Life's just a capital cabaret, old chum

ACTOR Alan Cumming yesterday told of his excitement at making a return to the world of Fringe cabaret — 26 years after his first appearance at the festival.

The award-winning star of film and Broadway vealed he has to wait for a year to bring his late-night musical show to Edinburgh and had flown over for just three performances in a week-long gap in filming on his hit TV series The Good Wife.

He told an audience at the Assembly venue in Princes Street Gardens he was nervous when the show, I Bought a Blue Car Today, was first staged in New York. But Cumming, who made his name at the Fringe as one half of eccentric duo Victor and Barry, said: "I love it with the show that you get to connect properly with an audience. You miss that when you are making films.

"I am being myself and not acting at all. It's a great feeling when the audience knows it is you that is up there."