See you at the Bitter End (Better Late Than Never)

It has taken a month for me to write this final instalment, about the last weekend of the Fringe, but better than never and distance can give some perspective.

The last weekend of the Fringe is a particularly desperate and strange time. The successful shows are riding the end of the crest of a wave that may never come again while the unsuccessful shows are stumbling along, half-maimed, fighting to reach the finish line.

On the Friday myself and The Moose went to see Alice at The Space. Alice was, of course, based on Alice in Wonderland which is the perfect show for Edinburgh in August - nowhere does the line, "You must be mad, or you wouldn't be here," resonate so clearly. Alice began at midnight and was a two-hour long promenade piece, which makes it sound like more of an endurance test than it was - most of the time we just moved from one room to another and then sat down rather than remained standing.

It was, if you'll pardon the pun, an excellent use of the space. As we passed from room to room in what seemed to be a labyrinthine location we were guided by the cats, two women dressed as cats one of whom asked me how long I had been a hedgehog. I replied that I had been for several years which is nothing but the truth, hedgehogging has run in my family for generations. She then later asked me how long I had been a rabbit, I reminded her I was a hedgehog. I will not be slurred in such a manner.

The show itself was a surreal melding of the fictional Alice in Wonderland and the story of the lives behind it (though that itself was a fictionalised version of that story). It was wonderfully performed and at times deeply disturbing, the scene in which they torture a baby with pepper was particularly grim. The whole play did an excellent job of plunging into a world much like that of the rabbit hole - a world where you didn't quite understand the rules anymore. Near the end I was kidnapped by one of the cats, led down a secret passage and told to 'follow Alice'. However, it was never clear when I was supposed to follow her so I ended up doing nothing. It didn't seem to affect the performance any, though, and it certainly reinforced my impression that this was a world in which I did not understand the rules.

Alice was one of those shows the Fringe is really for. Experimental, requiring a large ensemble cast and a unique space - I'm not sure there is any other place or time in the world that it would work quite so well. It drew a large audience on the day The Moose and I saw it and I believe it was one of the most successful pieces in the Fringe.

The fact it was so successful made my final meeting with cat doubly strange. I encountered the cat that kidnapped me on the street the next day, no longer dressed as a cat, handing out leaflets for another show in order to make money. Presumably that particular show needed a last surge in advertising as it had not been so successful. It is part of the perverse economy of the Fringe that someone from a successful show made extra money by handing out leaflets for an unsuccessful show.

* * *

That Saturday was given over to the day job for the entire day but afterwards I went with a fellow guide to the Captain's Bar. There I encountered a multitude of people I knew, Mike Daviot of the wonderful Hyde&Seek whom I had performed with, people involved in the making of the Speakeasy in which I have performed, someone I had performed with last year in the Fringe... all there separately. Half the bar was filled with people I knew in some theatrical capacity.

This sort of serendipity happens often in the Fringe and during the Festival in general but I doubt it is something people who neither local nor performers experience - how could they? Nevertheless the coincidental meetings that would be considered far-fetched if they occurred in fiction are part of the process - the neurons of the Festival firing at random and conceiving new combinations of old acquaintances.

After the Captain's Bar I went to Whistle Binkies to dance and drink until I had drunk so much the bouncers threw me out... or, rather, told me it was time to go and I drunkenly acquiesced. Working all day on the street during a Saturday in the Fringe might not drive every person to drink until they go mad, but it certainly does the trick for me.

* * *

That Sunday was the day to finally see two shows I had been dying to see through all or most of the Fringe. Firstly I went to see my friend Wild Card Kitty, who had also performed with me in the Fringe last year.

The venue she was performing at was an odd spot. Obviously a sports bar for most of the year, it was a bit out of the way to be offering free shows in the Fringe but on the plus side it did serve good hot-dogs at a very cheap price. I believe it was called the Phoenix Bar and if you're ever looking for a good, cheap hot-dog near Leith Walk I recommend it.

Wild Card Kitty's show is a comedy burlesque involving a succession of increasingly wild characters compared by Wild Card Kitty herself. It was amusing and entertaining (and educational, about the backstage world of burlesque) and for that last show drew a fair crowd for a free Fringe show (apparently the average crowd for such a show is six people). Having a quick drink with her afterwards I learnt that my favourite character, the retired 50s burlesque dancer, was generally the one people liked least. I still say it is the character with the most legs. I'd give her her own show.

After that I went back to Whistle Binkies to pick up my diary, which I had lost during my drunken escapades the previous night, and sat drinking a pint while listening to the 'comedy' going on there. I say 'comedy' because that particular act, from what I could hear, was little more than a run of comedy clichés so old Bruce Forsythe's grandfather would have been embarrassed to tell them. Nevertheless the crowd dutifully laughed at every one and he seemed, for what I could hear, to have a better crowd than Wild Card Kitty. What a difference a central location makes.

That evening I summoned The Evil Scotsman. There was a show I had been hearing rumours of since the Fringe began, a show called What The Fuck Is This? During this show, so I had heard, the man performing it - Richard Tyrone Jones - said no words other than, "What the fuck is this?" for the entire hour performance.

It turns out this is not strictly true; he did occasionally change the order and frequency but he never used any words other than 'what', 'the', 'fuck', 'is' and 'this'. I found the show hilarious, though I did accidentally sabotage it by spilling most of a pint on the floor right where Jones later crawled about in what I think was a sleeping bag. He took his revenge, though, by coming towards me and cutting off a piece of my hair, holding it aloft and shouting, "What the fuck is this?" I genuinely had no answer. (I later had The Moose even up my hair, she had been imploring me to get a haircut for some time so had no problems with my new, slightly more shorn, look.)

Alice, Wild Card Kitty and What The Fuck Is This? all have something in common, despite being on the face of it quite different shows. That is that they are the essence of what the Fringe is really for. Forget innumerable interchangeable comedians, some funny and some dire, it's the experimental stuff that matters. We can throw in Rebranding Beezlebub and Hyde&Seek into that category as well - shows that the Fringe is really about, shows that would struggle to exist without it even if, sometimes, they struggle to exist within it as well.

