Edinburgh is full of stories...some so shocking they’ll put you off your beans

Stories happen everywhere, obviously, but up here in Edinburgh, stories pretty much come up to you and nut you in the face.

You can’t get away from the stories, even if you wanted to. Even if you only went out to do your show then came straight home and hid under the duvet, you would soon get a rattling knock on the door from an insistent deliverer of stories and you'd have to shout “not today thank you, I’ve got enough going on”.

Only yesterday I was eating some beans for brunch, when I suddenly, apropos of nothing that I can remember, became recipient of a firsthand story of an action movie star who soiled his trousers on set after a night with three prostitutes, some cocaine, and an ill-used wine bottle.

The story had more details that I couldn’t possibly share here, and I didn’t need to know any of it but now I do and it can never be unlearnt and it put me off my beans – and that almost never happens.

Performers are strange creatures, and they’re ruddy everywhere up here.

You can’t move for people being all performery right in front of you.

But I have grown fond of my daily theatre rituals.

For instance, every day I have to try not to punch a lady dressed as a Disney princess.

She’s got a ukulele and does vocal warm-ups that would incite the very furies of hell, but I’ve grown accustomed to her face, and wanting to turn it inside-out with my fist.

I think I’ll miss her when this madness comes to an end. She’ll go back to Australia and will never learn how close she came to being turned into my winter gloves.

Then when I come off from doing my show I ammet by two men in white spacesuits and helmets with flashing lights, Chuck and Charlie, two super cool Americans doing a play about Moby Dick in space.

That’s right. Moby Dick, in space.

It’s awesome. We hug in passing.

Then as I clear my stage, a sink of fake blood and artificial human body parts is pulled on for another play.

I always peer at the blood and want to do two streaks across my face like I’m Rambo. Maybe I will. And no one will even bat an eyelid because I’m just another ruddy performer.

I’ve also realised that I’m dead superstitious just like a lot of needy sweaty egotistical performers.

Like, if Sarah, my best pal and the titular Pramkicker in my play, doesn’t bring me my costume, and I unthinkingly go and get it myself, it means I am going to have a rubbish show.

It means I’ve messed with the system and I will be punished for it, live on stage. It took only three days of Sarah bringing me my costume for this to become a nonnegotiable key to not mucking up.

Or if the toilet cubicle at the end is engaged when I do my pre-show wee and self-loathing meditation, I am going to have a really rubbish show. I feel very strongly about it. If I’m not in the right cubicle at the right time, I am doomed.

It’s quite tiring being a needy sweaty egotistical performer, really.

If I didn't enjoy it so much I might stop.

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