Save by the great John Hegley, comic poetry is a seldom borrowed hardcover in the stand-up library. A warm welcome, then, to Luke Wright, a member of "poetry boyband" Aisle 16, who is using the Fringe to launch his curveball bid for the poet laureateship.
It's a highly entertaining premise for a show: Wright himself has oodles of youthful charm and, at their best, the poems are scabrous, irreverent and performed with great gusto.
You get a seminar on the history of the laureateship to boot. The position has always been controversial, says Wright, and was denied to some of our finest poets: Keats, Coleridge, Simon Le Bon. He takes heart from the tenure, in the early 1700s, of Laurence Eusden, whose uselessness means that Wright needn't fear becoming the worst poet laureate ever should he succeed in securing the post.
The only criticism Wright need make of the current incumbent is that Andrew Motion once wrote a rap poem ("Better stand back /Here's an age attack") to celebrate Prince William's 21st birthday. 'Nuff said, as Motion himself might phrase it.
But the main attraction here is Wright's poetry. He starts with a narrative verse, Won't Get Out of Bed for Less than Ten Grand, which recounts a perversely successful bid for financial respect. There's a duff ode to Richard Madeley - all homoerotic schoolboy smut - and an altogether better verse (in the tradition, says Wright, of poet laureates writing political biographies) telling the life story of a Boris Johnson-like Tory leader: "He was posh and silly and therefore incapable of lies." And the battle of the Edmonton Ikea is a great subject for epic verse.
Wright's performance (and his poetry in general) is notable more for its full-blooded enthusiasm than for subtlety or dramatic shape. But there are the makings here of an exciting comic poetry talent. Let's face it, anyone who rhymes "Marquis de Sadean" with the Guardian is worth keeping an eye on.
· Until Aug 28. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