* * *

Monday was technically the last day of the Fringe, although many shows made Sunday their last day. It was truly the dying of the light, I didn't plan on seeing any shows but I had work during the day and as such I walked the streets of a city that had just had the shit beaten out of it by theatre and comedy.

Frank Skinner stood resplendent in his suit for his show Man in a Suit but it appeared as though someone had bitten a massive chunk out of him. Somebody else had stuck a Yes sticker on the nose of pug Russell Kane was holding in his posters and (presumably) somebody else had scratched his eyes out. In my view a reasonable reaction to a man taking up several prominent boards around the city to advertise a show that was only on for three days.

The crowds were dispersing and the city was subdued. The Festival was gone for another year. In a week there would be the Festival Fireworks, something that happens every year a week after it finishes, presumably to give frustrated locals something to look forward to. For a short time the city was calm and pageantry done with.

Only for a short time, though, the referendum on independence was upon us and the fear and loathing was about to really ramp up...

Ruby Dolls, Hawksley Workman and the triumph of Dionysus until the end.

The Festival is dying now but it does not go with a whimper. Yesterday I saw three shows as well as performing the day job. This is not uncommon, several of my friends who have been performing all Festival are now planning to fit in as many shows as they can in the last weekend and so a frenetic whirl of performers-seeing-performers begins as the last weekend run of tourists surge in.

The first show I saw involved an old friend of mine from Youth Theatre back in the Black Country (those of you imagining me with a Black Country accent now couldn't be more wrong, let's get that clear right now). She's not the only old friend of mine to appear in Edinburgh thanks to the festival but this year she is the only out-of-towner I know.

This show was the Ruby Dolls : Fabulous Creatures, a show which defies classification - a phrase whose cliché status is ironic since it is used to describe shows which have abandoned cliché. There is no other way to describe a show which combines singing, dancing, magic tricks, feminism, classical references, Jane Austen, Mary Poppins and a puppet goat though. If you find that description enticing you should, the Ruby Dolls are fast establishing themselves as an act par excellence. A cult following and poor imitators cannot be far away but they are the original and the best, catch them now before they shakes hands with Midas and turn to gold.

I had a drink with my friend afterwards in the venue. The venue itself is a sign of the bohemian world and the business world clashing the bohemian world winning. Previously the venue - Assembly Checkpoint - was a café known as The Forest. The Forest was a place which served vege food and put on, all year, the kind of stuff the Fringe is known for - smaller acts as well as internationally renowned people like Jason Webley.

Then the owners of the premises went bust and PriceWaterhouseCoopers came in to take over. They immediately gave The Forest notice, saying the place would be easier to sell without current occupation. The Forest fought hard, raised a lot of money in order to try and keep the place but it was to no immediate avail - they were kicked out. They found other premises elsewhere, though, and to the relief of the Edinburgh arts set The Forest lives on (though I admit that their new location is not as close to my own stomping grounds).

However, the building remains empty used only for one month in August now taken over by Assembly. So the only thing they have found to do with it is the same thing it used to do all year round but now only in August. Alas the toilets no longer have trans-friendly notices on them but despite that the forces of Bohemia have won an unexpected victory over the men in grey suits. Heartening to anyone with a soul but not to PWC. The forces of Dionysus defeat the forces of order and oppression through the twisting of fate and irony, a story at least as old as time. Which brings me neatly to...

The next show I saw, The God That Comes. A musical narrative by Hawksley Workman whom a friend of mine, HFO, swears is incredibly famous in Canada. It was HFO's fault that the Moose and I were there - I knew nothing about it other than its title and that she recommended it. I trust her recommendations and I was not disappointed. Hawksley deserves to be incredibly famous everywhere.

The God That Comes is about the God Dionysus and his ultimate victory over the forces of the oppressive and the ordinary via the embrace of carnal power as opposed to military power. Passion trumps order and the king is torn apart. (I'm giving away little by telling you the end, by the way, as Hawksley himself gives you the entire story right at the start of the show.)

The word that comes to mind when describing the show is 'primal'. From the very start to the very end it evokes a cave in the mountains where passions rule, a place of darkness and beauty - wine, sex and poetry away from civilisation and given pure form. An impressive evocation considering Hawksley uses a mess of wires and technology to achieve it all on his own, creating melodies and duets with himself (maybe there's a little bit of Narcissus in Dionysus).

Afterwards I went for a drink with HFO and her partner - in life and music - RFH and, unusually for HFO she was giddy with happiness. Turns out that after meeting Hawksley after the show he invited them both to lunch on Saturday. One can be so cynical about showbusiness but can you say anything but, "What a nice guy," when he's so willing to reach out to his fans and fellow musicians like that. Excellent show, excellent guy and I've seen another show I'd recommend to anyone.

By now the regular readers of this blog, if such creatures exist, must be wondering when I will see an awful show. Well, after sunset comes the darkness.

After my day job myself and the Ghost Gang went to the City Café. As the night was winding up there and we were wondering where to move on to a woman approached us and told us that we were going to see the show downstairs. I told that was a bit fascist and after a brief talk about fascism I decided that a show recommended and compared by a drunk woman might be entertaining.

It was entertaining... in a way. The comparing was drunken but of the four comedians introduced three of them died on their arses. It is a strange thing to watch joke after joke, if any of them could be called jokes, fall utterly flat. Alright, if the last one was deliberately terrible just so the line, "Pause for laughter," would get a laugh then kudos, it worked, still it was quite the build-up for one gag. The only funny one was the one at the end talking about how he doesn't have real testicles anymore owing to cancer. Sounds dreadful but somehow he made it funny, especially after the other acts just stood up and died.

After the act I made my way to Banshee to try and find the Ghost Gang but they were nowhere to be seen so I had a beer, read my Fortean Times magazine and left in time for the night bus. I had seen two excellent shows but finally I had seen something awful.

Dwarfs Disappear and Ghost Cops go down a storm...

Two days ago I was awake before noon. This is not a normal circumstance for me, my day job is more of a night job and then there's watching entire TV series on Netflix when I get home afterwards. Mornings are something I only normally see from the wrong side. This is the perfect sleep cycle to experience a festival that wakes at around noon and goes until 5am.

