So it’s been quite a busy August so far! Last week, I was up in Scotland where I spent five days up at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. I had a bit of nightmare journey getting there. I’d had a couple of days back home after being down in London, and then last Tuesday caught a 10am train from Stockport, planning to arrive in Edinburgh mid afternoon to give me plenty of time to check into my accommodation, and then head to the first show I’d booked which was at 6pm.

Of course, it didn’t go quite to plan. We got Lockerbie where the train didn’t move for quite a while because of a major power outage on the line – then about an hour later we were told they decided to take us to Glasgow instead, and we’d then have to make our way to Edinburgh by any connecting train we could get – perfect! So we got into Glasgow Central at 4pm (2½ hours after I was originally supposed to arrive in Edinburgh!), and then had to race across the city with loads of other passengers to get a train from Queen Street station, and I was lucky to get on one that was leaving right away, so got into Edinburgh not too long after 5 o’clock. This gave me just enough time to get to my accommodation on Hollyrood Road, and then up to the Pleasance Courtyard for Tim Vine’s show at 6pm. It was pretty tight, and I felt a bit worn out by the time I made it to the venue, but was just relieved to have finally made it!

I kind of hit the ground running – on that first evening I’d got myself tickets for three shows… the other two were over near George Square Gardens, so I was able to grab some fish and chips for tea because I was pretty hungry (they were pretty expensive – as I expected – but they tasted great!) By the time I was done for the evening, it was about half ten, so I made the 15 minute walk back to the student halls I was staying in, and thankfully it was downhill for a lot of the way!

The next day I popped into the Gag Reflex production office to catch up with Lee and the team, and to drop off a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts as thanks for giving me some complimentary tickets to a few of their shows.

Over the five days, I managed to get to see 22 shows:

• 1. ‘Tim Vine – Breeeep!’ at The Pleasance Courtyard
  2. ‘David O’Doherty – Whoa Is Me’ at the Gordon Aikman Theatre, George Square
  3. ‘Alice Fraser – ‘Chronos’ at the Gilded Balloon
  4. ‘Aaron Simmonds – Hot Wheels’ at the Pleasance Courtyard
  5. ‘Dom Chambers – Fake Wizard’ at The Blue Room, George Square
  6. ‘Jarred & Hobbit – The Big Beatbox Comedy Mess Around Gameshow Show!’ at The Counting House
  7. ‘Tim Key – Mulberry’ at the Pleasance Dome
  8. ‘The Mr Thing Show’ at the Pleasance Dome
  9. ‘Late ‘n’ Live’ at the Gilded Balloon
  10. ‘Tom Crosbie – Nerd’s Eye View’ at the Gilded Balloon
  11. ‘Danny O’Brien – The God Of All Things Bad’ at the Beehive Inn
  12. ‘Pete Firman – Bag Of Tricks’ at the Gilded Balloon
  13. ‘Andrew Maxwell – Krakatoa’ at Gilded Balloon
  14. ‘Harry Baker – Unashamed’ at the Revolution Bar
  15. ‘John Bishop & Tony Pitts – Three Little Words with Clive Anderson’ at the Gilded Balloon
  16. ‘Will Duggan – Iceberg’ at the Pleasance Courtyard
  17. ‘John Robins – Work In Progress / Progress In Work’ at The Caves
  18. ‘Ben Hart – Wonder’ at the Pleasance Courtyard
  19. ‘John Robertson – The Dark Room’ at the Gilded Balloon
  20. ‘Mat Ricardo – The Extraordinary Gentleman’ at Gilded Balloon
  21. ‘West End Magic’ at Surgeons Hall
  22. ‘Jon Culshaw – Les Dawson Flying High’ at the Gordon Aikman Theatre, George Square

A couple were a bit last minute, both shows that Lee was going to so I tagged along. The one that really was excellent was on the second evening. After moving The Dark Room to Friday night, I went out with everyone from Gag to celebrate Olly’s birthday, and we all checked out ‘The Mr Thing Show‘ – which is quite difficult to describe! It’s a kind of comedy chat show, with audience participation, lots of multimedia elements, and a puppet bartender called Steve! It really was completely chaotic, and totally hilarious, and quite early on I had to provide some kind of yell / scream that was sampled and then used in the show! Also, Georgi from Gag got pulled up onto stage to take part in a bizarre game involving Cher songs and a cutout of Debbie McGee!

Oh, and what was a bit random is that in the audience was a YouTube guy whose channel I’m subscribed to – Geoff Marshall – and one of the guys presenting the show recognised him too when they randomly asked him a question as part of audience participation! I would’ve liked to have said ‘hello’ to him at the end and say that I’ve enjoyed watching many of his YouTube videos, but he was chatting to someone as I was leaving, and I really had to race off because the show had gone on later than I expected, and I was already late for the Late ‘n’ Live show!

Other stand out shows (mainly where I didn’t know what to expect, as opposed to established names) were both actually Gag Reflex ones – ‘John Robertson’s Dark Room‘ and ‘Tom Crosbie – Nerd’s Eye View‘. (To be honest I really enjoyed 90% of all the shows I saw over the week, I guess it’s more these two were a bit different).

The Dark Room was crazy – it’s basically a live computer adventure game, hosted by a manic Australian, who scours the audience for people to take part, but always end up dying! I mean, it was totally full-on, and there was always the fear that you might get selected, but it was so funny!

And the other show that stands out is from Tom Crosbie. It’s hard to describe what he does – he’s not really a stand-up, but he is pretty funny, and I guess the show is basically kind of nerdy! Basically, really impressive feats of memory, and some amazing things with Rubik’s cubes – and I genuinely have no idea how he’s able to do what he does!

So in my time there, I got to see a real variety – from straight-forward stand-up, to chat, theatre, and magic. I had planned to come back to Manchester on Saturday evening, but of course my bad luck with trains had to resurface, with that day being designated a strike day, so all trains were cancelled! And because there wasn’t any affordable accommodation in Edinburgh to book for an extra night, I have to take a bus to Glasgow (the bus station was absolute carnage because there were so many people trying to find alternative travel!), and stayed the night in a Travelodge, before blagging my way onto a train back towards home the next morning!