It is also interesting to look back on my predictions. I am gearing up to write a piece about cabaret again, reflecting on how it has changed - or not - in the last three years. This has been prompted by Ben Walters' comments on how cabaret might cope as it goes mainstream. My first feeling on reading his provocation was that he had made it three years too late: the high water mark of the cabaret revival was just before it received its own section in the Fringe brochure.
Then I remembered, Walters works in London, and I probably ought to shut my mouth and check out what is happening down there before I make fatuous comments.
My last week of the Fringe was supposed to be all about checking out cabaret acts (and youth theatre, but that's the other article I need to write). Perhaps some anti-burlesque protester attacked my knee as I slept - I didn't get around to seeing as much as I would have liked. But a post-match survey of the Fringe brochure, and a great many of the names that I mentioned in 2011 are still doing shows, at about the same scale. A few names had a year off (Des O'Connor is very low profile these days, given that he was doing three shows a day a few years back). But I don't get the impression that a great deal has changed since I was an enthusiast for cabaret.
Anyway - here's to the joy of being a critic: if my article is ill-informed, we'll call it a provocation.
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