Sometimes, however, a famous dwarf insists that you get up in the morning. As I was supposed to be at 10am the next day to terrify a famous dwarf I got up relatively early to try and set my body clock to something which approximates that of an actual human being. As soon as I got into town I learnt that the famous dwarf had cancelled. This happens. Never work with famous people, no matter their height.

I had another reason for being in town at such a godly hour, though. I wanted to see my friend and colleague (a man who is so tall he is the opposite of a dwarf, not a giant as he has not the girth of stomach for that, but a man of great height) in a show called Ghost Cop in the Free Festival at the Three Sisters (which calls itself the 'Free Sisters' - not the sharpest of name changes perhaps but its a lot bloody better than 'Unboring').

Ghost Cop was hilarious, a pastiche of 80s cop movies with a cavalcade of sexual innuendo. Perhaps most impressive was the sound use, for an amateur show the sound effects were very... well... effective. There is no better word and if there's anything effects are supposed to be it must be effective. I would very much recommend seeing it, if you can drag yourself out of bed by noon in the last weekend of the Festival.

Ghost Cop is the perfect example of what the Fringe can do. Although it was made by an Edinburgh troupe the Fringe gives people the impetus to create and to be on stage. Some are eaten alive, some are remarkably successful, some launch careers and some just empty bank balances... oftentimes both but as we reach the tail end we can be sure that people have been made and broken as they are every year.

The third week and the culling of the weak.

We have entered week 3 of the Festival and the Fringe (those wondering how that is so should check out a previous blog, lazy bastards). Things are, as I promised they would, turning baleful. The Director posted on her facebook page that she had seen a performer standing on a bollard and handing out leaflets being kicked in the back of the knees. This is the darkness that engulfs us after two weeks of trying to be cool.

Trying to be cool is always a mistake. Do you remember your teenage years, when the coolest boys in school had - for some reason - dyed their fringe blonde and shaved the rest of their head? If you don't you probably remember something equally asinine. That is why you should never try to be cool.

Tonight I finished the day job at 10:30pm. I attempted to meet a friend at a place called Sneaky Pete's. I quite like Sneaky Pete's in that it gives a very good impression of what solitary confinement with all the demons you dreamt about in your childhood years would be like. Sadly, they were changing shows and had shut down for an hour. Again, eerily similar to childhood dreaming.

So I ambled back up the Cowgate. I chatted with The-self-employed-manic-tour-guide for a while. The Fringe/Festival is hard on those of us who live here and especially those who make their money from tourists. Everyone assumes we will all be busy but the truth is with so much competition it is difficult to be noticed... so he was giving out cards which allowed free entry and £1 shots to a nightclub I would never consider visiting.

Then I contacted The Evil Scotsman. He and I are alike in three ways : We like to drink, we love politics and we like to torture tourists. This is enough to make a drinking partner you can always rely on. We went to see comedy from Estonia at the Banshee Labyrinth, we didn't realise it would be from Estonia but it was... although it was compared by a man who looked like Jesus/Conchita.

Funnily enough a friend of a friend, Jo Clifford, is doing a kind of female-Jesus show in the Fringe. I haven't seen it yet, I may not get a chance. You should probably see it, though, because I saw a pre-Fringe show of hers and it was moving and funny, like Bugs Bunny in a camper van.

After the comedy The Evil Scotsman and I got chatting with Jesus and friends. As I, too, look a bit like Jesus we compared notes until finally I decided to go home... hopefully The Evil Scotsman encountered the Estonian comedian woman and got her number. It's about time he slept with an Estonian, a right of passage for all good young evil Scotsmen.

Unboring is a Dreadful Slogan

The slogan for the Edinburgh Fringe this year is 'unboring'. This is technically true, the festival is never boring. Frustrating, yes. Irritating? Yes. On the plus side it is entertaining, invigorating and unique but never boring.

However, to advertise it as unboring is immediately suspicious. Don't believe me? How would you consider a restaurant that advertised its food as 'unpoisonous'. It probably wouldn't be the first place you chose to eat at. Besides which it is horrible ungrammatical (though, oddly enough, you can get away with 'ungrammatical').

Its unboring nature, though, is inherent in how long the bars stay open. You can never claim a bar is dull when it stays open until 5am... at least, if it seems so, it probably isn't the bar's fault. Re the previous blog post it is the Fringe we have to thank for the nights that go on forever - while the tattoo may be more auspicious and the International Festival have more pedigree neither bring in the crowds that make the city council extend drinking hours - is the Fringe that commands such power.

I was out until 5am on Thursday night, preparing for a similar night on the 'day' job. Like any such night it expanded from people having their faces drawn on with make-up to a bizarre drunken argument I still don't understand and finally just quiet drinks. While sitting quietly drinking a friend of mine was given tequila by some stranger. Fearing it was spiked she refused to drink it. With the expectation of free drugs I drank it anyway. There was something deadly in it... tequila. I vomited just late enough that I managed to get to the toilets.

Never drink spiked tequila, if the drugs don't get you the fact that tequila is unbearable with salt and citrus fruit will!

The Many Names of the Edinburgh Festival

As promised, an explanation of terms...

August in Edinburgh has many names but the primary two are The Festival and The Fringe. There are actually several festivals that happen in August in Edinburgh. Perhaps the most august is the Tattoo. The military tattoo is the last that happens in Britain and it happens at Edinburgh castle throughout August. It is to blame for the fireworks which explode every night and twice on Saturdays. I quite enjoy fireworks - explosions, pretty lights, what's not to love? Those with sensitive pets in the city, especially in the centre, are not so keen.

Other minor festivals include the jazz festival (which has started earlier than August in recent years in order to re-energise) and the book festival (minor only in comparison to the other festivals - George RR Martin was at the latest one).

Then there is the International Festival. Nowadays this is not what draws people to the city but it is where the Festival became the behemoth it is now, because it is the festival the Fringe grew out of. The International Festival drew people from across the world to perform officially in Edinburgh. On the back of the crowd drawn by the combination of the International Festival and the Tattoo other performers began to come into Edinburgh and hire out their own venues to play to those crowds, this became the Fringe.

