Exhausted Footballers Headed Where Youth and Laughter Go,

The opening day of the Embra Fringe Festival is usually very special and the 2-for-1 offers on most shows just make it better. The Pleasance Courtyard is a fine place to be of an August evening.

I gazed at our tickets to find out the exact venue where we would see Colin & Fergus. I noticed I had purchased tickets numbered 1 to 4. We saw Colin & Fergus last year and they were good fun. I expected much more from them this year after hearing the first episode of Colin & Fergus’s Digi Radio on BBC7. They were playing in a venue called Pleasance Beside – a portakabin beside the courtyard buildings. As we entered, a strange man was sitting in the corner singing the words to ABBA and Elton John songs over the records in a Phoenix Nights karaoke-stylee. This year, Colin & Fergus have streamed their sketches into an hour-long plot: the case of ace detective Rutherford Lodge versus the Three Men in a Tub. Everything they did was a hit, it’s meticulously planned and much of it is ridiculous but that’s where their comedy lies, it doesn’t rely upon the shock value that Little Britain strives for, but on much more fun surprises and on a range of characters that aren’t just there to provide a catchphrase. Colin & Fergus’s show is enormously physical and the expressions on their faces add to the excellent plot, otherwise, they would never get away with something as lame as Scissors, Paper, Stone interspersed with a murder investigation. Along with Dave McNeill, who joined their show this year, Colin & Fergus were sublime and I can’t wait to hear them on the radio or see them again.

We decided to wander up to the Royal Mile and try to admire the street acts. There was an inexplicably huge crowd around Silver. I can’t believe that there’s really a niche in the market for people who coat themselves in metallic paint and move as a robot might. Further up the street, an Asian girl plucked pathetically at what appeared to be a home-made instrument. At the very end of the road cordoned off for official street acts, a man cracked whips. On our way back down, another performer leafleting and plugging their show decided to become rude when we informed her that we had a full schedule for the evening.

After refreshments, we returned to the Pleasance, to see Russell Howard in the Pleasance Upstairs venue. Russell has formed a show, Wandering, to teach us to appreciate the unusual and joyous moments or events that, however incidental, occur everyday, from a women dancing to her iPod or a man putting a botherer in their place. Russell recounted many of his encounters with people, it was a brilliant show. He reminded me of how Ross Noble used to be: quick-witted, energetic, original, super-observant, and erratic. Russell didn’t try to victimise any of the audience, which I regard as an important feature, although I remained worried that he would, but he let people contribute if they wanted to, as always there was one who perhaps tried to become too involved. I’m not sure how to feel, I will either try to appreciate these small moments more when they occur (I might even write about them here) or I’ll be disappointed when I don’t come across these moments (in which case, I won’t write about them – but there’s the guy on the checkouts at the shop where I buy juice and he’s always really friendly to every customer, he never scans all of their groceries, he deliberately does favours for all these strangers, I wonder if he’s some sort of Marxist).

We left the Pleasance Upstairs to Ryan Adams’ So Alive, one of my favourites to get some quick refreshments before the beginning of Mark Watson’s new show, I’m Worried That I’m Starting to Hate Almost Everyone in the World in the Pleasance Upstairs 10 minutes later. I really liked this show, one of 3 Mark's doing at the Fringe this year, he's writing a book with his audience in another and also performing a 36-hour long epic. Mark Watson was really warm and friendly, his audience felt at ease with him, maybe because they pitied him or because he was a touch self-deprecating. The show was based on the story of how Mark Watson was mugged and how he started to doubt the goodness of people. He was aided in his act by a furry sack, containing items which represented each of the seven sins; after audience members drew the items from the sack, he’d talk about the sins. He started the show by holding a vote for having the noisy air conditioning on or off and talking about how there’s always a “lull” in Fringe shows about 40 minutes where the audience just wants the show to finish, he asked an audience member to shout out after 40 minutes had gone. During this “lull”, Mark said he’d stop telling jokes and let us all relax; of course, during the “lull”, he kept chatting to us and remarked ‘you may have noticed that the lull was much like the rest of the show’. I’d definitely recommend Mark Watson to other Fringe-goers, he’s very entertaining and not at all like a wading bird, and I think this was my favourite show of the night.

We saw three really good shows, all for about £12. I have a real gift for not buying into rubbish so I'll have to buy some more tickets to see more stuff.