The Distractor Fringe Awards 2005 Part 2

The "Oh Dear, I'm Not Sure They've Got That Right" award

Goes, of course, to the Perrier committee who last night gave the award to Laura Solon. Now, I'm generally pro-Perrier as even if sometimes the winners have been a bit ropey the shortlists as a whole do tend to represent 5 shows that it is worth your time and effort seeing. However, there has been a recent trend for the Perrier to go to increasingly bizarre shows culminating in last year's award to Will Adamsdale for a show that was just, if you'll forgive me, unfunny bollocks. Now, I've not yet seen Laura Solon and so do not want to get ahead of myself - it may be a great show although the reviews have not been so glowing that this is a given. However, I am put on alert by this quote from Nica Burns (the producer, incidently, of Who's The Daddy so I must declare something of an interest given earlier posts) - "How fitting, in the 25th year, that out of the blue a young woman of extraordinary talent should be discovered in an out-of-the -way venue and become the surprise winner and only the second solo woman to win the Perrier". If you get a moment, take a look at the excellent Chortle.co.uk review of the show, where you will discover that Laura Solon is at the Holyrood Tavern (so out of the way Wil Hodgson, last year's best newcomer, is playing there), has a string of writing credits to her name and the show is being supported by a television production company. So not really unknown, not really out of the blue and not really in an out of the way venue but one in the eye for all those critics who (deservedly) have been giving the Perrier a kicking for its under representation of women. Final judgment will be reserved until the London Perrier shows in October but in the meantime....

"The Perrier Committee May Not Be Able To Spot Talent At 20 Paces But We Still Love You" award

This is shared between Jeremy Lion and Rhod Gilbert (Chris Addison having been declared ineligible on the grounds of his win in the Al Murray category). Two shows that just set out to be plain funny and succeeded with knobs on and both highly deserving of their nominations. Rhod Gilbert's description of using his Gran's bladder as a football, before she'd finished with it, and the tragic consequences was probably the finest 5 minutes of comedy I saw all festival.

The Distractor Fringe Awards 2005 Part 1

With this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival drawing to a close and the Perrier about to be announced, we pre-empt the inevitable disappointments and gross miscarriages of justice by awarding our own gongs - The Distractions, if you will. Here's the first batch:

Most Travelled Accent
Alan Davies in The Odd Couple. This play could also qualify for the "how long can they get away with this" award. The concept of "Comedians in serious plays" certainly brings in the punters, and makes for an enjoyable afternoon, but you never, ever forget you are watching Alan Davies, Bill Bailey and various other comics. It's a wonderfully written play, and would be fun to watch if performed by two stoats and a plastic bag, but you are constantly thinking - "yes they're quite good, considering they're not actors." That, and "where is Alan Davies from, exactly?"

Most Inappropriately Over-used Lines
A hard-fought category, this. The runner-up was "Are there any Americans in? Oooh, they're not as loud as they used to be", and honourable mention must go to the determination of some comedians to find comic mileage in the idea of a failed suicide bomber. But the winner is a line used by many many people to justify an embarrassingly bad joke - "I like it, it's staying in."

Best Comeback
John Sparkes as Frank Hovis in "Filth". The man is a comedy god. Character comedy at its best, he portrays the most disgusting comedian alive, soaked in cheap lager, innately proud of his bodily functions, painfully aware of his limitations as a human being, but full of working-men's-club charm. An ever-escalating succession of pure filth culminates in a joke about lino so hilariously vile that you laugh and wince simultaneously.

The Al Murray Award for Being Robbed Of The Perrier Again
Chris Addison. This is slightly premature, but he's the favourite now, so he hasn't a chance, has he? Either it'll go to something more typically left-field like Laura Solon or there'll be a backlash and a conventional stand-up like Jason Manford ("A young Peter Kay") will get it. Addison's show is well structured, has a great and original theme (the Periodic Table), and has some fantastic one-liners. On the night we saw him he seemed to find himself oddly hilarious and was going at a breakneck pace (speeding, you might say) but the quality of the writing was undeniable.

Best Worst Gag
Won hands down by Boothby Graffoe. At the end of his set, a tall Dutch-looking girl is brought on, to general confusion. She is five foot ten. And from Finland. "Big Finnish" says Graffoe, before wisely legging it.

