John Gibson: All paying the price for cliches

By JOHN GIBSON
Published on 13/08/2012 12:00

You ain’t sen nuthin’ yet. Allow me to digress. I had an editor (battalions of them, I’ve lost count) who famously castigated me for using cliches, to avoid them like the plague, he warned. I’d got his dander up.

Max is no longer with us and fearlessly I’m advising readers – wretched residents and visitors alike – that they’ve seen nuthin’ until they’ve frequented quagmired, pillaged, bulldozed over-populated Edinburgh for the next three weeks.

Our transport heid-bummer dragging us into the morass all the while.

Will Lesley Hinds manage to live with the bill, costing even more than she had the nerve to risk? Edinburgh, known in some tourist brochures as the Ashtray of the North, is going to cost even more than what’s surely giving her nightmarish nights weeks on end.

Bar’s buzzing

It’s going to be buzzing, Fingers Piano Bar in Frederick Street from here on till August 31. It’s been May Paton’s place these past seven years and again she’s been ferreting for some of the liveliest acts on the Fringe.

She has asked veteran Peter Buckley Hill to organise free shows there spanning cabaret, theatre, comedy and music every day from 2pm to 10pm.

Thereafter until five in the morning involving John Hides and Bleeker. The proven policy at Fingers when the Fringe is firing is one of we-never-close. And, yes, it’s free.

May, by the way, is a Glaswegian. “My roots are in Glasgow and I regularly motor through to se my mum. But I’ve lived most of my working life in Edinburgh. Fingers regulars keep telling me I’ve lot my accent.”