The degree to which this was subconscious racism , innocent incompetence , or corruption given that many officers knew David Norris’ criminal father will always be the subject of debate and conjecture. The famous/infamous Macpherson Report sided with the concept of “institutionalised racism” , thus causing splenetic rage amongst rightwing columnists since , who wilfully have misinterpreted what the concept means and accused Macpherson of labelling all police officers as racist.

He did nothing of the sort and indeed chose his words deliberately and carefully. He pointed out that if individual instances of racism were tolerated , condoned or hushed up , then an organisation as a whole becomes institutionally racist. It is possible to be institutionally racist even if only 1 out of 100,000 members are racist , if that one member is knowingly allowed to continue his merry way. But this eminently cautious concept became a stick by which journalists were only too keen to savagely beat Macpherson. Many of these journalists of course wrote for the Daily Mail, whose editor Paul Dacre is taking so much credit for yesterdays events. To watch this repugnant pygmy of a man showboating yesterday was in stark contrast to the measured dignity of Stephen Lawrence’s parents.The story about how the Daily Mail sent a team to run a story slamming the Lawrences , only to discover the Neville Lawrence had previously worked as a plasterer for Dacre is well known. It certainly explains how almost uniquely amongst black Britons , the Lawrences received reasonable treatment from the Daily Mail. Contrast that with Dacre’s editorial policy of continuously stigmatising women , gays and ethnic minority groups , and you will understand why his opportunism yesterday made me feel nauseous.

2012 seems like a very different era to 1993 , and there is in my opinion a very serious debate to be had about how the media report violent murder. I first became fascinated by the issue in 2005 when two horrific murders of young women took place in South London. One , the murder of Croydon model Sally Anne Bowman received mass national coverage. The other , the murder of teenager Rochelle Holness in Catford received very little in comparison.

http://content.met.police.uk/News/Murderer-of-Rochelle-Holness-jailed-for-life/1260267620853/1257246745756

The selective way that the media cherry pick which murders are worthy of greater scrutiny than others saddens me.It seems to me that there always has to be an angle , something to draw in readers/listeners. Thus a single tagline of their life achievements will be presented in the headline. “Aspiring footballer” “Promising student” “Harry Potter star”. Poor Rochelle Holness never had a tagline. Sometimes in my opinion , regionalism is to blame. If Michael Causer had been brought up in London , I’m sure his case would have been far more well known.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Michael_Causer

The coverage of the gruesome racist killing of Kris Donald also suffered from a mixture of media apathy to Scotland , and a general media discomfort with dealing with race murder when the victim is white.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kriss_Donald

That violent crime has become so commonplace that we have become comparatively emotionally inured to it shames society. I can’t even begin to imagine how devastating it would be to lose relative in such a way. To then discover the death of your loved one was too mundane to be newsworthy compounds the horror. Instead of getting caught up in an orgy of self-congratulation , Paul Dacre and other newspaper and media editors should try their damnedest to make sure that all murder victims whether black white or asian , gay or straight , aspiring student or educational underachiever , promising footballer or flatfooted buffoon are at least given the respect of having their stories deemed nationally newsworthy. Hopefully nobody should ever have to wait 18 years for some modicum of justice again.XX

My Dad however is nothing if not overambitious. In the late 1960′s , he had been the resident doctor on several Himalayan mountaineering expeditions. I have long known that part of his heart is still stuck there , and he has spent his life desperate to share the majesty of the Himalayas with others , despite having a son whose fear of heights is so intense that he has occasional moments of unease on the escalators at Angel tube station.So in his wisdom he decided to organise a Christmas minitrip. We wouldn’t be experiencing the cliched banalities of turkey , Christmas pudding and comfort. Three Sinhas and four Prtaks would be experiencing a Himalayan Christmas. After two nights exploring Darjeeling – a gorgeous hill town with breathtaking views of Mount Kanchenjunga – we awoke on Christmas morning in a hotel in Gangtok – a bustling colourful city , the capital of the Indian state of Sikkim.

The previous night, our official tour guide had visited us to explain that we would be spending Christmas day driving in our jeep for 6 1/2 hours to get to a remote Sikkimese village called Lachung which was 125 km away. He explained that the village was so remote that if we wanted Christmas dinner we would have to bring the food ourselves , and they would cook it. He explained that permits were needed to enter North Sikkim. He was sorting them out and would have them for us by 9 am. And like idiots we sat there , listened , and never once questioned the sanity of the project. I did text the boyfriend with the words “I fear this may be a trek too far”.