E's Best Show
Well, I loved Tim Minchin (see below), Frank Hovis and you have to love Boothby Graffoe (even though he hadn't written anything new), but my vote for best show goes to (drumroll) Mark Watson's 50 Years Before Death. A beautifully simple structure - each minute of the show corresponded to a year of his life - meant that Mark could do a range of jokes loosely tied to the ages of man- for instance, he could be disparaging of youngsters during middle age. His lines were excellent (I hate it when reviews reveal the show's best jokes, but what the hell, it's only one line and it's nearly all over, and it's such a good line - the number one thing he wanted to be said at his funeral was "hang on, he's still breathing"). He freewheeled between improvised material and his actual show with ease, and he had such a likable manner you went along with him. When we saw him, he seemed genuinely thrown to discover a ten year-old boy in the audience, but he was able to incorporate him into his show seamlessly. Great, great stuff.

Who's The Daddy (Kings Head, Islington)

You get the feeling sometimes with political comedy that the perpetrators believe that topicality relieves them of the obligation to be funny. So it proves with Who's the Daddy, a farce based on the recent adulterous shenanigans centred around the Spectator magazine which temporarily halted David Blunkett's political career. It must be a farce because people rush in and out of rooms, often with their trousers round their ankles, although its not actually very funny unless you find the sight of a second rate Boris Johnson impersonator saying "crikey" a lot and referring to everyone as "Rodders" and Kimbers" particularly amusing. The show is the creation of Toby Young and Lloyd Evans, both Spectator employees, with additional contributions from Jeremy Lloyd of Are You Being Served and 'Allo 'Allo fame, who is probably responsible for what few half-way decent jokes there are but who still should have known better. The catty exchanges between Kimberley Quinn and Petronella Wyatt (played by Sara Crowe,a lone beacon of talent) are reasonably entertaining but the rest of it just stinks of a couple of public schoolboys who've been given a certain amount of licence to poke fun at the head beak in the school show. While the central premise may have seemed like a ripping skit for the end of term revue, as a piece of theatre for which they feel able to relieve you of £22.50 to watch in the cramped conditions of the Kings Head it really doesn't cut the mustard. It blunders about trying to take a crack at various issues of the day with all the subtlety and wit of an oil tanker, the "punch lines" sledge hammered in accompanied by inane gurning by the cast. The final denouement, in which Kimberley Quinn's babies are revealed to have Johnson-esque blond hair while Blunkett bursts in dressed as Spiderman, announcing himself as a member of Fathers 4 Justice, was so utterly pointless as to be physically painful.

The main problem, outside the inane writing, is that ultimately so few of the people involved really matter that taking the piss out of them doesn't constitute meaningful satire. Boris Johnson is a never was politician and editor of a magazine with miniscule circulation; Rod Liddle was famous for about 2 minutes when he pointed out that the operative syllable in Countryside Alliance is the first one and promptly lost his job at the BBC, and just who the fuck is Petronella Wyatt and why should any of us care about this clearly vacuous Sloane? The only one of any importance is Blunkett and we all now know that in the context of his career his involvement with Kimberley Quinn is virtually irrelevant. In fact, the only people who think this might be remotely interesting are the employees of the Spectator and that's ultimately what Who's The Daddy is - it's the Spectator Christmas panto, written by a couple of the office amateur jokers, acted by a few of the office exhibitionists and full of jokes that will only raise a smile if you know (really know, not just recognise from TV) the subjects. There have probably been a few of these at your office but I bet you didn't charge strangers £22.50 to come in and watch.

Fortunately this pitiful excuse for a show closes at the weekend and so there should be little opportunity left for you to waste your time and money on it, although I am taking spread bets on how many student productions appear at next year's Edinburgh festival (buy around 5 is my advice). To be fair, I might have been a little easier on the play if I had seen it in a church hall near Bristo Square for a fiver at one in the afternoon. Having to drag myself of an evening to Islington, official Home of the Twat, and deal with the olympically slow bar staff in the Kings Head didn't put me in the best of moods, and that's before I found myself squeezed into a corner next to the air conditioning unit. But if this show was any good it would have made me forget all that rather than make me want to shout profanities out loud. Still, at least I appear to have been right all along in my belief that Toby Young is a complete cunt. If you see him, tell him he owes me £22.50.

