Edinburgh Confidential

How many trees does it take to supply the Edinburgh Festival with flyers? There is no punchline to that one, I'm merely asking a question. Every year I attend the festival, I'm amazed at the thrusting and cajoling of the kerb-side publicity distributors, and how many glossy A5 sheets change hands. Most of these flyers would be best employed as greaseproof toilet paper, and where they get their quotes is anyone's guess. "Amazing" it says across the top of one, citing some cultural source. What it fails to tell you is that the full quote was "an amazing lack of anything remotely interesting or amusing".

That said, amongst all the chaff there is still an abundance of wheat. You just have to find it. They say there aren't as many big names at the Festival this year. Whether or not that's true, there's still plenty to be going on with. The usual suspects are here, doing shows, sitting in their usual seats in the Pleasance Courtyard, debauching the young impressionables, but it's the new talent I'm more interested in. And it does turn up in the most unlikely places.

Wednesday night's cabaret at the Bongo club provided this week's Festival find. I'm not much into puppetry (our production team's insistence I participate in the infamous Puppetry Of The Penis show has fallen on deaf ears), but the St Petersburg Theatre Company's Comic Trust show Naphthalene takes an old idea and reinvents it with hilarious effect. I'm not a laugh-out-loud kind of guy, but I was reaching for my incontinence pants. Check it out at venue 8.

So that's week one over. I'm now culturally acclimatised, my bladder has thankfully regressed to its teenage capacity and I've found my investigative journalist's hat, so next Sunday expect an expose on the Festival's seedy underbelly. The Capital's comedic cartels - the Laffia? - better watch out.

The Point At The Festival is on STV, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11.30pm

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