Edinburgh Comedy Festival

The Winner of long-running Fringe comedy newcomer's award So You Think You're Funny? 2009 is 18 year old, Eton-educated Ivo Graham.

Phil Kay has set a precedent at the Edinburgh Fringe by becoming the first performer to acquire six stars for a show. Perhaps "acquire" is wrong - perhaps "appropriate", "purloin" or "commandeer" might be the correct term for he's achieved this remarkable feat by photocopying an extra star and adding it to the end of a line of stars on his posters.

Roger McGough stepped on to the stark stage that was bathed in a warm purple light where he stood at the green lectern looking cool in his mohair suit over a fancy dan shirt, with multi toned orange shoes and of course his signature whacky glasses.

I was sitting in a late night bar, as one does on the Fringe, supping a few cold ones down with a fellow critic when Anil Desai arrived at our table.

By "arrive" I mean he lurched suddenly into view of my peripheral vision as an initially out of focus humanoid blur and then suddenly in focus a few inches from my face.

Tom Wrigglesworth's name really suits him as at first glance he looks rather bemusing and eccentric. It sounds like a made up pseudonym or an alias, perhaps for a Merchant Ivory spoof or as a Duke in an old Hugh Hudson movie. ‘Wrigglesworth to see his Highness', ‘Pass the port, Wrigglesworth, there's a good chap', ‘Dammit Tiffy where the bloody hell is Wrigglesworth?' Etc., you get the idea.

Having been nominated for the IF Best Newcomer Award 2008, the Amused Moose LaughOff winner 2008, and nominated for the Chortle Best Newcomer Award 2009, I was very much  looking forward to Mike W

It must be a pain doing a show late in the afternoon. I’m not sure if I would take it as an insult that you are not good enough to do one in the prime time evening slots. This isn’t the case for Dan March’s Goldrunner.

The Sunday Defensive (Phil Gilbert & Jacob Edwards) boys are two of the friendliest people I have met. Dressed casually, but also like they have stepped out of a Top Man advert - a far cry from their fifties-esque show poster. We took up stools in Brooks Bar to discuss the poster, past jobs and the worst thing they have ever done...

Stephen K. Amos has always seemed like such a cool dude. His effortless comic styling’s make a lot of people laugh and rightly so. Taking a different step this year, his show is simply titled: Find the Funny. Wherever it may be and in such hard times in the UK, there really isn’t anything else to do, right? After a couple of venue changes, I caught up with him to discuss the show, Facebook and what his fans would like to know...

I was rather unsure of what to expect from Lady Garden. The title of the group has quite a rude connotation, doesn't it? That wasn't the reason why though. When I looked into them to find they were a six-piece female sketch group, I became a lot more intrigued.

After last year's hit sell-out Sammy J in the Forest of Dreams, there are high expectations that puppeteer Heath McIvor succeeds in delivering with this darkly comic portrayal of Ribena-toned Randy.

In the run up to the Fringe I get an average of thirty requests per day for a review in August.

It must be a pain doing a show at 11pm. Surely, once you were done, you would just go out til 5am, sleep all day and do it again?

I suppose you would have to have an endless supply of money, but if you did, you totally would, right?

Having reviewed and interviewed the Idiots of Ants boys at last year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I was rather wary to go along this year. Not because I thought it was going to be rubbish – I just didn’t want to not enjoy it as much. After many debates with the seven voices in my head, I ran into Ben from the show and he insisted I go.

I really enjoy going to see stand up shows at the Fringe. I especially enjoy when I don't know the people at all, but everyone else seems to. I'm not being sarcastic, it merely gives me a small sigh of relief as the room gets busier and busier.

In a Soho night club, in the early Eighties, a small but ruthless team of orange cretins hatch a rather lazy plot to destroy a nightclub and protect their inter-dimensional interests by doing so. This, to anyone familiar with Grandees, is not twaddle, piffle, or tosh but entirely par for the series' course.

Machismo. Men all over the world strut around with it, so why can't women have it too? This is Lyons' main argument in her seventh appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe. After seven years, you would think that the wealth of humour and laughs from an audience would have dried up. Well, with Lyons, that would be the worst assumption you could make.

They come along rarely, like diamonds in coal dust, glittering in all that darkness that is the Edinburgh Fringe: a perfectly formed comedic character with all the edges polished and rounded, the intonations and inflexions practised until they are flawless and have the impact and presence of a high yield, nuclear detonation.

It has always been a mystery to me, who decides what shows play in which venues at the Edinburgh Fringe. Obviously, the larger acts are pretty much guaranteed a big venue, but for the smaller acts, who says where they go? I'm sure the answer won't be as enlightening as I care to think though.

Having heard the name and recognising the face of Rhod Gilbert, I was interested to see what he would be like live.