End of the Festival

With the Edinburgh Festival having come to a close I thought I'd briefly riound up the shows I've been to see in the last couple of weeks.

Angry Puppy was a solid all-female sketch show. The cast and sketches were all of a high quality.

Limmy's Show didn't have the atmosphere of his Oran Mor shows in March, but it was still top drawer stuff. Any show featuring me trying to climb a fence must be funny.

Scott Cappuro had a lot of 5 star reviews and according to each one a lot of walk outs. On the night I saw him no one walked out, but that's not to say he toned it down that night. The vast number of comedians who think that they're edgy really ought to go see Cappuro to see how it's really done. This was boundary-pushing stand-up at its best. He even managed to squeeze in some mild masturbation during the hour.

Easily the worst show I saw at the festival was Paul Foot's. Quite how this guy has a career is a mystery to me. He stretched about 6 minutes of material into an hour. When one of your audience says "You're actually humping me now," your show's taking a wrong turning somewhere.

The sketch show Two Episodes of MASH had some mixed reviews over the three weeks. I enjoyed it for the most part. There were some good, quirky ideas, like the super-hero who had given it all up to teach road safety (Road Safety - It's Not Just For Arseholes) and the human cannonball who had overshot, meaning he couldn't get his timesheets signed. There was a good running gag about their sponsorship deal with a scaffolding firm. The whole thing though was only 45 minutes long.

Wisecrackin' Mindsqueezin' Behemoth was another sketch show written and performed by JL Roberts and Nadia Kamil. They had done a show called Staggered Spaces that I saw a couple of years ago. They are both likable and engaging performers. The show was a bit shambolic but all the more fun for it.

Global Warming is Gay featured Glue's very own Dazza. Despite a few really awful lines it wasn't a bad show. However for my mind you may as well have written a show replacing global warming with collecting football programmes, such as I didn't really buy that these folk were spending £30,000 to combat global warming.

Edinburgh was rounded off this year for me with Doug Stanhope last night. Shambling through the crowd in the small bar he looked as ridiculous as I've ever seen him. A skip cap perched on his mulleted head, his jacket looked like something he'd stolen off a drunken sailor and his baggy shorts looked like he'd slept in them the last couple of nights. Oh aye that's right, he had.

He began by riffing with the crowd, by the time he'd had his third beer he was really on form. He did have to deal with idiotic attention seeking hecklers, but all in all he delivered a first class show.

Here's an interview with him about Edinburgh from last week's Metro.

So that's it for Edinburgh for me as a punter this year. Saw some decent shows and ate some good pies out of Piemaker. Spent too much money that's for sure.