While the Fringe was originally about fringe theatre performers as the medium of stand-up comedy grew it became more about that and nowadays, while theatre etc. still thrives, the vast majority of acts are stand-up comedy.

That brings us to the present day. The Festival is how locals refer to all of the festivals at once, essentially it is another word for August and if, somehow, the months of the year were to be named by an empire based in Edinburgh rather than Rome then August would be Festivus. The Fringe is the part of The Festival that most (if not all) of the shows I have seen and will see are a part of - more exciting, if truth be known, than The International Festival that spawned them and the part of The Festival that truly attracts the misfits and lunatics that inspire this blog.

A City of Sad Clowns

Things have been quiet for me on the festival front the last few days, the day job has been occupying my time, so this was going to be an article about why sometimes I say 'festival' or 'festivals' and sometimes I say 'Fringe'. Those confused by that will have to wait, though, because over those days the news of actor and comedian Robin Williams' suicide came through to us.

The sad clown is a cliché for a reason, comedians are almost all haunted by the black dog as are a great deal of other performers and creative types. I've read articles which, in the case of comedians, puts this down to something which occurs in childhood. Personally I put it down to a flaw in the human brain - that a quick-fire mind has a way of burning to ash on a semi-regular basis.

Whereas my own adventures are mostly in theatre the Fringe's big thing is comedy; stand-up comics of varying levels of fame, ability and sanity are everywhere. To put so many of these bi-polar personalities in one place has a definite effect. Visitors (especially those only visiting for a short time) may only see the vibrancy - the endless things to see and do whatever their tastes, the dozens of places to buy overpriced alcohol until 5am, the costumed characters and local eccentrics enjoying having a larger audience.

As with the sad clown it is a very different story behind the curtain. The Fringe can make or break an individual or a company. Venues can be something other than expected, marketing can fail no matter how good, crucial cast members can fall sick and all this in a city where the population has doubled and chaos reigns supreme. Stress is no stranger even to the successful performers and as the unsuccessful performers begin to haemorrhage money a hungry look comes into their eyes.

The Fringe is your funny, manic friend. Grinning on the outside but look deep into its eyes and you will see roiling emotions and the precipice.

A Dreich day for Camelot

A pall was cast over the festival yesterday, a pall we in Edinburgh call Typical Festival Weather. It rained consistently from morning until night, casting the bright posters and pillars of the August city into heartless grey. There are advantages to the rain, though. Gone were the merciless crowds of Saturday, they wouldn't have been as thick on a Sunday anyway but the streets were remarkably free for a festival weekend. People choose shows close to them, places they can visit without suffering the rain too much and they're less inclined to stop and chat in the street when the weather is dreich.

It was against this miserable backdrop that The Moose and I went to see The Mechanisms perform their latest work High Noon Over Camelot - a song cycle reinventing Arthurian myth to set it on an aged space station in a decaying orbit. The Mechanisms have arisen out of the Steampunk movement, in case that wasn't obvious from the description of their work.

Getting to the location was a challenge, it was held in the Whynot?, one of the George Street clubs. George Street is, on a night out, where uncool people go to pretend to be cool. The Cowgate is cheaper, dirtier, more dangerous and more fun. George Street is expensive and has that cold façade of all destinations where people actually dress up to get drunk on a Saturday night. As a result, I have no idea where the clubs of George Street are and this one turned out to be in a narrow alley between George Street and Rose Street.

Arriving late was not a problem, though, as The Mechanisms - ironic given their name - were suffering technical difficulties and started later than we arrived. Once they started the show was spectacular, brilliant music made by beautiful people and some very clever lines. It is more than the sum of its parts, though, and the story genuinely tugs at the heartstrings as it reaches a conclusion which you will recognise as inevitable if you know anything of Arthurian legend.

The Mechanisms was part of the Free Fringe and, as such, they were taking tips at the end. As with every free show I've seen this year they were giving away gifts if you paid a certain amount. There's were the best I have witnessed so far, with an album if you donated £5 which I considered quite the bargain, adding their latest to my festival haul so far. The Moose already has all their albums so she took a poster and grinned broadly as she did so. The Moose is a dreadful fan-girl, blasé poise is beyond her.

After lunch we then went to Jenners for Bad Boys : Whisky Theatre. This show included whisky tasting, making it the third show so far that included alcohol. The Moose and I have been to several whisky tastings but this was the most unusual. The show itself is a lecture which flits between historic bad boys who have little or nothing to do with whisky and the bad boys of whisky - methods of advertising and production which are now illegal, or at least not legally allowed to call themselves 'whisky'.

The tasting involved tasting some 'swish' - whisky taken fairly nefariously by workers at stills which meant that he could not even tell us how high an alcohol content it had, though judging by the nose and palette it was pretty high. It also included some whisky which was a teaspoon blend - a single malt that had been deliberately blended with another ever so slightly so that it could not be sold as such for commercial and contract reasons.

It was definitely a tasting I could recommend to those who have been to tastings before - it is not the usual tasting fare and worth the experience for any fan of whisky. When it finished The Moose and I made our way home, there was no point staying out further, unlike whisky the festival is not improved by the addition of a drizzle of water.

Fear and Self-Loathing

I've already talked about how synchronicity can arise during the festival. Today was a day of understanding the self, though I didn't know that it would be when it began.

First The Moose and I made our way back to Hendrick's Carnival of Knowledge and the Odditorium for Zombies I Have Known and Loved where I tried a Poet's Dream Martini before getting my free Gin and Tonic - there's nothing like loading up the brain with booze before 3 in the afternoon but as a friend of mine says, "The sun must be over the yardarm somewhere."

Zombies I Have Known and Loved was a somewhat interactive lecture given by the author of How To Make a Zombie Frank Swain. It was a fascinating journey through the pitfalls of early investigations into the mythology and reality of the zombie and how little we're still sure of. Then it moved into attempts to physically resurrect human beings and animals - though even those may have been hoaxed to some extent. It seems that raising people from the dead and conmanship are close comrades, Lazarus was a master of the shell game.

