You’d be struggling to find me anywhere near the Edinburgh Festival because of the crowds, the noise, the heat and the dreadful over-proliferation of poseurs and pseuds.

And if a book is a bestseller and everybody is raving about it, I’m more likely to wait until all the fuss has died down and it’s in a bargain bin at the back of the shop before I buy it – if I do at all.

This is why I’ve never seen Jerry Sadowitz on stage at the Fringe, nor read The Satanic Verses, by Sir Salman Rushdie.

The edgy Scottish comic has had his show cancelled by venue managers because so many members of the audience complained about his content, alleging it to be racist, homophobic and misogynistic. What were they expecting? An episode of Terry and June?

Rushdie’s situation is a shade more complicated, but in essence the premise is the same. The Satanic Verses was controversial from the moment it was published in 1988 and his life was repeatedly threatened because many said the book was blasphemous to Islam.

Last week he was stabbed 10 times by a member of the audience during an event in upstate New York.

Artists want their work to have a hook, a selling point, a controversy, something that makes it different and thereby attractive to the customer. That’s what it’s all about. If you don’t like the idea then don’t consume it. I don’t like the Fringe, so I don’t go.

If art starts to go the way of the statue-toppling counter-culturals, then we are in a very bad place indeed. Art, literature, music, cinema and theatre, whether at the Fringe or anywhere else, should be challenging. It should make us think – and if it makes us uncomfortable, well there it is.

I’m speaking at a couple of Burns suppers in the New Year and if I’m being honest, I am dreading it. I will have to change my routine altogether, and ‘Burns Light’ it may well be.

I can’t help but think how outraged the bard would be by the prospect of his interpretations of alcohol and the pleasures of the flesh being watered down for a sensitive audience. Or I may go full fat for what would undoubtedly be the last time.

The Sadowitz situation may be the start of something, however. In future we could see fewer of the edgier acts at the Fringe, if venues decide something may make the audience ‘uncomfortable’.

I mean who knows, in time the Festival itself might disappear altogether. And then I’ll have the last laugh.