As anyone who has ever visited India will confirm , if there is a group of people whose incompetence and stupidity is stifling India’s progress as a nation , it is their bureaucratic classes. When the tour guide arrived on Christmas morning more than 2 hours late to give us our permits , we were collectively “fucking furious”. Because we knew that we would have to arrive at this remote Sikkimese village in the dark.At 1130 am , seven rather worried tourists stumbled into the jeep with minimal luggage , and a large sack of diverse vegetables tethered to the top of our jeep.

It soon became clear that our tour guide , an earnest young man who steadily became a figure of hate as our day progressed , had omitted two important details about this journey. One was that to get to Lachung , we would have to spend 6 1/2 hours trying to negotiate a variety of roads which were anything from 100-2,000 feet up cliffs , with no adequate protection against careering off the edge. The second important fact was this – since the earthquake that hit Sikkim in September 2011 most of these roads were in a state of utter disrepair. Sikkim tourism was actually going through a crisis as people had understandably chosen safer options. Noone told us.

It was about 12km into the journey that I first thought I was going to die.We were on a small damaged dust track of a road, about 1,000 feet up. In front of me was a vehicle for us to negotiate past. To my left was a 1,000 foot drop into a gorge. I have a fear of heights. I said “Is anyone else scared ?”. Nobody said a word.

And so this marathon journey continued. Every so often there would be the relief of low lying roads , or a stop to admire a waterfall , or for Dom’s Dad to explore his own issues with prostatism. But any relief would be short lived , as within minutes we would be back on an earthquake damaged road , with no protection against a fatal drop.

My Dad steadily retreated into silence , the silence of a man who knew he’d made a bad call this Christmas. Turkey , crackers , sausages wrapped in bacon even goddammit the Strictly Christmas special had never seemed more appealing.

All of us were dealing with our “issues” in our own way. All of us but one , our hired driver Teyju. He had no issues. This was his job , his livelihood , and if he was in any way nervous that one moment of lost concentration on his part would lead to our certain deaths , he never once showed it. It was only his unshakeable confidence that was keeping me sane.

As the sun started to set , so inevitably our journey slowed down as we had to negotiate these appalling roads in the dark. I didnt know at the time about this …

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16173251

but I’m not sure it would have made a difference. We all just felt a bit helpless. My mind started to wander as to how the media would report our deaths , what value the Daily Mail would estimate my Dad’s mock tudor house at.We started to sing Christmas carols to try and take our mind off things. We just didnt know enough of the words. Then Lily came up with the genius idea of singing “The 12 days of Christmas”. That must have taken 15 minutes all told , including debate and discussion. 15 minutes in which we made 2 km progress. We drove through a waterfall, across makeshift bridges, and several times narrowly avoided oncoming traffic. And then , at about 1830 we reached a small sleepy Sikkimese village called Lachung , none of us particularly understanding of what on earth we were doing there. Our hotel was freezing and my room lacked running water. But it didnt matter. The hotel staff had purloined chicken to go with the sack of vegetables we had brought. And Christmas dinner was chicken curry , vegetable curry and hot chapatis cooked for us by a selection of Nepalese strangers whose hospitality could not have been warmer. I was just relieved to be alive, but knowing full well that we were going to have to do all of this again just to get back to Gangtok.

But the journey back to Gangtok on Boxing Day wasnt the problem. Yes the roads were awful , yes we teetered close to the edge of ridiculous drops. But we were better mentally prepared. And developing utter faith in our driver Teyju, who seemed utterly incapable of making a mistake. Back in Gangtok on Monday evening , we all mistakenly believed that Tuesday’s journey to Bagdogra airport and a flight back to Kolkata would be a formality.Little did I know that the drama was just beginning.

Leaving Gangtok at 7am the next morning to get a 1330 flight underlined just how misjudged this schedule was. We left Sikkim to enter West Bengal.We had already seen one vehicle which had come off the road , and a lorry which appeared capsized in a river. And if anything the roads seemed to get narrower and higher. We found ourselves stuck in a mammoth two way traffic jam on a road only really designed for one way traffic. During this jam we teetered stationary for about 20 minutes with a 300 foot drop so close to my left that opening my door was simply not an option. Once we negotiated that fresh hell , we had every reason to believe that we could relax.

