Back in 2015 Jack Rooke brought his debut show Good Grief to the Edinburgh Fringe. Based on his own life as the son of a Watford cab driver, it was a scrappy little thing containing slightly amateurish videos. But the story of love and loss it told - Rooke’s dad had passed away when Rooke was just 15 - was sincere, honest and, most importantly, very, very funny. And though it played to audiences of less than 50 each night it got him noticed.

Another show followed in 2017, by which time he was being commissioned by BBC Three to make Happy Man, a series about identity, mental health and depression among young men. He then created the highly acclaimed Channel 4 sitcom Big Boys which ran for three series. It won Rooke a Bafta. He has since been part of the writing team working on the new BBC adaptation of Sue Townsend’s much-loved novel The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4.

So, if anyone knows what the Edinburgh Fringe can do for one’s career it’s Rooke.

So when he brought Good Grief back to Edinburgh for a limited run last month it should have been cause for celebration. And it was. (It was also, by the by, one of the best things I saw at the Fringe this year.) But at the end of the show Rooke came to the front of the stage, stood beside the show’s notable prop - a coffin - and told his audience, “in all honesty I believe in the landscape of today Good Grief wouldn’t exist.

“I would not have been able to have made it without the arts funding and opportunities that have now been cut and vanished,” he continued.

Jack Rooke (Image: Jack Rooke)

“And without Good Grief there wouldn’t be Big Boys. Even Big Boys was funded by a government fund called The Young Audiences Content Fund. That got cut the month after we came out.”

In short, he said, we are in a moment where working-class voices are being priced out - of both the Fringe and TV - and working-class stories are disappearing as a result.

“It really feels like we’ve lost a whole new generation of comedians and artists who just can’t afford to do it,” Rooke lamented. “There’s way less scrappy little weirdos like the guy who dragged this coffin down Cowgate.” It’s an argument he elaborates on when I speak to him a couple of weeks after his short Edinburgh run. He is bringing Good Grief to Glasgow next week, something he’s hugely excited about. But returning to the Fringe this year felt a bit depressing, he tells me. Back in 2015, he recalls, it still felt as if the Fringe offered a possible route to a career in the creative industries, supported by various funding sources and good will.

“But the budget for my show was two or three grand, whereas nowadays I’m hearing of Edinburgh solo shows people are spending 40, 50 grand on. There’s one show this year - I heard a rumour - that had 200 K invested in. I thought, ‘Oh my God that’s like a house.’”

“It’s become such a financial burden to go to the Fringe.”

Well, he added, maybe not for everyone. “I saw so many people performing whose parents are really well connected, or whose parents are just rich and able to bankroll it. And I saw the general industry flock to those shows.

“A lot of the industry nowadays is middle class. Actually, I’d say a fair proportion are from an already culturally established family background, or are constantly being bankrolled to come back to the Fringe year after year in this kind of........

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