conflict and confrontation, and people are at one another’s throats,” he says. “We’re losing the notion of courteous exchange of ideas and people are shouting at one another and threatening one another.
“People feel distressed by this level of confrontation and conflict, and we want to go back to an atmosphere in which we respected and cherished people around us, where we are able to discuss our problems without shooting one another.”
You’re highly unlikely to feel this sort of tense atmosphere during his North Berwick session, though. McCall Smith loves chatting about his books and taking questions from fans, who all seem to be an equally friendly bunch. And who knows? You might even find love in the audience.
Alexander McCall Smith: The Perfect Passion, Aug 9, Lodge Stage, Lodge Grounds, 2pm, £12
The spectacular Big Top in Lodge Grounds in North Berwick
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John Shaw: How it all started
One of the co-founders of Fringe by the Sea, on how the festival began
Like a lot of great things it started with many glasses of wine and growing derring-do, one winter night in late 2007. Eric Wales, the true musician of the enterprise, had long harboured ideas of a weekend skiffle festival on the beach at North Berwick. As talk and bravado grew over the night, the marketing input (me) opined that the way forward was surely to hang on the coat-tails of the Edinburgh Fringe just up the road. A ready-made audience that would relish an offering of sun, sea, sand and a 99 ice cream after even a few days spent in the maelstrom of the Royal Mile.
Fringe by the Sea seemed an obvious catch-all title and it was duly adopted by the threesome. (The third member of the triumvirate was Jane Thomson, who had been part of the Simple Minds management and forever to be remembered for bringing James Taylor to Lennoxlove.) Jane was perfect for PR, big event planning, admin and counting the cash!
Fringe by the Sea co-founder John Shaw launched the festival in 2008
We three presumed that all the angles were covered. All we had to do was book some acts. As they now say — delusional! The festival was pulled together and launched in 2008, only eight months after the first conversation. Calling in favours all round, it took place over four days — a long weekend when friends and family were called upon to run various venues around the town. The yacht club marquee was central, as were the masonic hall and St Andrew Blackadder Church. Orkestra del Sol led a procession along the high street before their gig, and the entertainment ranged from Dougie MacLean to Mr Boom, Fat Sams to Rab Noakes, Mike Hero to … of course, Seaside Skiffle.
Money was tight, so the security was a rotation of sleeping in the marquee to keep away intruders, hoping the council remembered to leave the public lavatories open, cycling from venue to venue to collect the cash and, of course, painting up a garden hut with whatever paint lurked at the back of a cupboard. Hey presto — a box office!
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None of us laid claim to having more than basic IT skills, so tickets were tried-and-trusted show-up-in-person. Prices ranged from £4 to £15, and with a modest grand from East Lothian council the first year actually washed its face.
Of course the event took its toll, so all three of us went off to lie in dark rooms until Christmas, when we eventually got round to speaking to each other again. The prospect of starting from zero didn’t deter, and year two saw the first big growth — a Spiegeltent that truly made the harbour the hub of Fringe by the Sea for the next nine years — but we still stayed true to spreading the joy around other venues in town.
Our proud boast is that we never lost money — mind you, we didn’t make any either — but that didn’t seem to be the point. We had always planned to do this for ten years, and are immensely proud that it continues to grow and prosper under new management — undoubtedly now a pre-eminent festival on the Scottish scene.
John Shaw is talking about starting the festival in How Hard Can It Be…?, Aug 8, 3.40pm, Lodge Stage, Lodge Grounds, free/ticketed
Fringe by the Sea, Aug 2-11, various venues, North Berwick, fringebythesea.com