Perrier Shortlist 2005

In the interests of information rather than entertainment (although normal service will be resumed in the way of editorial comment shortly), this year's Perrier Award shortlist is as follows:

Chris Addison - Atomicity

Dutch Elm Conservatoire in 'Conspiracy'

Jason Manford - Urban Legend

Jeremy Lion - What's The Time, Mr Lion

Laura Solon - Kopfrapers Syndrome: One Man and His Incredible Mind

The nominations for Perrier Best Newcomer are:

Charlie Pickering- Betterman

Mark Watson:50 Years Before Death

Rhod Gilbert's 1984

Tim Minchin - Darkside

Toulson and Harvey

Not entirely sure how Mark Watson qualifies as a newcomer seeing as how he was nominated in the same category as far back as 2001 (although his excellent show deserves recognition). My personal choices - Jeremy Lion for the Perrier, Rhod Gilbert for Best Newcomer, although if I were a betting man a fiver on Chris Addison might not go amiss. That said, in recent times the Perrier has been exploring the outer fringes of comedy with Daniel Kitson and Demetri Martin, and fell completely off the edge last year with the utterly unfunny Will Adamsdale, so perhaps we should expect the unexpected. However, for the London based, the Sunday evening shortlist shows in October will be well worth attending.

The Late Night Comedy Show Dilemma

The late-night all-star comedy shows at the Fringe are a great way of seeing loads of comics in a short space of time. You can happen across someone great that you've never previously heard of. You can see big-name comedians who aren't otherwise doing comedy shows. And you get a unique chance to see comedians off-form, coasting and pissed to the point of incomprehension.

Each of the major venues does a late-night show, involving a compere and three or four other acts. The quality is variable, and by their very nature they're a gamble (which is half the fun). But you can swing the balance slightly by choosing your venue with care.

Political comedy is a difficult beast - get it wrong and it can feel like you've paid ten quid to see some ranting nutter in your local high street. Political Animal (Underbelly) is hosted by John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman, who understand that to make people laugh about politics, you have to include some silliness and surrealism. They gleefully wind each other up throughout the show, which makes them a lot of fun to watch. On the night I saw the show, their acts were variable - Natalie Hayes skillfully combined conventional stand-up with some disturbing facts about IKEA, but Eddy Brimson, ex hunt saboteur and full-time conspiracy theorist, fell into the rant trap and left the audience cold. This is often the problem - you may agree with the sentiments, but you're in the mood for some laughs.

So if this is the case, you may be better off with Best Of The Fest (Assembly Rooms). This usually involves the biggest acts of the festival, and is held in the huge, barn-like Great Hall. Pretty much everyone is hammered, so the acts get huge laughs pretty easily, and tend to do their most crowd-pleasing material. With the right amount of drink inside you, this is a fantastic laugh. Equally, it can feel like a massive let-down - it's all very safe, and sometimes it seems like they're just going through the motions - especially if the act is equally inebriated and amusing themselves rather than the audience, which I have seen happen on several occasions (yes you, Tommy Tiernan, Phil Nichol, Johnny Vegas).

The shows at the Pleasance Dome (BBC Stand-up Show Live, Afterhours) are different. Maybe it's the bearpit-like, proper-comedy-club-like atmosphere, maybe it's the fact that the acts are not as famous and so are a little hungrier, a little less jaded, a little less cynical. The atmosphere is equally raucous, but the comics seem to feed off it, pushing their material that little bit further, rather than take advantage of it. I saw the great Dave Johns (the master of the where-you-from school of comedy) ring-master a bill including Russell Howard and Scott Capuro (brilliantly trying to seduce the straightest bloke in the room), then Alun Cochrane hosting Jason Byrne (mad ranting par excellance), Alex Horne (see below) and the fantastic Boothby Graffoe. Not one duff act.

So my advice would be this - see the late-night shows, but go for the smaller venues to avoid the feeling you've been cheated. And see the political stuff when you're sober enough to appreciate it.

A Pleasant Afternoon's Sketch Comedy

Sketch comedy is always going to be a little bit hit and miss. Little Britain has its dodgy moments. Even the hallowed Monty Python had a few stinkers in amongst the classics. But I have never seen a show as polarised as The Trap (Pleasance): the misses had me staring, arms folded, face unimpressed; the hits had me bent double, eyes streaming, bladder leaking.

