Tomorrow the Fringe will come to an end for another year, and the task of converting lots of theatres back into normal buildings will begin. As the curtain falls on the last show at the Pleasance with it comes the retirement of Christopher Richardson who has ran the successful venue since 1985.

Now 66, Christopher founded the Pleasance 20 years ago providing performance spaces for the unknown names of people like Rowan Aitkinson and Graeme Norton.

For the first 10 years of it’s life the Pleasance, one of the biggest venues on the Fringe consistently made a loss and the company repeatedly neared bankruptcy. Christopher personally bailed it out loads of times and it is thanks to him that the venue is what it is today.

Christopher Richardson has become a very important part of the fringe and has repeatedly given us all a venue that I like many others have loved to spend day-after-day show-after-show and indeed night-after-night at in it’s 17 spaces and courtyard bars.

Pleasance will live on without Richardson at the top, but it must be a difficult day for him to leave behind a venue he has devoted his life to. We can all only hope it will continue to be the same vibrant, diverse venue we’ve all come to know and love. The Pleasance.