My Edinburgh, Russell Kane, comedian
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Your support makes all the difference.So what do I watch? It's like the chef trying to find the restaurant which lets him un-think cooking. Almost impossible. The shows I seek out have to be as far away from my frantic ejaculations as possible. They fall into two categories – serious/scary plays and surreal abandon.
This year my play is Memory Cells, over at the Pleasance King Dome, and playing (when I went at least) to criminally modest houses. My golly. I don't know if I was just feeling a tad vulnerable after the previous evening's snakebite and black depravity (no, really), but the slow crunching psychosexual menace of the thing really got me.
Surreal abandon goes to Hans Teeuwen. I have never seen him before, but he is comedy acid – bizarre narratives unfolding themselves into ever more phantasmagorical loops of woodland animal filthy fun. Go see. Take a beer and a lateral outlook.
My other obsessions: food and boozing. I have an OCD dedication to Edinburgh fuel. Haggis. Pop over, I'll feed you my Chilli Con Haggis. Haggis pizza? Not a problem. Or this year's new entry: haggis with fenugreek leaves. I'm a sort of effeminate Hemingway when I'm north of the border. Typing away, running though the streets reflecting, biting into exotic food as the sun comes up after a night's hard boozing. Watch out for me stumbling through Nicolson Square at 3am, a look of carnivorous determination on my face – convinced I've finally glimpsed the true meaning of mirth as I slip into a chilli-sauce-based coma.
Also, I hear Simon Callow's Shakespeare show is rather good.
Russell Kane's Smokescreens and Castles, Pleasance Courtyard (0131 556 6550) to 30 August
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