Then suddenly , and unexpectedly our road was blocked. Two vast machines were blocking our path. One was chopping up rocks to expand the road. I couldnt see this vehicle which was on the road above us. In front of us was a vast digging machine responsible for clearing up the boulders created by vehicle number 1. And neither vehicle was in the mood to help us out. And as vehicle number 1 was constantly creating new boulders on the road ahead of us , it was totally unsafe to approach vehicle number 2. For half an hour there was a truly hellish impasse. We were now at the front of a massive queue of traffic , all hooting their horns whilst knowing that the driver of vehicle number 1 either couldn’t hear them , or could hear them but didn’t care.

Eventually , something just snapped with my Dad. It was his dream to take us all to the Himalayas. At every juncture his plans had been modified or thwarted by the sheer spirit crushing incompetence of any number of people. And now two vast machines lay between us and getting to the airport on time. Two machines which had positioned themselves in such a way as to be unanswerable to anyone. The 100 metres between our vehicle and the digger was fraught with danger. My Dad decided that it was a risk worth taking. He got out of the jeep and walked purposefully to the digger. If the vehicle above did produce any fresh rocks , thankfully they missed him. My Dad vented his fury and it worked. The vehicles agreed to temporarily stop what they were doing. My Dad ran the 100 meters to get back in the jeep.Suddenly his heart disease was forgotten. We got back in the jeep. The digger started to clear up the mess that the other vehicle had caused. And rather too quickly we decided to try and overtake the digger.

We should have waited. Two minutes would not have hurt anyone. But we were at the front of a massive queue of traffic. If we had waited , someone would have tried to overtake us I imagine , and chaos would have ensued.So on this narrow stretch of road, about 100 feet above a gorge we tried to come round the side of a large digging machine. And our back left wheel slipped off the edge of the road causing the back left of the vehicle to tilt downwards.

It can’t have lasted long. Two seconds , three seconds maximum. It was enough time to look to the left , notice the drop and realise we were doomed. It was enough time for my Mum to start sobbing as she contemplated death , a sound that I’ll never forget. It was enough time for me to accept our fate and feel frustrated that after all the dangers we had been through , a minor miscalculation whilst trying get past a bloody digger was going to be the coup de grace. Still , it had been a great adventure.We had seen some amazing bloody sights.

I don’t know or understand what miracle our driver Teyju then pulled off. But in one manouevre , he managed to get the wheel back on to terra firma , and overtake the digger. We, or rather he , did it. Once we overtook the digger , the rest of the holiday was quite frankly dull in comparison.No contemplation of one’s own mortality whatsoever. All of us even got randomly upgraded to business class on the flight back to London yesterday , as though a benevolent karmic force had understood what we had been through.

Frankly it was no way to spend Christmas. But if the concept of a Christmas trip to Sikkim was in essence a failure it was a glorious , bold and imaginative failure. I’m delighted to have a Dad who has a veritable sense of adventure , and congratulations to the various Prtaks who kept their stiff upper lip far more successfully than I did.

xxx

Ever since I can remember , I have been obsessed with the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. I don’t even watch the show , I just love trying to second guess who is going to win. Last week they not only announced the ten nominations , but also listed which newspaper /magazine had nominated which sports stars. To my intense annoyance , the Manchester Evening News had nominated two Lancashire bowlers and four Manchester based footballers in their list of ten. So I linked to it on twitter.

I received the following message from a twitter user called jacobs1750.

@paulsinha Look on the bright side, it won’t be a muslim immigrant that wins it.

I suppose in retrospect this could have been a reference to the boxer Amir Khan but I immediately took it to be a reference to the Somali born long distance runner Mo Farah , who won a magnificent gold for Britain at the 2011 World Athletics Championships. A quick look at jacobs1750′s previous tweets revealed him to have an extreme dislike of Islan , and it would seem all Muslims , based mainly on a zionist perspective.

I could have ignored him. I know that.But out in the ether, there was now what I considered to be an offensive tweet about Mo Farah. And it had my name on it. So I honestly felt I needed to make things clear. I tweeted…..

@Jacobs1750 Don’t associate me with your racist filth. Mo Farah has more courage and soul than a million cyber bigots could ever muster.

