WTF... from Edinburgh

• Frankie Boyle is training in Jeet Kune Do, the martial art Bruce Lee devised to use in real street fights. Moves include ramming fingers into opponents' eyes. A member at the rugged Glasgow basement gym where he trains said: ‘Frankie takes it very seriously. He can punch and kick really hard.’

• 'Who was that?' the punter sat next to Chortle at Stewart Lee's Stewbilee gig asked after some on-stage shenanigans. 'Richard Herring,' we told her. Her face looked as blank as an empty page . 'They used to be in a double act together in the Nineties.' 'Ah,' she said, not really understanding, before writing the name down incorrectly. 'I don't normally review comedy, you see...' The published article also made reference to that well-known comic actor Kevin Elder.

• At school, Jason Manford was the singer in an indie band called Panic. Their biggest gig was when he was 15 at the Whalley Range Tennis & Cricket Club, where the band raised £400 for a cancer hospital.

• Meanwhile, the new One Show host got frisked by airport security staff on leaving Edinburgh after a badge he picked up from Pappy’s show set off the metal detector. Manford tweeted: ‘ Damn you @Pappystweet & your free post-show badge! Just got bollocks felt cos forgot it was in my pocket’

• Middle-class injuries department: Chris Addison started his first Edinburgh show on crutches after tearing a ligament and passing out from the pain when leaping down the stairs of his flat to meet the supermarket delivery man.

• This week’s video is for all the techhies at Edinburgh: Time-lapse of all the turnarounds in Pleasance Two:
  

• Matt Green says his strangest ever Edinburgh Fringe punter was a middle-aged man who spent the show staring at him from the front row with ‘serial-killer eyes’. He decided to chat to him and try to get him involved, but was met with a wall of silence, with the man revealing only that his name was Bob. Admitting defeat, Green ploughed on regardless. After the show Bob was waiting outside to tell him he loved the show. ‘Odd that you didn’t tell your face’, Green thought. He then revealed that his name wasn’t Bob and that one of his favourite pastimes was going to comedy shows, sitting at the front and trying to psych-out the comedian by staring at him. Three days later he came to the show again, but this time he was accompanied by ten other people wearing matching black T-shirts. His said: ‘I am Bob’; theirs all said: ‘I’m With Bob’. They sat in the front row and stared at him throughout the show, with no explanation of what was going on.’

• Stolen: Two blow-up sex dolls Gemma Goggin uses in her Gilded Balloon show; and the banner from Nik Coppin's free show proudly proclaiming: ‘Shaggers’.

• Fishing for change to drop into the bucket at the end of Paul Kerensa's Free Fringe show on Monday, one unfortunate punter accidentally dropped in their house-keys – a mistake that was only discovered a few hours later. He said: ‘The keys have yet to be claimed, so if you have been sleeping on a bench ever since, get in touch with the venue (The Canons' Gait). Or knock on your front door, and I might answer wearing your dressing-gown.’

• Tweets of the week:
  Gary Delaney (@GaryDelaney): Climbed Arthur's Seat last night to gaze at the heavens. Orion's belt only has three stars, but it reads like a four.
  Tony Cowards (@TonyCowards): I recently made a film about a beautifully decorated lorry, not sure it’ll be any good but the trailer looks fantastic.
  Simon Evans (@thesimonevans): ‘Amen’ was the medieval equivalent of ‘Send’.

SOURCES: Sunday Mail, Chortle, Sunday Mirror, Twitter, Independent, Youtube, Fest, Independent on Sunday/Chortle, Chortle Twitter

Published: 20 Aug 2010