Any performer who hosts a nightly chat show with people he hardly knows needs his head examining. And one who invites the complete cast of Twelve Angry Men - a dozen comics, each with an elephantine ego - is positively certifiable.
That Marc Salem, an American unfamiliar with the Lilliputian hierarchies of British celebrity culture, somehow carries off what on paper should have been a disaster is testimony to his unique genius. For his is a head truly worth examination. A professor of kinesics - that's the science of non-verbal communication to you and me - who ran away with the comedy circus, he is quite simply the most astonishing mind-reader I have ever seen.
Still, you have to have a brain to have it read, and Aussie comic Brendon Burns, Salem's guest the evening I saw him, was a bit of a challenge. Thank heavens for Craig Hill, the new queen of high-camp comedy (Julian Clary is not fit to touch the hem of his kilt). But it was only when Salem turned his skills to the audience, correctly identifying from behind a blindfold where a score of us had just returned from our holiday and what we liked to eat, that the show took off.
Whether the chat show format - aimed clearly at a TV transfer - is right for Salem, remains to be seen, but such talent cannot remain hidden for long.
· Until August 25. Box office: 0131-226 2428.
