The last time I experienced the sensory overload that is Edinburgh Fringe was in 2017 and while a lot has changed since then, the arrival in the city is still heralded by an avalanche of flyers for shows. Without fail, these shows are always on in five minutes and are always guaranteed to be absolutely hilarious. It was reassuring to see the Fringe in full flow and to realise that the chaos remains intact. 

I battled my way to The Edinburgh Larder first for food and had a delicious Scottish breakfast, swerving the haggis and black pudding, much to the disappointment of the friendly chap serving. At that moment, I felt very much like an English tourist, but the ingredients. Oh my god, the ingredients. After food, I headed to Calton Hill, which I’d never been to before, despite visiting Edinburgh at least six times. From the hill, there are views of the city from every direction, including the quite awful poo emoji building, walnut whip or whatever it is. Happily, the poo is not visible from all angles and there’s enough beauty in Edinburgh to spare. Just visible in the distance are the bridges across the firth of forth, Arthur’s seat and the Old Town. Put all of this together, and Edinburgh surely has the most enviable views of any city in the UK. The weather was not exactly glorious but it was a real change from what the forecasts had been predicting. Within minutes, fluffy clouds turned what the Scottish might call a braw day into a dreich one. I fled the hill, taking shelter in The Advocate pub and almost immediately, the sun returned. Welcome to Edinburgh!

I had missed the fringe a great deal in my time away and had spent quite some time in advance booking shows and trying to work out what would be unmissable – harder said than done when I arrived just a few days after the festival started. The idea of turning up with nothing booked and over 3000 shows to choose from is too scary for words. Our first show was Reuben Solo, but as we had some time to kill, we thought we would see JD Shapiro with a show called If it ain’t woke, don’t fix it. With an edgy title like this, it was sure to be an incredible hour. The staff at the venue informed us that he’d simply not bothered to turn up for his shows. Maybe his non-arrival was an elaborate show in itself and I was inadvertently part of an art project? Reuben Solo did show up and this was a fun hour of a loud and often chaotic Aussie performing a show that had little in the way of flow. His easy rapport with the audience and his stunning abilities with a graph papered over any cracks for a strong start to the festival.

Our second show was Tamsyn Kelly – Crying at TK Maxx. The show was more on the personal side and Tamsyn is a good storyteller and has a good ability to form stories into a cohesive set, but the delivery lacked confidence to make the material shine. Tamsyn laughed a lot at her own material, which always confuses me; after months of writing and performing, it probably wouldn’t be that funny. But she’s a likeable presence and early in her career. She has daddy issues, which gives her something in common with Simon Amstell who was at the fringe to work on new content. For £18! His lines, even ones not fully formed, are so sharp and polished, you realise just how good he is at comedy. He would tell us that he’s a star, can sleep with whoever he likes and is very important, but he’d then remember that he needs us more than we need him. He needs the validation from an adoring audience, while he’s on a journey of healing and growing. His transition from bubbly but acerbic host on Channel 4 to a man on stage telling us he loves ‘bobbing up and down on a dick’ has been a remarkable one. While his current themes, of family, sex and drugs are familiar, his delivery is so controlled and charming that he remains intensely watchable. 

On our second morning we were offered free tickets to ‘a show about pirates’ that was starting soon so we went along. The venue was a minimal affair inside a hotel conference room with a box that said Sand! on it, thus flawlessly transporting us to a desert island. Two pirates come on stage and perform something akin to a poem with occasional funny moments. The writing and performances were good but the story shied away from the theme that pirates are pretty gay – this could have been developed further but what was there was charming. Most remarkable was the American accents at the end; I totally bought the Scottish accent from one performer and the other accent, a sort of strangled cockney, was nothing if not intriguing. 

In the afternoon, we watched Christopher Bliss, a novelist who is so busy writing books that he has no time to read other people’s novels. He’s a fan of the 3-page novel of the sort that gives the twist away in the title, such as ‘Karen turns out to be the ghost’ and through the show he reads us his novels, and gives remarkable advice to budding authors. It’s all silly fun that never takes itself seriously. 

Straight after Christopher Bliss was Tom Ballard, who I saw a few years back. He also doesn’t take himself seriously, opening with stories of him having sex with a male witch. Ballard takes great joy in being open and explicit and I suspect he might not be familiar with having a filter, which I am grateful for. Ballard muses on the Queen’s death, where it could be said he wasn’t a fan but he also takes aim at Rupert Murdoch and other billionaires, to great effect. He’s very loud and even when he asked if he was too loud, the audience all agreed he wasn’t too loud because Ballard is a force of nature. There’s also an angry edge to his work and his material on why capitalism is a disaster is both funny and thought provoking. A raucous standout at the fringe. 

The absolute standout of the fringe though, was Patti Harrison. Her show is called My Huge Tits Huge Because They Are Infected Not Fake! and I am sure I booked tickets for this show based on the title and ridiculous poster alone. I am glad I did because this is a strange beast of a show. Patti comes on with her phone by her side, advising us that the show is a work in progress and that we aren’t to look at her huge tits as there is a perfectly good reason for them being huge. She leads us down different ideas and ramblings, promising that the show will begin at some point. Throughout the show, she continues to say she will begin soon, while being in the middle of a story about her experiences with a therapist before wildly veering off to an aside about how she hates the British accent, or her love affair with a Hollywood star. It’s such a tightly controlled show that you are never able to work out where Patti will go next. She breaks into songs at a few points and unusually for a comedy show, they are funny and stick in your head. This is comedy of the highest order and I loved the experience of laughing uncontrollably at various points while the audience member next to me remained stony faced. The end of the show brings together what themes Patti has touched upon in a crescendo of chaos and screaming. As often happens to me when I enjoy a show, I have now become obsessed with Patti and will be telling everyone that will listen – and those that won’t – that this is a show that needs to be seen.