At the end, and most important for the day's synchronicity, he talked about parasites and how a certain parasite that at least 50% of people in Britain have been exposed to causes people to behave differently. That's only one parasite we know of, it is possible that not all of our personality is human. Certainly, many people have a personality that is not entirely their own in the sense that it comes neither from their genes or upbringing but that is, nevertheless, a part of them.

After lunch we then went to my friend Mike Daviot's Hyde and Seek at C Nova. Hyde and Seek is excellent both in writing and acting, a one man show in which Mike weaves his own life with that of Robert Louis Stevenson around the central conceit of the story of Jekyll and Hyde and how we're not two people we're all both Jekyll AND Hyde. That brief description does it little justice, it was a moving and entrancing performance. It has been in at least one of the more high-profile 'pick of the Fringe' shows (Mervyn Stutter's to be precise) and deserves to be in far more.

With the lecture I heard earlier in my mind my thoughts wandered back to the parasite, could the parasite - alien and yet still a part of us, not separate as we would first assume (and hope) - be Mr. Hyde?

Afterwards we fought our way through the crowds to the Beehive for drinks in the beer garden where myself, Mike and a few friends drank and exchanged theatrical anecdotes until, at 10pm, the beer garden closed and we dispersed. Leaving brought home to me that this was the first weekend of the festival and though the festival is always busy, Saturdays are carnage.

First the beer garden crowd were forced to move like driven cattle out of a pub too small for the sudden influx indoors. Then I was out into the Grassmarket and moving thorough the Cowgate. All around me people were shouting, falling over, running into each other... threats, kisses, lewd compliments and lewder insults... fear and self-loathing.

As I made my still-too-sober way through it and towards my bus I couldn't help but wonder how many of those people were zombies?

An inexplicable fairy puppet

Going to see A Midsummer Night's Dream : The Rock Musical illustrated just how strange days become when the Fringe festival is in town. Firstly The Moose and I made the mistake of taking the bus all the way up to South Bridge for a 1:05pm show. Traffic is always bad at lunchtime and at one stage the bus genuinely began to move backwards.

Eventually we made it to our stop and fought through the crowd towards C Venues. The festival crowds are difficult not just because there are a great many people but because they are full of performers not used to busy cities. This is a dangerous combination; performers are self-absorbed people who make grand gestures as a matter of course. Take this dramatic waving of arms and lack of concern for the existence of others then scatter it onto a busy city street and you have a recipe for chaos.

Last year I was walking along a narrow pavement when a man in front of me suddenly stopped and started dancing backwards towards me to show his friends a dance move. On this occasion, though, we just had to duck under the arm of a man who decided that when pointing directions to his friend a simple finger point would not do and that he had to thrust out his hand at a right-angle to his body like an old-fashioned policeman directing traffic.

At C Venues we discovered we were in the +3 room - the room right at the top of the main building. The Moose and I charged up the stairs, up and up, until we reached '+3' and ran right into a couple of Korean men dressed as pixies. Refugees from the previous show.

Once we got in and the show began it was weirdness followed by weirdness. Firstly the Infinity Repertory Theatre, performing the piece, seem to be an American youth theatre - which was a surprise. I know professional actors who struggle to put on a show at C Venues. They're a professional location and somehow a youth theatre managed to cross the Atlantic and put on a show there. My old youth theatre were good but they never considered going to the Edinburgh Fringe and they were in the same country!

So, the age of the performers (12 to 18 as far as I could figure) came as a surprise. The music was more High School Musical than rock and at first I thought I had finally found a dreadful show to cheerfully lambaste but... it worked. At the very least it was entertaining and Helena in particular was a very impressive young actress, singer and dancer - what they call in the business a 'triple threat'.

For some reason I never figured out, Oberon was a puppet. It wasn't like every fairy character was a puppet (none of the others were) or that the person operating the puppet couldn't have played Oberon - they had just made the inexplicable directorial decision to make Oberon into a hand-puppet. In a show of surprises, that was perhaps the oddest.

Once the play was over we made our way back down. The '+2' area on the floor below seemed to have been taken over by a cult; the doors were wide open and loud chanting was coming from within which the people waiting in the corridor outside were enthusiastically joining in with. We high-tailed it further down the stairs for fear of being sacrificed to the demon Oberpuppetron.

Leaving C Venues we passed a crowd of people in togas performing vocal warm-ups on the street. Up until that moment I had never considered car exhaust fumes conducive to vocal exercises and I probably never will again. Then it was on to a breakfast pint at the Greyfriars Bobby pub. Just another typical visit to a fringe show...

A Typical Festival Conversation...

After seeing Avengers Assembleth myself and The Moose met up with our house-mates and two friends they know from Twitter. Somehow, I cannot remember how, the conversation moved on to the idea of a Requiem for a Ghost.

Me : A Requiem for a Ghost would be the best requiem ever! They're the only ones still around to hear it.

The Moose gave me a funny look.

Me : What's wrong with that statement? It makes perfect sense.

The Moose : But ghosts can fade away if everyone forgets them or they finish their business, maybe the ghosts hold a funeral for the departed ghost.

Me : You mean to say you think a Requiem for a Ghost is a requiem to mourn the second death of the dead?

The Moose : Yes.

This is what is discussed in Edinburgh, the funeral music of the twice-dead.

Fear and Loathing, Simon Callow and the Avengers Assembleth

When I named my blog I had no idea that fear and loathing would be such a running theme in the shows this Fringe. I knew it would occur in the reality, it always does, but I didn't realise so many shows would have a link to those exact three words. Some theorize that there is an Akashic Record, a global human consciousness that leads to the same ideas manifesting independently at the same time in the minds of several different people - this leads to such embarrassing disputes as Issac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz inventing calculus at the same time.

One man who would almost certainly scoff at the idea of the Akashic Record is Richard Wiseman - noted sceptical parapsychologist and one half of the two giving the talk titled Fear and Loathing at Hendrick's Carnival of Knowledge in what they call The Odditorium.

