THE FULFORD AND TANG HALL
CURMUDGEON
EDINBURGH FRINGE PULL-OUT INSERT

Blagging Our Way Through Foreign Climes.
VOLUME I ISSUE 4 (and a bit)- August 1997

The rest of you, the super-cool and ultra-smug "oo, oo, I've read Tristram Shandy, I'm dead smart, me" sub-Oscar Wilde wannabes, wipe that I've-heard-of-the-Assembly-Rooms grin off your face. You know nothing about the Fringe. Nothing, do you hear?

See, it's just like films and music. We understand them, you don't. You sit back, we explain it to you, and you remain grateful. You are just a sponge: accept your place in the universe.

So that's why we headed North and camped out in the land of nineteenth-century fingers and deep-frying in batter, risking life, limb, arterial fat content and sleep patterns to bring you a tiny and totally unrepresentative slice of the Fringe. Don't worry, it's no less informative or accurate than anyone else's review section. Over a thousand shows going on, and by day 14 of the Fringe, the Guardian staff were so idle that they were down to one show reviewed per day. We managed 13 shows in 54 hours. Who do you trust now?

We missed Shortland Street to do this for you. We better get some thanks.

The Lee and Herring Section

• Remarkably enough, someone famous finally took us seriously enough to actually talk to us. Even better, it was someone we like loads. So we present to you the 'Mudge's first real interview with Lee and Herring. Proper stars! They've done TV and everything. Personally, I'm amazed the interview didn't turn into gushing nonsense, but, you know, they managed to control themselves.
• King Dong Vs Moby Dick, which, as the title promises, does have dick jokes. But, like Stewart Lee himself, there's so much more to it. I've met him. It's not like he's my best mate or anything, but we have met.
• Cluub Zarathustra is another show that Stewart Lee is in this year. We talked about that when we met, you know.
• Excavating Rita, the new play by Richard Herring. Yes, you heard me, Richard Herring, wannabe playwright. Not, of course, that you'd think it to look at him, but it becomes obvious if you ever meet him. Which I have. Did I mention that?
• This Morning With Richard Not Judy II. Their new show together. It was just after I saw this show that I met them. Both of them. Did I mention that? That it was both of them? Oh, I did. Right.

AS FOR THE REST...

There's a handful of experiences that you have to undergo to really say that you've experienced that Fringe.

Comedy. Contrary to what the Fringe press office tries to claim, this is still what the Fringe is actually about. This is why the three most powerful venues (Assembly Rooms, Gilded Balloon and Pleasance) are 99.9999 per cent comedy venues. So, Lee and Herring notwithstanding, we thought we'd wrestle a few laughs to the ground

• Simon Lipson is a professional comedian. He should therefore be good. However, it was a free show, which normally means man on the slide, but actually it was pretty good fun.
• Improverts. Student comedy. Normally enough to scare you off, that phrase, but remember, some real people were students too.

Then, you should go see something really famous. Just so that when you go home afterwards, you have a half-way interesting anecdote to pep up your three-hour long tales of Andalusian nose- flute buskers on the Royal Mile.

• The New Jim Rose Circus Sideshow offers transvestite mexican wrestling and a man who bangs spoons into his head. How could we not go?

Of course, one of the strengths of the Fringe is that it presents a wide variety of acts in a strange assortment of venues. This year, we decided to attend a puppet show in an art deco garden shed. Beat that, sonny.

• Tiny Mo's Big Time Cabaret may well be the best show ever at any Fringe, anywhere. End of story

The Fringe, after running for so long, has developed a handful of institutions. You have to go see at least one of these, just so you won't sound like a fool over breakfast at the hotel and to prevent people from laughing at you in the street.

• Pick Of The Fringe. Would you trust a bloke in a pink suit and blue shoes to tell you what to go and see? You trust us, so you obviously need all the help you can get.

Of course, if you're at the Fringe, you've got to make at least a passing pretence at artistic credibility. So you've got to attend a play, some dance thing, or performance art, or whatever you call it these days in Time Out (it's all just moving slowly to me) and a bit of poetry

• The Blues Brother. As a massive John Belushi fan, I was hugely afraid that Steve Steen's one-man life of the genius was going to be another Wired. However, this one makes the great advance over Woodward's work of malevolence by actually being good.
• Derevo - If you're going to review some dance, go for the most obscure dance you can: Formal Russian anti-clown agit- prop. No, wait, come back, it's actually really good.
• Hovis Presley - bit of a cheat, because he's a comedic poet, so we could at least expect a few laughs. But he is miles better than most poets because
  a: He's massively talented
  b: He doesn't dress like a fop
  c: He's from Bolton
  d: He does his show in a pub

and to finish off the entire affair

• Our brief guide to a handful of other acts that we caught briefly at the Fringe this year, that we thought were quite good. Mind you, they might not be able to hold a full hour together.
• And, just to polish it all off, a few recommendations for acts that we've seen in previous years, that have dragged the old routines up for a new audience. Mind you, it's been ages since we've seen them, so they might be piss-poor by now.

GREAT THANKS TO: The Pleasance Press Office Staff - particularly Rebecca, Sara and Kate, without whom this entire business would have been shabbier and more-ill-constructed than it already is. Thankyou.

Any comments? Any suggestions? Anybody actually reading this gibberish? If so, then please write to the editors at whit@pheasnt.demon.co.uk . Then we can at least pretend we have some friends.