And so it continued as he replied….

@paulsinha muslim immigrants are finished in England, they can fuck off back to Somalia and Pakistan now.Go with them. Farah is not English

Isn’t he quite the charmer ? I now knew I was in the presence of an intellectual heavyweight.

Me : @Jacobs1750 Thanks for directing me to Somalia and Pakistan but I have a Quiz League of London game tonight and my team needs me.

Him : @paulsinha Don’t worry, flights to Pakistan are daily, right round the clock. Somalia? Go to Kenya first, then go overland.

Me : @Jacobs1750 if this is what passes for flirting these days , it’s not working.

Him : @paulsinha Damn, I was hoping for a romatic candlelit dinner for two at Swords.

Me : @Jacobs1750 Unlucky. But I’m not even a “tit” man let alone a “racist tit” man.

(note: Being in ITV light entertainment means I had to restrain my language here)

Him : @paulsinha And muslims are not a race.

Me : @Jacobs1750 you’re right Muslims are not a race. The men’s 5,000m at the world athletics championships – that was a race.

Him : Good

And that was that. My first racist troll. I use the word “racist” because If you are dismissing a human being purely on his background rather than his character , then I hardly see why it matters a jot whether it’s his religion or the colour of his skin.

What I would like to say is this. When the telephone lines are open for voting to see who wins the BBC Sports Personality of the Year – then vote for Mo Farah. Firstly because of the majesty of his sporting achievements.And secondly because if he won , it would make one particular sociopathic bigot very unhappy. xx

1. “Is the new chaser Asian ?” Yes. My Mum and Dad were born in West Bengal.India.When I was born I inherited genetic material from both parents in the traditional manner.

2. The neck ? Yes it is an anatomical curiosity. I’ve had it all my life , I was born with it. Since puberty it seemed to develop a life of its own. Like many of the tweeters about the show , it is surprisingly and entertainingly thick. But as it has served its purpose well of connecting my head to the rest of my body , I quite like it.

3. “Hasn’t the Chaser done stand up comedy before ?” If you don’t have the nous to confirm this fact , which takes about 0.5 seconds to find online , then perhaps The Chase is not for you. I would suggest Red or Black.

4. “Who would win out of Eggheads vs Chasers ?” I think that would depend on the format. A quiz format I think they would win. A wrestling format , I’d favour our chances.

5. “Doesn’t the new Chaser look like Benny from Crossroads ?” It is with great sadness , that having examined the youtube video I agree. I’ve descended a long way since my teenage years when I was compared to the young Donny Osmond. Now if anyone says I look like Barry from Eastenders I take it as a compliment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSEsfb0Qo6Q

6. “How does a qualified doctor not know what a coxa is?” A medical education tends to concentrate on that which is useful and relevant to practice rather than an archaic Latin word that is never used.

7. “How can a chaser not know that Jaguar made the E type?” Because there is tons of easy shit that I or indeed other Chasers dont know. IMHO one of the skills of the show is to have a massively broad range of questions in order to increase the chances of the Chaser making an idiot of themselves.

8. “Do the Chasers pick the size of the money offers ?” Of course. The producers at ITV are only too happy to allow complex financial decisions to be made at the whim of the Chasers. In fact there was meant to be a fifth Chaser this series , Kweku Adoboli , but his reckless offers nearly bankrupted the show.

9. “When the Chaser loses , it feels like its fixed” I’m surprised that anyone who even begins to think that has managed to master typing. The Chasers’ dressing room is not a pleasant place to be after a defeat I can tell you.In fact it’s not a pleasant place at any time unless like me you have a thing for 25 stone men in their pants shouting “Let’s mix quizness with pleasure” at the top of their voice.

10. “Its not fair. The contestants lose time in the final chase by having to press the buzzer” True. Thats why there are other features to compensate , like the contestants starting with 1,2,3 or 4 points already and the vital pushback feature. Last Tuesday , by the time I caught their score of 19 , i’d answered 23 questions to their 15.

I hope this is of help. Please don’t ask me when I’m gonna be on , coz I’m not allowed to say. But I do have a favourite song from the musical Annie.