Most of the rummer sketches were in the first half - a comedy song about how comedy songs are crap (always risky), then a lengthy, dull character piece - but as the show went on, my admiration increased exponentially. The idea of a variety show to link the sketches is a good one. The performers (Dan Mersh, Jeremy Limb and Paul Litchfield) were never less than engaging, and often brilliant. And while the mood was over-ridingly silly (nothing wrong with that), it's actually a lot cleverer than it looks - a seemingly terrible double act sketch turns out to be an elaborate set-up for one of the best pieces of writing I have seen this year, and simple things like quizzes and catchphrases become essential parts of later sketches. The show seemed deliberately ramshackle, and is a touch studenty, but you come out of it grinning like a fool.

The Monkey Butlers (Underbelly) are a slightly different proposition. Where The Trap seem about to fall apart, they are always slick and professional. The transitions between sketches are expertly handled, and the pace never seems to flag. The performances are mostly straight, and the actors entirely inhabit their roles, while displaying excellent comic timing. Each of them brings something different to the show - Paddy Lennox, particularly, reminded me of a young Michael Palin. The writing is sharp - one sketch has a football crowd cheer on a couple's argument, and there are clever satires on daytime TV, 24 hour news and The Blair Witch Project. Best of all, the sketches rely on wordplay and character rather than catchphrases. All this is admirable, but apart from one fantastic mobile phone gag, the laughs are mostly chuckles rather than bellies. Again, there's nothing wrong with that.

These shows may approach sketch comedy in contrasting ways, but both are worth seeing. Buy your tickets with confidence.

Moose Season

Criticising young, new comedians is like shooting dolphins in a barrel - just because it's easy, that doesn't mean it's right. It takes a lot of guts to get up there and face the crowds with nothing but your wits to protect you. And shouldn't we be encouraging these people to nurture and develop their talents into future successes?

No, we shouldn't. Someone obviously encouraged Joe Pasquale, and look where that got us. People fail at stand-up because they haven't got what it takes. I tried, I failed, I dealt with that (so yes, now I just snipe from the cyber-bushes, fair point). And in the case of at least half of the five up-and-coming (actually mediocre-and-staying-there) acts in Amused Moose Comedy's Hot Starlets (Pleasance Dome) last Friday, it's time to take them aside and have a quiet word.

Here's how it happened. The show was compared gamely by Kate Smurthwaite, who successfully whipped the crowd into a frenzy. The first act, Papa CJ from India, rides the wave of goodwill and does very well. His act is funny, but he occasionally veers towards stereotyping himself, and if he can avoid that he will be fine. Then the trouble starts.

The next one is a tall Belgian whose act consists of telling us how much cooler, sexier and better at dancing he is than all of us. That's not how to make people laugh, that's how to start a fight. It's difficult to tell whether he is "in character", pretending to be an insufferable, arrogant Belgian for "comic effect", or if he is simply a twat. Next, someone does a comedy greek accent for what is, basically, frank racism. And finally, a bearded man appears and expertly delivers a monologue into which, tragically, he forgets to insert any jokes. You will notice I do not mention their names. You don't need to know them. They know who they are. They are the ones who need to take themselves somewhere quiet, reflect on their current positions, and maybe give that temping agency a call.

It's worth mentioning that in the middle of all this, commendably turning around a crowd that was being gradually worn down from goodwill to indifference, was Wendy Wason. She came on, charmed everyone, did some well-observed material about motherhood and drinking, then left again. Apparently this was only her second gig. It seemed as if she'd been talking to audiences for years (NB I've since found out she's done quite a bit , won awards, and was even in bloody Coupling. It's her second year of stand-up. Close, then).

Still, two gems in a pool of vomit is a good find, and "new talent" shows are always a gamble. By all means see them, encourage the wheat, but have no mercy on the chaff. They will thank you for it in the long run.

Powerpoint Comedy

It's all Dave Gorman's fault. It's no longer acceptable for comics to simply tell jokes for an hour. Suddenly, they have to do shows with some sort of point to them, to tell a story or document some wacky quest or other, preferably using powerpoint. Dave Gorman did it brilliantly - his Googlewhack Adventure is the set text for powerpoint comedy, mostly because you really believe he is that obsessional, he really had to complete his quest, and didn't just do it to toss off another Edinburgh show.

And so his fellow comics follow in his wake. Some, like Dan Tetsell's Sins of the Grandfathers (Underbelly), even take the piss out of his style of show. Trouble is, Dan Tetsell then goes on to present what is, unfortunately, a less impressive copy.

