Ten signs you've been to too many Fringes

Thom Tuck spots the symptoms

1. You immediately discount shows that start with more than one 'A'

You know the type: 'Aaaaaaaaaaargh! It’s Some Comedy' or 'Aaaaand That’s What I Call Improv!!' (it won’t be what anyone else calls it) or 'Aardvarks??!!???!!!!???!!'. Desperate, desperate people peddling bilge in a way that completely ignores the fact that everyone has a phone nowadays and can look things up based on interest not alphabetical order. It even makes you suspicious of people with too many 'A's in their name anyway. Sorry, Dara.

2. You have a special pub that you don’t tell anyone else about

It’s small. The barman’s called Fraser and he’s got the rosiest cheeks you ever did see. They have a battered Scrabble in the back room. They do stovies and the greatest Bloody Mary you’ve ever tasted. It’s really hard to find and, no, you can’t come.

3. The very idea of someone doing Shakespeare straight gives you a boner

Or a wide-on, if you are that way genitaled. The many, many works of the handily out-of-copyright Bard of Britain™ are habitually brutalised by earnest children with matching hoodies at the greatest arts festival in the world. 'Do you want to see Timon of Athens set in a 19th Century Irish nunnery populated by gibbons?' No.

4. You’re absolutely convinced that you know the best route everywhere

You’ve just wandered out of the Traverse Bar surprised that it’s still daytime with a gaggle of relative Fringe Noobs and you all want to get to the Pleasance Above, or the Pleasance Within, or the Pleasance Beside Itself With Smugness. You lead them confidently, holding an umbrella aloft like a tour guide in the Vatican. You fail, mainly because you forgot your grappling hook.

5. You’ve done some upsetting maths

You’ve just paid your exorbitant rent to live in half a room for twenty seven booze-addled nights and realised that if you’d never been to this Festival, you could now have a speedboat.

6. Some words hurt

You’ve started grinding your teeth. A small trickle of blood snakes its way out of your earlobe. You consider removing your eyes. All of this because you’ve just heard the words 'American High School Theatre Festival'.

7. You have bought a knife

It’s a sharp, sharp knife and it nestles comfortingly in your cagoule pocket. You probably won’t use it, but it’s good to know that if you do see another collection of foetuses clapping and doing their vocal warm-ups in public in a way that you know they think makes them look charming, then you could swiftly, and with a minimum of fuss, dispatch them spluttering and twitching onto the cobbles. See also: bagpipes.

8. September is basically wasted reacclimatising to normal life

After the solid month of ego, solipsism and intellectual onanism it can be very difficult to respond appropriately to civilian life. It’s not right to respond to being told that the price of something is three quid by immediately blurting out, 'IT READS LIKE A FOUR'. There’s no-one more useful to your career over the postman’s shoulder. And you can’t use your Abattoir pass on the bus.