I hadn’t actually said a word at this point , I had merely walked onto stage. The lighting was such that I had no idea who had said it. Also,although I had heard it fairly clearly I really wasn’t sure whether the audience had picked it up.My options were pretty limited. If i started with a tirade , it might set up a totally wrong tone for my set especially if noone else had heard it. So pragmatism set in and I felt that I simply had to plough on.

It wasn’t a vintage set by any means , although the audience did enjoy the “flirting with audience member” bit. As I often try and do , I went to chat to the audience member after the gig. Imagine my surprise to find that he and his group were being chucked out of the gig for racist heckling. The guy I picked apologised to me for having called me a “fucking paki” at the start of the gig. And I realised once and for all that I have terrible taste in men.

It is sadly not the first time I’ve had racist heckling. The idea that today’s comedy audiences represent some kind of left-liberal consensus has never been further from the truth. I was impressed with the severity with which this group were dealt with. Not only were they chucked out , but a few calls to the police later , there was no way they were going to be let in to any of the city’s other venues that night. But it did put something of dampener on my weekend and made me think long and hard about what measures can be taken to reduce the chances of it happening again.

It is now an inescapable and uncomfortable fact that comedy audiences in the larger clubs up and down the country do not attract diverse audiences.London is a definite exception , and Birmingham and Manchester also have their moments.But an awful lot of clubs are becoming increasingly monocultural.And I don’t just mean in terms of race. As increasingly comedy clubs have become simply another extension of a town or city’s bar/nightclub scene an increasing number of demographic groups are being frightened away. Older couples ,younger couples , indie kids , the gays , visitors from overseas seem conspicuous by their relative absence. One of the reasons London’s Comedy Store works so well imho is that the audiences are an amazingly varied bunch.

This never used to bother me. I always thought that you can’t force people who are not interested in your product to become interested for the sake of diversity. But I do think there are are a lot of comedy fans out there who have become increasingly detached by the booze and large group mentality of a lot of club comedy.I would love to see these people being tempted back in , because I think a more culturally diverse audience sets a softer friendlier tone for the evening , one that might convince the racist idiots that they are on their own.

I also think that the comics on stage have a huge responsibility as well. The ones who I worked with this weekend were great. But in too many gigs that I have done in the last few years , the perceived absolute no-no of racism and the relative no-no of homophobia has been replaced by lazy sexism , xenophobia, class warfare where either posh people or “chavs” are eviscerated, and the mocking of audience members for nothing more than their shirt , size or hair colour.

I am realistic enough to know that you can’t ever prevent idiots from coming to live comedy , and that eventually I will be heckled in a racist manner again. But I do think a lot of clubs could think about how to make their nights less attractive to idiots. And my thanks to the staff on Friday night for dealing with the problem in such an uncompromising manner..

Last year , to be frank , was a difficult fringe for me. It started with a venue party where I could barely hear myself think above the sound of skinny jeaned , trendy haired attention whores screeching their own ideas of self importance at top volume. And it ended with the best reviews of my career combining with some of the worst audience figures. An awful lot of soul searching followed and the basic conclusion was that there was no point doing the Fringe unless you make absolutely sure that you enjoy yourself.

If you spend too long worrying about career progression and industry recognition, then it becomes very difficult to enjoy yourself. Because the Fringe by its very nature is an unfair place. It aspires to be a meritocracy , but achieving that is almost impossible because as a matter of routine press attention is disprortionately lavished on those acts who have spent £2,000 on PR. It is not a coincidence that in 2006 and 2007 , when I paid for a truly magnificent PR man I was reviewed by all four national broadsheets , but in 2009-2011 I have been ignored.

Luckily , the influence of the broadsheets is waning. This is due to the vast expansion of the internet reviews industry. A lot of people might sneer at the worth of an internet review. I don’t. Because unlike the broadsheet critics , these publications don’t ignore or patronise acts playing at venues outside the “Big 4″. It is worth checking out the reviews section of The Skinny , Fest and Scotsgay to see incisive and excellently written pieces covering all expanses of the Fringe. I am especially grateful to the 3 star reviews I received in both Fest and The Skinny for being constructive in their criticisms and helping me improve the show.

