Fringe benefits

Currently in Edinburgh.

The first time I came here for the Festival – or, more accurately, the Fringe – was in 1977.

I was a student at Aberdeen but went with a schoolfriend from St Andrews. We stayed for a week in a dark, damp basement flat off South Clerk Street that was owned by the father of another schoolfriend (who I met for coffee this morning).

I remember very little about it apart from the fact that we quickly got bored of going from one Fringe event to another and found the Film Festival far more interesting and better value for money.

The Film Festival also introduced me to a strange new world far removed from Hollywood (or Aberdeen) - hookers and long distance lorry drivers in rural America.

A few years later a friend co-wrote a revue with a handful of other students from Aberdeen and I dutifully trotted along to support their efforts.

It was clear they were having a great time; the audience less so. The location was good but far better productions were condemned to be performed in front of a dozen people in tiny halls far from the city centre.

And that, in a nutshell, is the strength and weakness of the Fringe. Anyone can book a venue and put on a show. Location has little to do with talent.

Another strength and weakness is the size of the Fringe, which has got bigger and bigger with every passing year. There's plenty to choose from but unexpected treats are few and far between.

Anxious to avoid a dud production, audiences play safe. Thirty-five years ago Cambridge Footlights was a pale shadow of its Sixties heyday but it was a 'safe' choice so that's what everyone went to.

Today audiences demonstrate their conservatism by booking tickets for Paul Merton and other household names. Far better shows are ignored or reviewed only when it's too late.

Curiously, when I lived in Edinburgh in the Nineties the Festival was little more than background noise. If anything it was a nuisance, bringing hordes of people to the city and making it impossible to enjoy a quiet drink or coffee in my local pub or cafe.

In short, it's been a long time since I went to the Festival/Fringe and the only reason I'm here this year is because my godson is performing and his parents booked a luxurious flat in a quiet square in the city centre so they could see his shows.

Thankfully Thomas and his fellow performers are staying elsewhere so the traditional Fringe routine - very late nights and general squalor – don't apply to us. (I'm middle-aged, for goodness sake!)

Anyway the highlight of my visit so far has been bumping into actor, writer, director and producer Guy Masterson.

I first met Guy in 1992 when I interviewed him for a magazine I was editing. Great nephew of Richard Burton, he was performing The Boy's Own Story in which he played a goalkeeper.

Two years later Guy directed a small show I produced at the BBC Concert Hall in London.

We worked together a couple of times after that. One event was a dinner at the House of Commons where Guy recited excerpts from Under Milk Wood.

An adaptation of Dylan Thomas's most famous poem, Under Milk Wood (the show) is one of many solo productions Guy has taken around the world but the Fringe is his natural and most successful habitat.

He's been coming here for over two decades, winning numerous awards. In 2005 he directed one of Edinburgh's most successful shows, 'The Odd Couple', starring Bill Bailey and Alan Davies.

Anyway, as a result of our chance meeting in the street, we went to his latest show, Dylan Thomas: The Man, The Myth, which was written by and features the poet's granddaughter Hannah Ellis. (I'd recommend it but it was the final performance.)

You can have a little too much culture of course and so on Friday we drove down the coast to Gullane and had afternoon tea at Greywalls, one of our favourite hotels.

Here I am with my old friend Gary Ling. Afternoon tea doesn't come much better than this.