Tetsell's grandfather was in the SS, though he never knew him. Through surviving photos and scanty documentary evidence (nicely presented via powerpoint), he proposes to deal with the guilt this undoubtedly engenders, and asks searching questions about the nature of evil. You feel this must have affected him - but it doesn't really come across, because of his arch and distracted delivery (although he does a nice line in self-deprecation). The big questions hang vapidly in the air, while he makes cracks about country music and sitcoms. There isn't really any structure to it either. Worst of all, you feel he really did look into it all just to get a show out of it.

In contrast, Alex Horne's When In Rome (Pleasance) takes the idea of powerpoint comedy and takes it to the next level. It's presented as a kind of a walk-through of an interactive game designed to help you learn latin. Alex Horne enthusiastically lectures while his "assistant", Tim Key, works the computer. The visuals are very impressive, and the attention to detail astonishing - everyone does an exam at the start, and everyone's results are even e-mailed to you the next day. Alex and Tim make an original pair, mining an unlikely comedic seam of hesitant, embarassed mumbling which works very well. Yes, it sags a bit in the middle, and it never pretends to be profound, but the audience are nicely involved and it always feels like it's going somewhere, that there's a structure to it all, holding the gags together.

We also caught Alex Horne as part of the Pleasance's After Hours show, and he was, again, very impressive, so it seems he can do stand-up too. I wouldn't be surprised if he's approached by TV very soon.

Incidentally, when I said the other day that EH1 had gone, I meant the bar, not the postal district. In case anyone was worried about central Edinburgh.

Tim Minchin - Darkside (Gilded Balloon Teviot)

Billy Connolly started out his illustrious comedy career as a musician, building his act up from the comedic bits he did between songs. Tim Minchin, you feel, would do well to go the other way. Not that he's not funny - he is blessed with a face and demeanour you feel compelled to laugh at before he speaks, Tommy Cooper-style, and his act begins with a perfectly executed bit of slapstick - but his songs are so good that every time he stands up from his piano to address the audience, you just wish he would sit down and give us another song. A comedic Ben Folds, his playing is dazzling, and he has a great instinct for lyrical deftness (case in point - his ode to a blow-up doll twists Cole Porter-ish wordplay to excellent effect).

His stand-up material isn't awful, just a bit ordinary. The usual subjects of debt and therapy are trotted out. His persona, endearingly borderline-psychotic, is infectious and winning. But his songs are what makes him stand out. He has already snagged an award at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and you can see him going further. Watch for him.

Tim Minchin is at the Gilded Ballon Teviot at 22.15

In other news, now I've arrived in Edinburgh I see EH1 has gone. If anyone else knows where to get a decent bacon sarnie now, please let me know.

Edinburgh Festival - David Strassman/Rhod Gilbert (both Pleasance)

A good few years ago now, David Strassman took the art of ventriloquism from the safe perch occupied by Orville the Duck and turned it into something far darker and dangerous. Rather than a luminous green duck, Strassman's primary sidekick was the psychotic Chuck Wood, a pre-pubescent with an attitude problem and a tendency to urinate on the front row of the audience. Having initially threatened to successfully cross over onto prime time television, Strassman has been off the radar in the UK for a while but a sold out Pleasance One and the reaction to the entrance of Chuck and the infinitely more benign Ted E Bare suggest he is fondly remembered in these parts.

The core of the show remains Chuck's abusive and insolent presence, countered by the deceptively sweet natured Ted, but Strassman has added some additional characters with variable success. A geriatric version of Ted works well, as does a pretend alien called Kevin who gets into people's heads and "drives" them for a hobby. There is a beaver who believes he's a lounge room comic, which is more hit and miss, and a female robot PA, which frankly dies on its arse. Strassman moves slickly between the characters and there is a nice running joke where Chuck temporarily invades the mind of whichever character is on the end of Strassman's arm and departs leaving behind a picture of Strassman engaged in an apparently deviant act. However, amiable though the show is, it never quite bursts into life. Interesting ideas on whether the characters are expressions of Strassman's personality and what that says about him, and them, go undeveloped and the material, a few cracks about George Bush and a joke about the inhabitants of Livingston stolen wholesale from Bill Hicks aside, always seems to err on the side of caution.

