Fringe day 4

Big looooooooooooooong day at the Fringe today.

The first show we saw was Charmed Forces, a piss-take of a variety act entertaining the troops abroad. It was hugely cringey and extremely entertaining, particularly silent Neville who is advised not to talk too much or touch the audience, but whose 'special occasion' dance made us laugh and laugh. (4*)

Next we saw Piff the magic dragon: Piff-tacular 2 - get rich or die trying. The magic was dodgy and the chat a bit blah, but the novelty of a grown (and slightly bitter) man dressed as a dragon carries you through about 45 minutes, and the novelty of a grown (and slightly bitter) man dressed as a dragon levitating a live and be-costumed chihuahua is well worth the wait. (3*)

Are you there? was a play. We hadn't seen a play. It was a play about ghosts. For some reason one of the ghosts was played by an actor, and one was silent and invisible. Weird. It was alright. (3*)

We booked Richard Herring: Christ on a bike, the second coming (pictured) because we thought he'd be reliable for a Saturday night, and we went so far as to pay the maximum full price for him (no freebies, no 2 for 1s, no previews - argh!). He didn't let us down. This guy is extremely clever and has impeccable delivery. Some in my party preferred his 'Hitler moustache' show from last year. Don't go if you are seriously religious, otherwise I'd recommend you give him a go.

We're knocking on a bit now and Late 'n' Live is a big ask, being as it doesn't start til 1am. The room was packed in - not as good as it used to be where you could walk out and get more beers, and extremely sweaty. We had cracking seats though.

The acts were as follows:

- Patrick Monahan (compare) - he was alright, did some impressive dancing, guess he got it going quite well (3*)

- Costaki Economopoulos - a guy from the US who didn't find his stride, which I think was because he made various cultural references that didn't really gel with the UK audience such as poison ivy and calling football 'soccer' (2*)

- Robert White - is a virtual unknown, I think they give some new guy a go each night and he did a frankly amazing job of winning the audience round after the last guy. Really funny songs, very likeable, some pretty dark material and ended up snogging some guy out of the audience. (5*)

- Arj Barker - this guy is famous, out of Flight of the conchords so they say. He was er... not sober... and consequently not as funny as he thought he was. He was alright like, but I think he assumed that his fame was enough to make him brilliant. Nah. (3*)

- Axis of awesome - A band who do amusing songs. They did a great one about people who play loud music from their cars, and another one which evidences how most songs come from the same four chords (not news to me, but nicely sdone so worth a watch here) (4*)