Curio’s unleashes his personal Festival furio!

Ricky Gervais
This never-off-the-telly-tubby finds himself the ‘must see’ show of the Festival. The Fringe should be about promoting all the hard working acts who struggle both creatively and financially to survive, never mind to prosper. Instead the media spotlight stays on this uber-rich, bloated, comedy oligarch, whose show is just another crank in his money making machine.

Ricky Gervais - main feature of every gutless Festival magazine

Maggots to meat
Imagine a place where a futureless generation of chemically-induced fiends crawl. They dance and wail in time to the din of bass-laden beats like hungry ghosts. While they jangle their marrow-rotting limbs and dumb brains in time to the music, the kind bar owners put on a barbeque. This ritual Sunday afternoon, al-fresco ‘soup kitchen’ is a morbid glimpse of doomed youth. Avoid.

The Outhouse, Broughton Street Lane (0131-557-6668)

A most dangerous delicacy
Take something that’s bad for you. Deep-fry it in fat and make it even unhealthier. Proceed to eat it. Then relax and feel your arteries clog, your internal organs internally vomit, and your digestive system collapses in a state of panic. For some that’s no reason not to try the deep-fried Mars Bar. A national disgrace.

Available only from the finest purveyors of coronary arrests

Loony Tunes
Nothing, they say, moves your spirit like the bonny skirl o’ the pipes. Nothing also wrecks your nervous system, reverberates inside your medulla oblongata or chews the very marrow of your bones than the hellish howl of the Devil bag. During the Festival these tartan pouches of pipe-pukery, spew forth an ear-drum clenching clamour of turgid, tuneless tosh. Ear plugs at the ready!

Every street corner all over Edinburgh

Sportswear
It’s not the clothing itself that is to be despised, but the violent thuggery that drapes the lurid garments upon their malnourished frames. Chavs, neds, gadgies - call them what you will. This guttural filth roam the streets in packs, with the same harmful intensity as locusts to cereal crop. Social tragedy or base vermin? You decide. But as you ponder, beware of being robbed, chased, bladed, electrocuted, garrotted, or sold to Currency Converters by these depraved scumbags.

Everywhere except work-places, public libraries and theatres.

Media darlings
What’s got a weak chin, has to have the last word on EVERYTHING and “will do lunch with you sometime, treacle”? Answer: the archetypal theatre luvvie/creative ponce who descend upon Edinburgh carrying the consumptive greed of the urban rat. Watch them brag about how rich, talented and hard working they are, while constantly feeding their yapping mouths with as much booze, fags and pills as their paltry creative industry salary can afford. Oh, and especially avoid the ones have a penchant for the white powder. Forehead-slappingly ghastly!

Everywhere within earshot

Brolly good show
If there’s one thing likely to mar the Festival, it’s Edinburgh’s schizoid weather.
A theatre of varieties in itself, the climate can go from fair to freak in nano-seconds. The forecast for August is said to be good, but be prepared for any eventuality. Precipitation perverts are guaranteed a veritable feast of rain types: drizzle, downpour, monsoon, cold rain, warm rain, wet rain, dry rain, Edinburgh reigns supreme. There’s more drama in the skies than in the venues.

Water, water everywhere