Of all the venues I have visited so far this was by the far the best; upon arrival I was swiftly led into their sitting room and bar - a place of civilization and refinement where, owing to my ticket purchase, I was entitled to a free gin cocktail (the whole thing is sponsored by Hendrick's gin, there are advantages to selling out to commercialism). They give away a free faux newspaper called The Unusual Times which tells of such things as an ape-loving 18th century Lord in Edinburgh as well as their shows and the cocktails available. Genius.

Moving up the stairs into the Odditorium we entered a room not with row after row of chairs but with tables and chairs like a (cheap) café. In the corner sat our speakers, Richard Wiseman and Jeremy Dyson who was a writer for the League of Gentleman and has written in the horror genre as well as in comedy.

The room took a dark turn when Richard Wiseman announced his scepticism as to the existence of ghosts... but the booing, it turned out, was good-natured and no half-empty glasses of G&T were thrown at the genial but sceptical professor. The discussion ranged from Pareidolia (seeing faces when there is no face to see) to the invention of the transparent ghost (a result of faked spirit-photographs created by double-exposure) to the theoretical reasons why we enjoy being scared and why dark, lonely places frighten us.

The ghostly experiences of The Moose were mentioned, as she told of a ghost she observed and became something of the centre of attention with her story. For someone who hates to be the centre of attention she sure is good at it, one of the many reasons I love her - her innate contradictions. I asked a question, with regard to my 'day' job experiences, about how much they thought fiction influenced real-world ghostly tales. We all concluded that, weirdly, it doesn't seem to do so very much even though culture influences our experiences in other ways quite profoundly.

At the end of the talk we were given a free copy of Jeremy Dyson's The Haunted Book. Having been given a free cocktail and a free book as well as an entertaining talk The Odditorium was well worth the price of admission. My advice to anyone looking to put on an entertaining talk at a good price with plenty of freebies is to find some kind of booze merchant you can sell out to - those people throw the best parties... obviously... because they have all the booze.

After that we charged from the city's New Town to its Old Town and the Assembly Hall on the Mound (actually, strictly speaking The Mound could be considered part of the New Town as the entire mound was built at that time out of the rubble they had left over... true story). We were there to see Simon Callow's Juvenalia.

Simon Callow is a great actor. I have been most impressed with him after seeing The Chemical Wedding, a film about Aleister Crowley in which he performs both as the stuttering Professor Oliver Haddo and as Crowley himself, a startling transformation which he performed spectacularly. He did not disappoint.

In Juvenalia he takes the part of the Roman satirist Juvenal and performs his sixteen satires. Ancient history was a part of my degree and when speaking he sometimes reminded my of my favourite lecturer - the sadly deceased Keith Hopwood. Historians dispute whether Juvenal was genuinely reactionary or whether the voice he uses is supposed to be mocked as much as those the words are mocking - in short whether he is Jim Davidson or Al Murray the Pub Landlord. The position on this shifts depending on the prevailing intellectual feeling of the time - among the reactionary Victorians he was considered a reactionary but in the modern ironic age he is considered ironic.

Simon Callow definitely chose the latter interpretation, something which I am grateful for as I think it is more fun... and his performance was fun. Blustering and visceral, the voices of other characters done to perfection, I relished every moment of seeing this colossus of an actor tear into the characters and archetypes I had studied at 19 when studying ancient Rome. It was enlightening how much the reactionary position of 100AD was akin to the reactionary position of today - concern over gay marriage (yes, believe it or not), shame and envy over other people's sex lives, a longing for a non-existent golden age. That golden age was complaining about the exact same things.

While sitting there (in chairs far more comfortable than those at the Grand, I might add) it became apparent that I was chuckling when few others were. I don't think the audience were expecting what they were given. I blame this entirely on the blurb given for him in the Fringe's tome of shows:

"Simon Callow in stand-up mode as an impatient and illiberal Roman commentator with coruscating views on the world around us - vice, hypocrisy, degeneracy, fashionistas, gay marriage and mortality."

Nowhere, absolutely nowhere, does it make clear that he is speaking as Juvenal and with genuine ancient Roman satire rather than a modern script set in Roman times. I did not know, going in, whether he would be Juvenal himself or a fictional Juvenal-esque Roman citizen. I knew I'd enjoy it either way but I suspect most of the audience were thrown and the comment The Moose heard most when leaving was, "It was interesting."

Ignore those nay-sayers, it was brilliant, but if you're reading this then you know damn well what kind of a brilliant show you're in for. Which is more than the Fringe tome gives you for some reason.

Fear and loathing reared its head here as well. On the way out I was given the option to buy a copy of the script for a fiver. Despite writing a ground-breaking but flawed essay on Satire Six in my third year I do not have a copy of Juvenal's satires so I bought it. In his foreword Simon Callow calls it "fear and loathing in the Forum." Synchronicity at work.

The Scottish independence debate, I later discovered, was as much a phantom at this feast as it was at Comedy Sans Frontieres. When I got home later I found Simon Callow had signed an open letter, recently released, asking Scotland not to vote to dissolve the union. A spectre is haunted the Fringe, the spectre of independence...

We then moved on to Shakespeare's Avengers Assembleth at the Greenside venue. The Greenside venue is a church hall, as about 20% of the Fringe venues are. Edinburgh was, for a long time, a religious hotbed. Now it is a hotbed of theatre in August but very few people believe in God (when Eddie Izzard said he didn't believe in God he got cheered, when Richard Wiseman said he didn't believe in ghosts he got booed - a state of affairs I am perfectly comfortable with). As a result, the churches have adapated.

One might think that a hastily converted church hall would at last mean a less comfortable venue than the Grand. That one would be exhibiting woolly-thinking of the highest order as it was STILL more comfortable. Though it was, admittedly, not as comfortable as the Assembly Hall and nowhere near as comfortable as Hendrick's place.

(Readers may wonder why I keep going on and on about the venues and not the shows. This is because this is not a review of the shows, though they are reviewed, it is a review of the festival as a whole and the endlessly variant comfort levels is a crucial part of that experience - so you're going to have to put up with my nigh-unto endless ranting about chairs.)

