Ok, straight off of the bat, I love Scotland. The weather is rubbish (a couple of inches of rain everyday since we've been here), but it doesn't matter. It's historic and scenic and the people are very friendly, and then there's the whiskey......

It's been a couple of days since I posted, but that's because we have been in Fringe overdrive. Yesterday was 2 for 1 tickets to everything so we just went nuts and saw 6 shows. We saw another 2 today, so here is a blow by blow report.

The first show we saw was called Cabbages, by 3 kids calling themselves Eleventhirtyone. It was, in the local lingo, shite. I mean really fricken bad. It was supposed to be sketch comedy, but it was about as funny as a fart in an elevator. The only amusement I got was trying to think up adjectives to describe how deplorable it was. Just think of the worst Scouts Shouts young director trash you have seen, and then times that by 10 and you get some idea.

Next cab off of the rank was a show by Andy Train , called just push the button. Andy is a male nurse, and he spends 45 minutes sharing funny anecdotes about the medical profession. He was amusing, but we had heard a lot of his material before from our nurse friends (you know who you are...)

Stop 3 on our arts overload day was a show called The sitcom trails, by a group of the same name. The premise was that the cast acted out half of 3 sitcoms, and then you voted on which one you see the end of. These guys have a television show which is supposed to be comedy gold, but the stage version was just OK in my book. It had it's moments, but glad we only paid half price.

From here things began to improve, probably because we stopped the 3 shows above were afternoon shows, and the following shows were in the evening. Anyway, number 4 was a gig by a wiley Irish comedian Paddy Burns called the 7 rules of happiness. Paddy also works as a motivational speaker, and his show was bloody funny.

Following Paddy, we went to see a show by a group of New Yorkers called Neutrino. It was an instant movie, in that 3 crews ran around outside shooting a film with camcorders while two guys cut it together with music live on stage, as they ran into the theatre with tape after tape. Very, very cool, and they used Karen's bead necklace as a prop.

Finally yesterday, we went and saw some old school stand up comedy by Janey Godley. Janey is a Glaswegian who had a hard childhood and married into the Glasgow mob. She was a total face ache I'm here to tell you. She also has a blog (see here website), which is also bloody hilarious as you can read for yourself, after you have finished here of course.

We rounded out last night with a few soothing bundies at the bar here at the hostel. It's a pretty wild bar, and reminds me a lot of Rover Moots I have been to, for obvious reasons. People from all around the world being drunk and silly.

Today, well, we did shit loads as well, but you know what? I'm tired and we are getting up early to go to St Andrews tomorrow, so you are going to have to wait until tommorrow to hear about it.