I'm not going to the Edinburgh Festival...

...and here is a quick summary of exactly why.

I have been to the Festival many times as part of a theatre company, but never been tempted by it as a comic, as it has always seemed to me that the last thing the Edinburgh Festival needs is another f*cking comedian.

The place is crammed way beyond saturation point with us already, all of us, except the very good and the very lucky, working hard on our shows then parting with thousands of pounds (which I don't have) to perform in a tiny room to four or five people a night, two of whom will probably turn out to be Icelandic backpackers or something and will not get the references in the limited portion of your set they actually understand.

The streets are uncomfortably busy, if not with hordes of Nikon-wielding tourists then by a swarm of your fellow performers thrusting flyers into the hands of all and sundry. You must join them and gamely attempt to flyer your own show, only to suffer the soul-destroying indignity of seeing tourists who stood and watched a Romanian theatre company who were performing extracts from their show (dressed as teacups!?) with abject fascination, take your flyer, look you up and down and give it the most cursory of glances before dropping it six paces away.

The whole city, pretty though it is, has been built clinging for dear life to the side of a mountain, it seems. You will quickly become almost pathologically averse to stone staircases.

The food and drink are outrageously expensive, and, despite all this personal stress, every other comic you meet, when asked, will no doubt tell you that things are going just brilliantly for them.

So I will save the thousands I don't have, stay at home this August and sweep up the last minute bookings that inevitably come when nearly all the other comics in the country are otherwise engaged.