The mantra of trying to enjoy myself has proved tricky during the worst of the weather. I’m really not a “bad weather” person. But luckily the weather did relent enough for me to have a number of highlights. These have included……

1. Seeing the astonishing beatboxer Shlomo perform in front of 25 people at Chortle Fast Fringe

2. Eating lobster and chips by the sea in North Berwick

3. Being asked by an audience member a few moments before my show – “Excuse me – do you work here ?”

4. Watching the Zaltzmann/Oliver comeback special

5. After both constestants failed to get the maths target “911″ on Comedy Countdown , Dan Atkinson saying to me ” Carol – can you create nine-eleven all on your own?”

6. The line “fisting Enya”

7. Last nights party at the Stand.

8. Luke Wright’s heartbreaking poem about a woman driven to suicide.

9. Watching a show which had the surprise punchline “Comedian Paul Sinha was found dead hanging from a trapeze”

10. The way a certain canine character was introduced in Humphrey Ker’s show.

The Fringe gets bigger and bigger with every passing year. I think it’s great that there is now a bewildering array of quality entertainment on offer. The inevitable consequence , however , is that its becoming increasingly hard for comedians who are not on telly to draw in great numbers.I am proud however to be part of the entertainment provided by the wonderful Stand comedy club , not least in that despite fairly modest box office figures I have actually made a small profit. My gratitude goes out to their superb staff , to Paul and Emily who suffered such inclement weather to flyer for me , to Marisa for being my rock and to my agent Sally Carter without whose tireless effort I would be nobody.

I have also got off my backside and watched loads of shows , and loved them all. Yesterday’s double bill of Jo Neary and Gavin Webster was tremendous. Congrats to all , but especially Brett Goldstein – an astonishingly good show if like me you only know him as the amiable compere at the 99 club- and to Cariad Lloyd whose wonderful character sketch show at the Voodoo Rooms has deservedly earned the Free Fringe its second nomination.

About those nominations. It’s a great list. It seems almost pointless to moan about the continuing domination of Pleasance acts on the list – 9/14 is in no way representative of the spread of comedic talent at the Fringe. The symbiotic relationship between the Pleasance and the award will never , ever change. But it is a great list , and many congratulations to all of them , not least the aforementioned Cariad , and Chris Ramsey. He may seem like the surprise choice , but having gigged with him recently in Leeds it is pretty clear that he is a ridiculously gifted comedian.

The Foster’s awards are not the only awards earning column inches today. There is the annual “joke of the fringe” nonsense organised by the TV channel Dave. Personally I can think of nothing which misrepresents what most of us are trying to do up here than reducing complex, nuanced shows to a single soundbite taken out of context and often misquoted. When I think of all the jokes which have reduced me to tears at the Fringe over the years , there is inevitably a backstory or context which makes the joke magical. In my opinion this whole farce utterly cheapens the concept of Fringe comedy and it is even more depressing just how much media attention is lavished on it.

It is this sort of drivel that makes me with each passing year more proud to be associated with the Stand Comedy Club , an institution with far loftier ambitions regarding Fringe comedy.Last night at Political Animal , messrs Andy Zaltzman, John Oliver and a “voice of god” Daniel Kitson combined to make me laugh harder than I have ever laughed before.It was utterly joyous. Tonight’s show features them as well as Rich Hall , Robin Ince , Simon Munnery and myself. It is undoubtedly the best bill I have ever been on and it has already sold out. I for one am sick with excitement.

There is however a group of people who seem to regard crossing the bridge as a task of Herculean proportions.That group of people is broadsheet comedy critics. I cannot speak for Dominic Maxwell of The Times as I am currently experimenting with the concept of boycotting News International publications. But a look at the reviews in the other three reveals an astonishingly lazy mindset.

Here’s the thing. The Stand Comedy Club programme an outstanding set of shows every year. This year’s shows include Stewart Lee , Simon Munnery , Omid Djalili , Alun Cochrane , Andy Zaltzmann amongst many , many others spread across its’ five venues. It’s a heady mix of legends , young upstarts , globetrotting stalwarts , gloriously leftfield and solidly mainstream. But especially since the move of the Assembly Rooms this year , it seems to be becoming an increasingly lonely advert for the joys of the New Town.

The general public have an excuse. It is not their responsibilty to be fair. The “Big 4″ venues along with the Caves and the Free Fringe offer a fantastic wealth of entertainment and dining and of course , and especially on rainy days , that short 10 minute walk may seem unenticing.

