Edinburgh Fringe: Saturday 8th August 2026

A pleasant drive to Edinburgh, parking at the Ingliston Park & Ride. I need a pee, so I make use of the one toilet facility operational at the ticket booth. The tram still terminates at West End because of the Princes Street closure. The morning is dry and bright, but breezy, the sun warming my face as I head to Alandas for an ice cream, buying a two-scoop cone with White Chocolate Coconut Cornflakes and Pistachio Brownie. It's melting fast, so I race to lick around the outside before it drips. My fingers end up slightly sticky, the massive ice cream melting faster than my tongue can lick. I make my way to Monkey Barrel 1. 

The queue is already halfway up the street. I curse my dilly-dallying.   

11:05 (1hr) Glenn Moore: Work in Progress

Monkey Barrel 1. Ticket Price: £10

I get seated in the second row, though, filling the single seat left.

Glenn Moore is performing a work in progress, so he has his tablet, which he uses to read his jokes. I'm surprised by how fluent the jokes are, even at this early stage in the process. A few clunkers die, but mostly his material was excellent. Once he develops them into a full set, it won't appear as disjointed. A good start.

I have a big gap before the next show. I buy a Mexican Oval and a bottle of Coke Zero from a Greggs for lunch, wander over to the Pleasance to see if I can slip in another show (unfortunately, the only ones I'm interested in are either sold out or overlap). I go to the Princes Park Gardens to find somewhere to sit. My stomach gurgles, my bowels tighten. I get my five-minute warning of an imminent evacuation. Shit! I make for the nearest place - the National Gallery. The shock of it being closed due to industrial action buys me another five minutes. I reach a nearby pub just in time. Thankfully, the cubicle is free, and I explode. I only mention this because it's relevant later.

14:55 (1hr) Eric Rushton: Could Well Be In 

Monkey Barrel 2. Ticket Price: £15

I'm feeling much better by the time I return to Monkey Barrel. This time it's downstairs at MB2. I stand in the queue inside, only to be told that that's for people without tickets. The staff direct me to the other side of the room. I'm third in.

I don't want to be right in front of the microphone, so I move back a row and sit by the wall. The view is still good from this safer seat. The bloke who ends up in the front row seat I would have been in is engaged by Eric several times during the show. 

Eric's stage persona (and possibly his real-life one too) is that of a man with mental health issues, particularly depression. He's from a large, non-Catholic family that suffered hardship as he grew up. Yet his mum always knew what present to get him to brighten each Christmas. He knuckled down at school, determined to lift him and his mum out of poverty. He got an interview for Oxford, the home of the dictionary, but didn't get in. He went to Warwick instead. There he caught the stand-up bug, and he's been ploughing on in that field ever since. The dartboard onstage was a recent birthday gift from his mum. He couldn't understand why she would give him one. The story's resolution provides the answer.

I didn't buy into the comedy here. His depression casts a shadow over the laughs. His lack of confidence undersells the performance. The writing is good, and the jokes are there, so why did I just feel sorry for him? It ends on a positive note, thank f***.

I decide it isn't worth risking dinner, so, instead, I spend that money on a ticket to another show.

16:35 (1hr) Garrett Millerick: "We Tried it Your Way" 

Pleasance Baby Grand.

I end up in the front row for this show. We've been encouraged to use our phones during this show as it is interactive. 

G-Dog iteration number 1.

We have a pre-show questionnaire to complete. We need to provide our name, ask a question for Millerick, say whether we've ever wanted to perform stand-up (I lie and say no), and suggest a subject we'd like a stand-up routine written about. I suggest 'getting caught short on the way to a gig'. 

Of course, my subject is one of the three he selects. He interviews me briefly, then replies, "Andrew, I'll be honest with you. Sometimes you can give too much information." My subject didn't win the vote (but did come second, out of three).

 

Garrett's show is about two things: the blinding headaches that stop him from doing his job, and his decision to create an AI to see if it could replace him. The end result reflects how good he is as a stand-up, a powerful presence on stage, something a computer can never mimic... yet.

I enjoyed this hour, even though I was part of it.

18:15 (1hr) Celia Pacquola: Gift Horse

Upstairs at Assembly Roxy. Ticket Price: £15  

I decided I couldn't last all night without eating, so I found a Sainsbury's Local and bought some crisps and an energy bar for my dinner. 