Avengers Assembleth was by far the most amateurish production I have seen so far at the Fringe. People with no experience of the theatre will take that immediately to mean that it was bad... nobody wants to be served an amateurish burger. Unless they're at a barbecue, in which case they positively DEMAND an amateurish burger.

This was comic theatrical barbecue. The actors almost all took on more than one role, the writing focussed on jokes more than plot (the plot did not make sense and everybody knew it) and the set was non-existent. While it was amateurish it was also the most laugh-out-loud funny show I have seen so far this Fringe. The jokes came thick and fast, high-brow and low-brow, and were delivered with a rapid-fire effectiveness.

Some of the actors were more impressive than others, Hamlet (who was also the Papal Inquisitor), Macbeth and Juliet especially impressed me. For both reasons of writing and performance the 'villains' - Tybalt, Ophelia and Iago, - didn't reflect their original characters very well while on stage (off stage Ophelia was spot on, a comment which will make sense if you see the show and damn those that don't). Even so they all entertained and, ultimately, that's what it's all about (that, and the hokey-cokey).

A final note, don't watch it if you have pretty much any strongly-held religious convictions. They make righteous fun of many of them, although I think Hindus and Muslims are safe. Also, defying our theme, they did not mention fear and loathing. Shame on them.

Grave Invaders, Rebranding Beelzebub and Comedy Sans Frontieres

Last night I saw three shows, two of them free and one of them a one-off midnight show that was not free. For anyone reading this unfamiliar with the Fringe Festival I should explain that 'free' shows are shows performed in exchange for tips at the end. They allow people to see shows they aren't sure about paying for and deciding afterwards what the show is worth, meaning relative unknowns can put on a show and (hopefully) make money from it.

I say hopefully, I am sure people have bankrupted themselves putting on free shows at the Fringe since for them the cost of taking the time off their regular work, finding living space and printing leaflets etc. is very much not free. On top of that this year, presumably inspired by Kickstarter, if you donate a certain amount some of the acts (including both I saw tonight) will give you small gifts - stickers etc.

The two shows I saw tonight were Grave Invaders and Rebranding Beelzebub, both on at the Banshee Labyrinth - a place which lays claim to being the most haunted pub in Edinburgh. It is a rock pub/club with so many rooms that it even has a cinema. It's called 'Labyrinth' for a reason - go too deep and strangers will get lost there. It is the lost souls of these visitors that add to the numerous ghosts.

Grave Invaders is a show which revolves around the poetry of its three performers. The theme is very loose, while roughly based on the group's visitation of the graves of poets up and down the country that isn't reflected very much in the poems they deliver. I am a big fan of making up some facile excuse to travel up and down the country so I think the looseness of the theme can be forgiven, especially as the poetry itself is excellent. Really top-notch wordplay, rhyme and rhythm as well as being very funny. They do seem to frown on being cruel to Carol Ann Duffy, though. Which is ridiculous - what is this life if full of care we cannot bitch about Carol Ann Duffy's inexplicable popularity?

Then we had not really quite enough time to dash to the toilet and buy a couple of beers before the next show, as a result of which we turned up to Rebranding Beelzebub slightly late. Not incredibly late, nothing of import was missed except the usual, "Welcome to my show," stuff - which I assume Tim Ralphs, the storyteller, did but which I can't prove that as I wasn't there.

As a result of missing the introduction, though, I first thought that I was in the wrong show. Dressed in red and black he certainly looked the part of a man telling a story about Satan but at first he just seemed to talk about vegetable boxes... the devil does turn up soon enough, though, and when he does the storytelling becomes spellbinding. Storytelling is in essence what I do in the day job so I know good storytelling when I see and hear it and, much to my chagrin, this was definitely it. Annoying as I was hoping to be able to post at least one visceral and vicious review. Maybe next time.

Of the two Rebranding Beelzebub was more my style but both are thoroughly enjoyable and only improved by the sound of glasses smashing in the bar around them. As they happen one show after the other in the same place, there's not even any need to choose between them. They are a winning combination. Maybe they could team up and do some sort of storytelling/poetry devil meets dead poets thing. If they do, I will demand royalties for the idea. If they've any sense they will ignore me, but I'll do it anyway.

After listening to some lovely stories about Satan it was off to the Pleasance's Grand stage to see Comedy Sans Frontieres. This, alas, is not a show you can see as it was a one-off but you CAN see the comedians who were involved.

Comedy Sans Frontieres had a simple premise - that national borders are only in our minds and we should celebrate our similarities and our differences. This was against something of an ironic backdrop as a proven liar and a failed Chancellor of the Exchequer had been debating Scottish independence on STV only two hours previously.

Moving to the Grand from the free shows was a palpable change. The Grand has big names, the event was arranged by Dylan Moran and Eddie Izzard in order to present to the UK comedians that impressed them as they toured other countries specifically: Igor Meerson from Russia, Francessco De Carlo from Italy, Yacine Belhousse from France, Michael Mittermeier from Germany.

However, you are paying for the names and not comfort. The Banshee Labyrinth was a far more comfortable place to spend two hours watching shows than the Grand - in the Grand the seats are too close together and the heat was like sitting in a simmering kettle. Truly, it does not do its acts any favours in making the audience so uncomfortable. Fortunately these acts were worth the discomfort.

Perhaps owing to familiarity - with the language in their case and with their style in mine - my favourite acts were Izzard and Moran, both doing new material and Dylan Moran's version of Fifty Shades of Grey a particular treat. The international guests focussed on the humour in national stereotypes. They did so in particularly hilarious fashion but by the fourth outing it felt like we'd been there before.

Those minor complaints aside there wasn't a single act I regretted sitting in the hellpit that is the Grand to watch which is testament to their ability as comedians. There is not a one I wouldn't happily see again but two acts did stand out for different reasons:

Perhaps he had an advantage in being up first but Yacine Belhousse, the Frenchman, stood out for me in that he both built up and smashed the French national stereotypes. His humour was artful, which is perhaps less of a compliment than that it was very, very funny which was also true.

