Sal and I returned late last night, coughing, sniffing, and in need of a good lie down, from a thoroughly entertaining weekend up in Edinburgh. We can’t quite blame the city for our colds–I’m pretty sure we had those before we went–but I’m sure our activities over the weekend can’t have helped in their slow gestation.

On the way from the airport to our hotel, I realised that I’ve clearly been living in the south for far too long. My conversation with our taxi driver was punctated by increasingly lengthy pauses, as my brain stuggled to decipher his half of our conversation. I spent much of the journey concentrating really hard in an attempt to understand him, in the way one might during a French oral test, perhaps, dreading the social awkwardness that might ensue if I failed to quite catch what it was he had to say about the comedy of Mr Stewart Lee. I sensed that perhaps Sal’s quietness could be put down to her having an even harder time keeping up. Of course, this being Edinburgh (and during the fringe no less), our taxi driver was probably the most Scottish person I spoke to all weekend, so we managed to survive the weekend without subtitles after all.

This being not only my first trip to the Festival, but also my first time in the city, we headed out to explore just as soon as we had checked into our rather lovely hotel. We saw no sign of it, but the rooftop garden outside our room was allegedly home, at some point over the weekend, to Channel Five’s launch party for their Autumn schedule, at least according to last week’s Media Independent–disappointingly, the closest I got to a celebrity spot (apart from the people we’d paid to see) was a bloke who looked like Robin Ince who walked past me in the lobby.

[Is that Robin Ince?
In our hotel reception?
Looking a bit lost?]

Our first comedy event of the weekend, at the Pleasance Courtyard on Saturday night, was Richard Herring’s new show, which I enjoyed immensely, even though it seems Rich wasn’t that happy with us (“After yesterday’s lovely main show, tonight’s was much harder work. I was rather tired, but the audience were much harder to please. As usual with this kind of crowd they applauded wildly at the end, even though they hadn’t been showing their appreciation too much through laughter!”) Personally, if I wasn’t laughing loudly enough it was probably because–through regular reading of Warming Up–I felt like I’d heard many of the jokes before. Still great, though, although I did think he was just a little harsh on the couple who walked out towards the end (“If something offends you, walk away. Yeah, that’s what Jesus said, wasn’t it?”). By my watch the show was over time slightly at that point, so it’s possible that they just had another show to get to, rather than that they were deeply offended, but maybe that’s just me being naive in believing that surely no one could possibly be offended by jokes about the Pope and Catholicism any more.

Actually, for some reason, religion in general, but Catholicism specifically, seemed to crop up an awful lot over the weekend. I think every single comedian we saw had something to say about it. Perhaps that’s a reaction to the events of the last couple of years, or perhaps Catholicism specifically is just such a ridiculous belief system that it provides ludicrously easy comedy fodder for lazy comedians, I don’t know.

Stewart Lee, Rich’s erstwhile other half, who we caught on Sunday, certainly had a lot to say about religion, but then that sort of makes sense when you consider what was going on with him, his opera, and those Christian Voice loonies earlier in the year. His show, in a packed bunker at the top of the Underbelly, was one of the best pieces of stand-up that I’ve seen in a long time. Definitely worth checking out if and when it pops up in London, or wherever you happen to be.

Immediately after Mr Lee, we returned to the same room to join a much smaller crowd, as just a handful of people watched Janey Godley tell her enthralling stories about her, um, “interesting” life. We selected this show based entirely on Richard Herring’s recommendation, and it proved to be possibly the highlight of my weekend.

Edinburgh seems like a nice place. I’m not sure I’d terribly enjoy the influx of tourists and shabby student theatre every year if I was a local, but I couldn’t help noticing that, in common with much of the civilised world, the pubs are open after 11 o’clock. Did rather throw into a different light the headline on the copy of Mr Murdoch’s shabby rag (no, not The Sun, the other one) that was shoved under our hotel room door over the weekend in some kind of aritifical circulation boosting exercise. Far from being a portend of the end days, it turns out that in fact with later drinking hours, the rest of the UK will be much the same as it is now, just with drinking a bit later…

On Monday, there was just time to cram in a bit more comedy by returning to The Pleasance to see a handful of comedians (and Tim Vine) perform short sets in aid of the Charlie Hartill Special Reserve, a fund to support new comedy and theatre. It was great (including more Richard Herring, doing his slightly more obviously crowd pleasing Cock material, and also Dara O’Brien, Omid Djalili, and the like). All very good indeed. Apart from Tim Vine, who was unbelievably shit.