Kate Copstick: “If you can’t control your bladder see a doctor, not a show”

I GO to see the excellent Thinking Drinker’s Guide To Alcohol and, as I leave, their charming PR Sally Homer sidles up and presses a bottle of absinthe on me.

“It’s not a bribe,” she whispers. I know that. So I thrust it in my bag. To make room I remove a little jacket and carry it in my hand. As I am cutting it fine for my next show in Niddry Street I hail a cab, not realising that, thanks to the trams, the route from George Street to Niddry St now goes via South Queensferry. By the time I get to Niddry Street I am late and minus £11. And I leave my jacket in the cab. After the show I am heading to Bristo Square and the clouds have burst. As I wade up the hill, I reach in to pull my freebie Foster’s Comedy Awards umbrella from my bag. But the bottle of absinthe has lodged inside the brolly and, as I pull, the whole thing falls apart. I squelch up North Bridge and when I cannot stand the wet any longer I stop to buy another umbrella. It looks black and sensible. Until I put it up when I see it is covered in badly drawn Betty Boop figures in garish colours. I give the bottle away. The weather clears up.

TALKING of Niddry Street, frilly-fronted Bob Slayer at The Hive has created the Fringeometer online (www.fringeometer.com). Nominate things or people as being “very Fringe” or “not Fringe”. He urges me to complain. Me? Complain? Surely some mistake. But I am struck by another example of the kind of moneygrabbing that is damaging the Fringe when I bump into Charlie Wood, Romulus to Ed Bartlam’s Remus in the Underbelly Empire. Charlie is watching the pennies as Mrs Wood is growing a new branch for the Wood family tree and the only thing more expensive than being a new parent is being an alcoholic in an Edinburgh University bar. We meet outside the Hotel du Vin where he is staying for a week because it is cheaper than renting a flat. Just saying, Edinburgh.

MY TOP nomination for very Fringe would go to Stuart Gordon, here with Re-Animator The Musical which he co-wrote and directed based on his cult smash hit movie. Gordon is a successful Hollywood director. And renowned theatre director. And, currently, operating the lighting desk for the show each night. THAT is Fringe Spirit, people.

I was also impressed to meet Bound And Gagged Comedy’s Nigel Klarfeld – the thinking man’s Addison Cresswell – doing some flyering outside the Pleasance. This, in comedy world terms, is like discovering Philip Green sewing T-shirts. FYI, he particularly recommends Chris McCausland, the Sean Hughes (right) early show and Nick Helm who, he says, now has got his show together.

NOT all shows worth seeing are in the brochure. I am wandering along Rose Street towards new comedy venue The Shack when I hear music. Oasis, to be precise. Don’t Look Back In Anger. Looking closer I realise the performer hasn’t got that much to look back on at all. He is 11. Billy Watman, up here from “near Oxford” comes each year and his regular pitch is under the rose at the back of Jenners. Worth a listen.

ON THE door of Chris Stokes’ show is a sign stating there is a “no readmission” policy. You leave, you don’t get back in. Why don’t all shows have this? I genuinely don’t know how performers keep their tempers as punters stomp up and down and in and out during shows. If you just want people to look at you, get your own bloody show, if getting another drink is so important why not just stay at the bar, and if you cannot control your bladder for 50 minutes see a doctor, not a show.