The second act that really stood out for me was Igor Meerson. He was funny but what really shone was his finishing poignancy as he spoke about the Ukraine and how neither side's citizens wanted a return to the Cold War and that having witnessed the news from both sides he knows neither is getting the whole truth. This is the centenary of the start of the World War One, a war which was almost brought to a standstill after the Christmas Truce of 1914 spontaneously declared by the soldiers against the wishes of their masters. Together, hopefully, we can keep the peace despite our leaders.

Entering Edinburgh

It seems strange to be writing about entering Edinburgh in August when I live here, but as soon as that baleful and beautiful month arrived I was heading into deepest, darkest Wales for a wedding. To Lampeter, to be precise, a university town that shares a great deal of properties with Brig-a-doon - not least of which that it is incredibly hard to get in and out of.

So my first real blog about the festival is going to be what it is like to journey to it from the middle of rural Wales. The first challenge was, of course, the rural Welsh bus service - a service that happens seemingly at random. This challenge was overcome by simply sitting at the right bus stop (once we found the right bus stop) and waiting for a bus. The times given on the timetables might as well have been the Tibetan Book of the Dead translated into Aramaic for all the sense I could make of them.

From there we stopped at Carmarthen where an over-priced train ticket brought us into Cardiff. Cardiff is a city as modern as Edinburgh is ancient. Looking at its gleaming structures, it would be difficult to believe that anyone lived there any earlier than 1901 were it not for a bloody great castle sat in its centre.

My partner, The Moose, and I had booked overnight tickets on a Megabus to get back to Scotland so we had some time to kill in Cardiff. As we had cases to drag seeing the sights was not an option, but we met up with an old friend in a chain Irish theme pub and caught up over drinks. He has taken up Cex-work and it seems to have treated him well, at any rate he can wear his hair at a length of his choosing which is an important factor in job satisfaction (supermarkets take note).

It was at this point that I expected the journey to become a nightmare. A megabus, even if it was titled, 'Megabus Gold' is hardly the epitome of luxury travel and getting into Edinburgh in August must be hellish right? As it turns out, not at all. Getting into the bus was not without incident - an Indian gentlemen came up to me and aggressively mumbled something about Glasgow before having his bags full of contraband booze (none allowed on the coach) taken away by an irate driver - but the bus itself was laid out in beds and the two of us could sleep.

My only complaint was that the bed above was so low it definitely gave me the impression of being taken to Glasgow in a coffin - which for a long time was the only way I could conceive of ever going there. Perhaps the nightmare element was present after all, but it was a subtle kind of creeping horror rather than balls-to-the-wall, blood, guts and phenylalanine kind of horror. Also we got a free muffin, which helped to dispel the coffin illusion.

In Glasgow getting a ticket and a bus to Edinburgh proved easy and the bus itself quite empty, though I did manage to improve the journey by throwing some cream crackers everywhere.

Therefore my advice for those travelling into Edinburgh for the fringe is this : get in early, beat the crowds and - of you can - hire your own hearse and coffin, so that you can snore in peace on the way.

Fear and Loathing At The Edinburgh Fringe

Why fear and loathing?

The obvious answer is in homage and imitation of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson - founder of gonzo journalism and the man every gonzo journalist has been desperately trying to imitate in style and lifestyle ever since, myself included. We do not live an era of originality; we live in an era of test audiences, sequels, movies based on comic characters made 40 years ago or fantasy novels written 80 years ago. People want art that is almost exactly the same as the art they consumed last week, much like they want food that is exactly the same as the food they consumed last week (myself included). By the end of his life even Hunter S. Thompson was just doing a very good impression of Hunter S.Thompson.

Why fear and loathing?

Because of my day job. I use 'day' euphemistically, I am a ghost tour guide in Edinburgh. There are thousands of us so I'm not giving away too much by telling you this but I won't tell you too much more in case people figure out which one I am and they sack me for being a crazed, louche nightmare in human guise. (Actually, that'd probably get me promoted but better safe than sorry).

So fear is my bread and butter, my meat and drink. Quite literally because without the money I make from fear I would not have meat OR drink... and drink is especially necessary when facing the festival.There are only three types of people who make their money from fear -ghost tour guides, horror writers and Vladimir Putin. August company indeed.

Where does the loathing come in? Do you think tour guides enjoy fighting through the festival crowds? Let me disabuse you of that notion, we do not. I love the festival when I'm not working, but while working I loathe it. I am not alone. Those working in restaurants, hotels, transport etc. etc. do not relish the boost to the economy either -to them it's just harder work for the same wage.

Why fear and loathing?

Because last year I was sitting in the Jekyll&Hyde bar, reading an ancient copy of Ars Magica when I was joined by a man called Robert Coyle. He was an Irish comedian visiting Edinburgh, he regaled me with tales of his adventures seeking the fountain of youth and I regaled him with the time I kept a pet wasp. He said he thought I'd enjoy his show. I did enjoy his show, very much, he's a funny guy. One line especially stuck with me, "In August Edinburgh is like Vegas with shittier weather."

I cannot in good conscience steal his line (though I can use it here as this bit is also part review, copyright law being a monster with ninety-seven angry,drunken heads) but as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is such a famous work, I can evoke it with this title.

Why fear and loathing?

Because some of these blog posts will be reviews of shows I stumble into and actors fear and loathe reviews. Reviews can make or break a show and are often written by people who have nothing but an amateur experience of acting, writing or directing. I do have professional experience in two of those fields, so my reviews might be considered fairer than most. That means mine will be feared and loathed all the more intensely, though, because unlike those written by amateurs mine cannot be contested with the mantra, "You don't know what you're talking about." I do, yet I remain as biased and fuelled by misanthropy as the rest of them.

Why fear and loathing?

Because I know from experience things will turn baleful. Shall I recall the Fringe in which I ended up in a communist revolution in a bar? The Fringe in which I had a verbal joust with some thug ranting at a homeless woman that he was the devil (a claim I took rather personally)? There is no need, because this Fringe will bring similar tales - maybe even moreso since, thanks to this blog, this Fringe I'll be looking for them...