Upstairs at the Roxy really does mean going up a lot of stairs. The square staircase goes up and up and up. I end up sitting in the third row, off to the left. 

A staff member, not Celia.

This is a wonderful hour of skillfully crafted stand-up, delivered with charm and delight. Starting with the unwanted kayak birthday present that her boyfriend Dara gave her, she launches into the journey that gift took her on, explaining all the questions it raised and feelings it created. It is very funny. It is easy to see why it won the top award at this year's Melbourne Comedy Festival. 

20:15 (1hr) Spencer Jones: Dogs

Queen Dome at Pleasance Dome. Ticket Price: £18 

I grab a hot chocolate before Spencer's show and join what turns out to be the wrong queue. The staff at the Pleasance Dome are rigorous in getting us into the right shape queue, as Dogs is completely sold out.

Likewise, inside the venue, they ensure there are no gaps in a row, demanding that we move to the end and sit within the designated spaces. Spencer is already on stage when we arrive, painting a picture of a dog on a canvas. He never refers to it again.

This is a silly show. He wears papier-mache masks and false teeth, uses several props for comic effect, and walks several imaginary dogs and performs as one or two. He builds a loop of sounds over the course of the show and uses it to punctuate that a sketch is over; he seems not to have a running order, randomly selecting what comes next, then asks the tech at the end what he's missed so he can do it. 

He comments early on about the stutter he has developed and his recent Tourette's. He gives funny examples of the latter, making me wonder whether the confession is genuine. It seems a weird thing to joke about in the current social climate if it isn't true. The stutter is very much in evidence, not so much the Tourette's, unless that also presents as him wiggling his tongue, which he does a lot. 

The audience laughed a lot.

21:50 (1hr) Jamie Kilstein: Can't Tie Knots

Lounge at Gilded Balloon Teviot. Ticket Price: £18

I head to the Gilded Balloon Teviot building. There is no queue at the Lounge for Jamie Kilstein, so I buy a drink and sit in the cafe. Amanda Knox's book is on sale. Then I notice the queue on the balcony and realise she is up there for her meet-and-greet. There was a controversy over her performing this show, but she seems to have won over public opinion, based on the number of good reviews. It's a sellout.

I forgot to take a picture of my view of Jamie's stage. The crowd is sparse for the size of the room. Stupidly, I automatically move to the end of the row, sitting against the wall, programmed to do so by requests in previous shows. A group of foreign lads pack in beside me. Then I see no other row has done this. I don't enjoy the crush.

Jamie's show is dark. Although Celia's appearance at the Fringe was my prompt to drive through, I wanted to see Jamie's show for myself. I saw Jamie many years ago at The Stand in Glasgow. I even own a few of his albums: "Zombie Jesus" (2009), "Libel, Slander and Sedition" (2011) and "What Alive People Do" (2013). These were made before he got cancelled for cheating on his wife. Can't Tie Knots refers to his attempts to kill himself when his personal life and career imploded. There's a badly tied noose hanging from the mic stand, a prop he handles several times to show his state of mind at the time. 

The show's narrative timeline confused me. One minute he's having a panic attack at Robin Williams' funeral (yes, THAT Robin Williams - they were friends), then he's telling us how Robin stopped him from quitting stand-up during the interval of The Book Of Mormon. He's at the show with his wife, yet he claims he met her through the church, which he joined in 2020, years after Robin killed himself. He found God through mushrooms, also encountering Robin and Jerry Garcia on the same trip, further adding to the confusion. 

(Edit: the confusion is mine - he's been married twice, though I didn't hear him mention he was referring to a 'first' wife during the show).

    

This show felt like a confession, an attempt to rebuild his career by addressing his fuck ups and the forces that drove him to want to kill himself. His neuroses are writ large. It's messy, but with some extra clarity, it has the potential to become something great. 

I left the show feeling vulnerable. It was late, and I was on my own. I craved a hug, the warmth of a body, reassurance that my life was worth living. Edinburgh was full of Saturday night revellers. Maybe one drunk girl might have taken pity on me and complied if I'd asked.

But I didn't. Instead, I headed to McDonald's and ordered a strawberry milkshake. I chose to live vicariously, knowing I had a dodgy bowel and an hour's drive ahead of me. 

The journey passed without incident, except for the M8 being shut at Junction 8 Baillieston. Later in bed, I did suffer from recurrent windy pops.