Rick Edwards, Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh

Julian Hall
Monday 10 August 2009 00:00 BST
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Perhaps the unusually sunny start to the Fringe is to blame but only a day in, one of the more half-baked shows has already happened as the personable T4 presenter Rick Edwards was given a folder of viewers' jokes to read for a one-off gig.

This free, made-for-TV event was hosted by the regular TV warm up man Dave Gibson who set the tone for the jokes that followed with the gag: "I'm dating a couple of anorexics: two birds, one stone." T4 pin up Rick Edwards arrived on stage armed with gags garnered from an appeal to T4 viewers. "I used to do stand up four or five years ago" revealed the 6'5" presenter, "if I was ever going to come back to it, this wasn't how I would plan it."

The 29-year old did a reasonable job of trying to enliven, and sometimes explain, the more obvious contributions from the young British public who had sent in jokes such as: "Have you ever seen a horsefly? No. But I have seen a cow jump off a cliff" and, my personal favourite: "My brother has been sniffing curry powder and now he's in a korma." Though jokes like: "I wanted to drown my sorrows but I can't get my wife to swim" and "statistically one in seven dwarves are grumpy" may never win awards, it is still too early to say whether the British public haven't already made the best jokes of this year's Fringe.

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