If it's August, it must be Edinburgh

It's so long since I blogged about anything of substance that much of what we did in Edinburgh has faded from my precious brain area, but some things remain. We saw some American comedians, including Louis CK again, who was patchy in his attempt to pull strands from his longer show, and Kristen Schaal, who did a cute sketch show with a guy called Kurt something or other (no, I'm not looking it up, I'm not well), but seems to be a little one-note. I am allowed to be bitter about her, because Mrmonkey has informed me that he will be divorcing me soon so he can go and marry her little squirrely face. Well, go on ahead. See if I care.

We also saw some English comedians, including Nina Conti and her monkey, who were both entertaining as always, although I was more creeped out than amused by her working her dad (Tom Conti, in case you hadn't guessed), into the show. It seemed a bit desperate, frankly; and Commodore Sir Tim Fitzhigham, who had the best directed show on the whole Fringe. Actually, Tim's show was very interesting. It told of his decision to emulate the great Shakespearean clown Will Kemp's feat of morris dancing from London to Norwich in nine days. There is film footage of Tim doing that very thing, and tales of the adventures he had along the way, all performed in a tiny little portakabin of a venue. Most entertaining.

Also we did see ComedyB in the largest venue on the Fringe, and he was entertaining as always, although we did want to kill the four women in the front row who wouldn't shut the hell up while he was talking. The annoying thing about this kind of stealth heckling is that nobody in the rest of the audience can hear it, but it's incredibly distracting for the performer, so they have to do something about it, but doing something about it makes them look a bit of a dick, because nobody else knows there's really a problem. So don't talk if you're in the front row, is the lesson there.

We also saw Craig Campbell's show. Craig is a burly loon of a Canadian comedian who had decided to go a different way this year; instead of your standard bloke-tells-joke show, he went for a horror/comedy one-man play about a guy who works the haunted house at carnivals, travelling all over Canada, taking drugs and scaring the shit out of people. It was really good. Craig's characterization was surprisingly effective, the show had a plot and a proper story and everything, and it was funny to boot. I'd recommend it, and I'm not a fan of the one-person play thing.

Off-hand I can't remember what else we saw, but I'm sure I'll remember later.