Edinburgh festivals diary by Kate Copstick - 'I am dangerously close to having fun.'

You can put as much colouring and spicing as you like on a chunk of tofu, but it is still not a real steak. Most Amanda Knox reviews say her show should not have been listed as comedy. Last night I saw Josh Pickar talk movingly about his work saving prisoners on death row – listed in Comedy. The now ridiculously huge section needs to be broken down, and better categorised than just slapping on a sub-heading. Or find a sexier title than “Spoken Word”.

While enjoying a tea in the excellent Slow Progress Records, I am delighted to be joined by the inestimable Peter Buckley Hill, founder and continued stalwart of the Free Fringe. He has just had two teeth extracted but braves an Earl Grey while we pick apart the enduring challenge faced by an organisation predicated on the ethos that free is absolutely not the same as worthless.

We discuss dynamic pricing (which I have apparently failed to understand) and Tourette's (which I insufficiently understand). We part and I go off to flyer for his seven o'clock show and distribute Wee Blue Books. I know I shouldn't but I do. Between Blackfriars St and The Canon's Gait I develop a newfound respect and sympathy for flyerers.

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Talking of which, I am en route down South Bridge when I am flyered by none other than National Treasure Gyles Brandreth. For his own show Up Memory Lane, I hasten to add, although his style is so charming that anyone requiring a bit of class in their street team might consider contacting him.

I am privileged to be enjoying a wander up my own memory lane, having been invited to appear on stage in several shows. It is a wonderful thing to stand in front of a receptive audience and enjoy applause and laughter. Harun Mashud's Political Breakfast is rammed with people amazingly fully sentient at 9.30am and Peter Michael Marino's Planet of the Grapes is so brilliantly put together and so much fun that a young lad in the front row loses a tooth laughing.

I also get to fangirl a bit over Mark Watson in a Yurt, during Thom Tuck's really rather excellent How To Fringe. I am dangerously close to having fun.

So I feel for the comic I see who has the misfortune to have, in her audience, a row of the kind of girlies who give product-assisted blondes, cheap Sauvignan Blanc and loud crisp eating a bad name. I have had fungal rashes which were less irritating.

I get a sad text from Twonkey, who had only four people in on Eclipse Day. They loved it and told him so but “Nobody is bigger than the Moon covering the Sun”, he says sagely. Or perhaps the celestial powers just made sure not to clash with Daniel Sloss and find out.

Of course, not all trials and tribulations are suffered by performers in August. As I sit in a Grassmarket hostelry eating an eye-wateringly expensive toasted sandwich, I overhear one of the young waiting staff having a tiny panic attack.

“I don't speak the languages of anyone in my section,” she says. French, Spanish and something she cannot recognise. How long before Edinburgh's August Eateries are run on Google Translate? Kate Copstick

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