Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Rob Deering’s top ten tunes

AWARD-WINNING comedian and multi-instrumentalist Rob Deering brings two Fringe offerings to Edinburgh for 2012 – Beat This, a live music-based game show in which the audience take on four top comedians, and The One, described as the Best Rob Deering Album In The World... Ever. But what tracks would make his own personal Top 10?

1: Also Sprach Zarathustra – Eumir Deodato

My first solo Festival show started with this classic jazz-funk version of the Strauss piece from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

2: Boys Don’t Cry – The Cure

In my mid-teens I had The Cure instead of a girlfriend. The first time I did a gig with a proper band we closed with this. The crowd went wild and invaded the stage, and I very nearly got a girlfriend.

3: Baba O’Riley – The Who

I used to think The Who’s ‘best live band in the 
world’ tag was just hype, but if you look at them in their pomp on YouTube, they’re a frickin’ force of nature.

4: Space Shanty – Leftfield

The amount of time I spend running while listening to beepy-bleepy music from my youth is preposterous; I’m like a mid-life crisis on legs.

5: Race for the Prize – Flaming Lips

Saw them and it changed my life. If it was practical – and original – to start my show by crawling over the audience in a man-sized hamster ball, I would.

6: Back in Black – AC/DC

Quintessential rock riff. Stand-up got me into RAWK. I was a winsome, Morrissey-ish youth.

7: Ramblin’ Man – Lemon Jelly

This marvellous song, with its litany of places both exotic and lame, has extra resonance for anyone who, like me, has been on tour since pretty much the beginning of time.

8: My Doorbell – The White Stripes

I used to drum in bands, and the beat on this song makes brain cells fall out of my ears.

9: Wonderful Tonight – Eric Clapton

... is balls, obviously, but it’s the pinnacle of all the romantic classics I destroy in my set. People really have come up afterwards and told me I retrospectively ruined their wedding.

10: The American Trilogy

Elvis’ American trilogy is an incredible song – collection of songs, in fact; I’d give anything to have heard it live in Vegas back in the day. I would probably have screamed like the girl in the audience screams on the record, unable to contain herself as the crescendo builds. Fabulous. Ridiculous. Enormous.

• Rob Deering: Beat This, Pleasance Courtyard, every Friday and Saturday until August 25, 11pm, £10, www.edfringe.com; Rob Deering: The One, Pleasance Courtyard, until August 27, 8.15pm, £11-£12, www.edfringe.com