It is perhaps a symptom of Strassman's early success that the sight of a ventriloquist's dummy swearing no longer carries with it the same shock factor but the show has the feel of something is designed to play well in the lounges of middle America. At the end, through the use of sophisticated animatronics, Strassman is able to depart the stage leaving the characters to move and converse by themselves. While the technology is impressive, its not used for any great purpose - we marvel at the inventiveness but can't help noticing that what they are saying isn't particularly funny. Strassman is an extremely able performer, and there will be plenty of worse ways to spend an hour in Edinburgh this month, but ultimately I left with a nagging sense of disappointment.


Rhod Gilbert begins by apologising for the fact the show appears under comedy in the programme - this is only because there is no misery section. He wants to tell us about his annus horribilis, 1984, and the misfortunes that befell his family that year and dragged them down from the dizzy heights of Llanbobl Family of the Year 1983. Gilbert proceeds to spin a series of wonderfully surreal tales involving exploding grannies, paint drinking granddads, philandering milkmen and a shop mobility time machine. All of this is delivered with dead pan seriousness underpinned by the naivety of a child unable to understand what was happening around him - who could have sent his mother a Valentine's Day card offering to take her away on his float, and why did young Rhod get a milkman's outfit for his birthday that was many sizes too big? Gilbert has all the comic skills, managing to maintain the facade that he is sharing with us painful memories from his past despite admitting as early as the second minute that he is making it all up, and comfortably dealing with the revelation from one audience member that is own worst year involved the woman he loved running off with a bloke in a wheelchair, which sounded like it could be a show in itself - "so she didn't so much run away as roll away", asks Gilbert in a voice suffused with sadness. He even gets away with giving us 41 minutes notice of perhaps the best one liner you will hear all festival. Best of all though is that the material is consistently, even remorselessly, funny; the 2 minute set piece on the death of his grandmother is worth the admission price alone. On top of all this, he's Welsh. Definitely one to see.

Buy Tickets
David Strassman
Rhod Gilbert

It's Your Polar Bear That Tells Me You've Got a Polar Bear

Next week, The Distractor decamps to Edinburgh. This is partly for a stag night (mine, if you're interested) but also to sample the delights of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As you may have surmised from M'learned Colleague's impassioned defence of the Festival last week, we are fans, veterans and Friends of the world's largest arts festival. There really is no better opportunity to see an amazing variety of performances, ranging from experimental theatre to organ recitals, Norwegian Dance Troupes to amateur versions of classic plays.

But what floats our particular boats is comedy. There are plenty of established comedians who are worth seeing up there (although less so this year), but half the fun is taking a random punt on something you've never heard of. You may see tomorrow's Eddie Izzard, you may see absolute rip-your-ears-off shite.

Two examples. Last year, Boothby Graffoe, who has been on the circuit for years and has studiously managed to avoid stardom of any kind, had us blubbing with laughter. His songs are surreal masterpieces (the above title is a line from one, and no, it doesn't make much more sense in context). The man can work an audience impeccably. His sense of timing is incredible. And he's no mean guitar player either. This year, he's at The Stand, and in our eyes he's unmissable.

Two years ago, based on positive reviews, we decided to see a show called "Die" by BrandX/Gawkagogo productions. A show both about and resembling a descent into hell. Their design and props were great, but the show was terrible. Jokes so bad you actually felt their pain as they died, delivered in such a smug way they begged for violence. Two years later, and we are still finding new ways to slag it off. It still gives us entertainment, and thus was worth the pain. While it pains me to give them the oxygen of publicity (or, for that matter, any oxygen at all), BrandX/Gawkagogo are doing another show this year. I see they're re-using the props. In our eyes, they're unseeable.

There are hundreds of venues - my particular favourite is The Pleasance Courtyard, mainly because of its huge mixture of acts both seasoned and unknown, but worth going to for the atmosphere alone. The founder and propriator, the great Christopher Richardson, can often be seen in his Panama hat, hob-nobbing with the punters and performers in the bar. He retires this year, sadly. Respect etc.

There is, of course, more to Edinburgh than the Festival, and I am looking forward immensely to eating breakfast in EH1, drinking coffee in Beanscene, buying CDs at Avalanche Records and drinking in establishments too numerous to mention.

For reasons mentioned at the top of this article, postings may be hazy or scarce next week, but we will endeavour to give you a flavour of it all. Of the festival, I mean. The stag night's none of your business.