But broadsheet comedy critics have no excuse. It is their job to offer an accurate assessment of comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. If they are almost completely ignoring the shows at the Stand , then they are failing to do their job. It is telling that this accusation cannot be made about journalists working for any other publications. A cursory glance at Fest, Skinny , The List , Chortle , The Scotsman etc will show that all of their journalists are working hard to reviews shows from all corners of the Fringe. Whereas Messrs Hall , Monahan Logan et al seem only to happy to wilfully do the opposite. How I laughed last year when both Dominic Cavendish and Brian Logan claimed that Josie Long’s excellent 2010 show was the “only” political show on the Fringe.

On Sunday , helped by some apalling blunders by me , a team of critics defeated us comics 7-3 in the annual Fringe football game. And deservedly so as they showed both skill and great fitness.The fitness thing surprised me. Who knew that guys who baulk at the concept of crossing the North Bridge , could be capable of such stamina ?

That first Saturday was utterly miserable. It had been bucketing down with rain all day.From the moment I first peered out of my window I realised there was little chance of me selling significant numbers of tickets on the first Saturday of the Fringe. And so it proved. As I stared out at my smallest Saturday audience for five years I tried hard to hide feelings of utter deflation. All the pre festival optimism , all the defiant protestations that it wasn’t about ticket sales this year , it was about enjoying myself , it all seemed rather hollow.

Then I realised something really important. I had spent most of the day huddled up in bed.What right did I have to be miserable ? Out there all day were people getting drenched trying to persuade other people who were getting drenched to come and see the show. They were the ones entitled to be miserable , not me. Once I realised that everything started getting better.

The next day the same numbers came. But it was a Sunday. And they were awesome. On the Monday, Comedy Countdown started. It was a riotous drunken hoot. On the Wednesday , Chortle gave me my fifth sucessive 4 star review. On Thursday a really lovely article about me apppeared in the Scotsman and as a result I had my best Thursday figures for years. And once more they were awesome. And audience numbers have just about held up. And the nice reviews keep coming in. These have been a massive relief. I have had great insecurities about this show during preview season , I am so glad and proud of the positive feedback.

And this week is my week mirabilis. In that people I adore are visiting. Last Saturday my mood was massively improved by the surprise visit of friends and godson, my sister is currently up , my folks on Thursday , and on Friday a very nice young man. And i feel guilty for having got so miserable so quickly. If the Fringe is a marathon not a sprint , then I’m at the 15 mile mark feeling exhilaration and exhaustion in equal measure. Here’s hoping when I do hit the inevitable wall , I can fight my way through it.

After lunch , my thoughts were already turning to time management. The second preview show was on at 7pm , giving me a few hours to sit in bed thinking about the show and preparing. The downside of this tactic is this – my basement flat literally has zero 02 phone reception. I am only contactable by internet while I’m in my flat. So i decided to head to the venue for 6pm , so that I can be contactable from then.

At 5.55 pm I am minutes away from the venue. I look at my phone and it is quite clear something’s up. I have several missed calls. I ring my agent. “Where are you ? she says.

“Two minutes away from the venue” I cheerfully reply.

“You do realise that your preview starts at 6 ?” She asks , in a surprisingly calm tone.

At which point I feel physically sick. After running uphill for two minutes to get to the venue I feel even more sick. I like to survey the audience , get a feel for them and relax into the start of the show.There’s no time for that. Instead when I walk onto stage I am a slightly breathless mess.

Luckily for me the show went ok. Not that many in , but I performed it much better than the previous night , despite nearly missing the show altogether.The lesson learnt is I need to get out of the flat more , so that people can ring me. It’s a shame because I’m finding the bed that I’m writing this from very comfortable indeed.

Later last night was one of my favourite events of the calendar year – The Stand’s launch party. Terrific canapes and a star studded comedy bill including Phil Jupitus , Stewart Lee , Fred Macaulay. I was proud to be on such a bill and enjoyed the gig enormously. Not least when Lorraine Chase congratulated me afterwards. I did wonder which easyjet destination she may have flown in from , but didn’t ask. Mitch Benn who was also on the bill was totally unrecognisable. He has lost 11 stone on a fancy diet. 11 stone.It’s an extraordinary achievement in a relatively short space of time and deserves every credit.

Tonight my show is at 2240
Tonight my show is at 2240
Tonight my show is at 2240
Tonight my show is at 2240
Tonight my show is at 2240