Skip to content

FringeGuru

Home
 
Adrian Bunting, 1966 – 2013

Friday saw the funeral of Adrian Bunting, playwright, producer and compère, who passed away after a brutally short illness on Saturday 11 May.

I first met Adrian a couple of years ago, when he gatecrashed a party to bend my ear about his play Kemble’s Riot. He was an instantly-likeable man, pugnacious when he chose to be, but charming, witty, and just that little bit devilish too.

Kemble’s Riot won both our Editor’s Choice award – an accolade Adrian was touchingly proud of – and Latest 7’s prize for the best play of the 2011 Fringe. Trophies like that matter little now, but he enjoyed them during his life and it’s right that we recall them on his passing.

I can’t claim Adrian as a personal friend, though it would have been my honour to have done so. But I do know that, among those who were close to him, the profound sense of loss is mixed with bittersweet happiness – a gratitude for the time they spent together.

It's often said that the measure of a man is the affection he inspires in his friends. Those friends now plan a permanent tribute, an open-air theatre called “the BOAT”.  There could be no more fitting legacy for this big-hearted showman, who brought so much joy to so many around him.

Richard Stamp, co-founder, Fringe Guru