Buy Tickets for the Festival

The Back Room - The Editors (Kitchenware Records)

The indie guitar fightback of recent times has been populated mostly by bands seeking to emulate Coldplay, with varying degrees of dampness of bedsheet. A smaller but significant part has been played a group of bands who appear to have spent a number of years locked in their bedrooms listening to British bands of the post-punk and new romantic eras, emerging intent on partying like its 1984. The better examples of this style - Interpol, The Killers, The Bravery - share with their bed wetting contemporaries a taste for the big chorus and an ear for a decent tune, but lean towards simmering resentment rather than poetic angst. The end result has therefore been albums with considerably more edge than you get from, say, Athlete but with enough drive to make you want to stop staring at your shoes and get up and dance. Interestingly, given how deeply these bands draw on British music, the most successful exponents so far have hailed from the US. Now Birmingham's The Editors have attempted to seize the muse back, and made rather a good fist of it.

As with all these bands, there is fun to be had spotting where various aspects of the sound comes from. All pervading sense of Joy Division? Check. Deep love of the Smiths? Check. Basic familiarity with the Cure, the Teardrop Explodes and Echo and the Bunnymen? Check. A never to be admitted to fondness for their sisters' Duran Duran albums? Check. This is not to accuse the Editors of being unoriginal; the influences are worn lightly enough to prevent this being the work of some New Order tribute band, and anyway at the end of the day you just can't argue with the tunes. From the moment Lights burst into life you are irresistibly drawn along, with any pang of nostalgia for the music of your (or at least my) youth merely an added bonus. The highlights? The aforementioned Lights, and Blood get things off to a raucous start. Someone Says is basically a Joy Division song, but a bloody good one. And the opening 8 bars of Bullets will make you want to put you hands in the air and shout "yes, yes, oh God yes" in a way that Jamie Cullum never will.

In short, a great album which stands comparison both with the best of its type such as Interpol's debut album and the Killers' Hot Fuss, and also with pretty much any other album released so far this year. In many ways, it's the album the Bravery should have made if they hadn't apparently decided that Honest Mistake was such a good tune that they needn't bother coming up with any more. With similar British bands like Apartment up-and-coming, both the Yanks and the bed wetters should look out.

Blunt Weapons

An irregular column asking: Music - look at the bloody state of it.

So for several weeks now the charts have been dominated by not the latest manufactured teen-pop sensation, but by an unassuming singer-songwriter called James Blunt. You'd have thought this would be a good thing. You'd be wrong, and I'll tell you why.

I don't tend to listen to commercial drive-time radio (I prefer hitting myself repeatedly with a bag of marbles), so I did't get to hear "You're Beautiful" until it had established itself at the top of the charts. And once I had, I could't for the life of me work out what the fuss was about. Neither, initially, could my girlfriend. Until we saw him on CD:Uk. Now, having been number one for three weeks, our James was doing the PR rounds, and the poor chap looked as though he too couldn't work out why he was there. He seemed affable, nicely spoken, very normal, and utterly out of his depth. I have to say, I warmed to him. My girlfriend wanted to buy his record.

Suddenly things became clearer. Now, this woman is very soon to be my wife, so I'm required to respect her opinions (and most of the time, I do). And, to be fair, she had also based her decision on the fact that the album comes with a sticker marked "adult material". But our reactions were quite different. I talked to a few friends, and similar stories emerged. Girls love James Blunt. And that's exactly what his marketing department, god love them, were after. Look at him - sensitive, posh, all heartbroken (the song seems to be about loving someone he can never have, as far as it makes any sense at all), even gets his kit off in the video. He should have called his album "Bet You Wish Your Bloke Was More Like Me" and be done with it.

Each to their own. I mean, I find him insultingly bland, but thousands clearly don't. And that isn't what makes his success a bad thing. These things are: Firstly, he's opened the door for other, rubbish, Heart-FM-groomed saps like that tosser in the stupid hat who sings "Bad Day". And we need him and his ilk like we need another Toploader. Secondly, "You're Beautiful" is now so successful, has got so far out of his control, that it can't be anything but a millstone around the poor chap's neck. And he'll now spend the rest of his career trying to live up to it. Crowds at his concerts will shout for it, and no matter how much he wants them to hear his challenging new material, the baying hoardes won't be happy till they hear "the hit". It happened to David Gray - a decent songwriter hamstrung by one successful song.

So girls, feel free to feel sorry for James. He actually deserves it.