With its Edwardian dandies, its talking vegetables and its dancing penguins, the Royal Mile at this time of year feels like a particularly colourful episode of Doctor Who. Yesterday, I saw a man barging through the crowds with his top off shouting: "Allez! Allez!" and pretending to lasso people. I didn't know whether to take a flyer or call the police. But then I have been doing strange things, too. Normally, I would never agree to meet a stranger in the early hours of the morning in a deserted car park. But because they say the magic words "The BBC might come," I'm there in a flash.
In the past, I've enjoyed seeing legends such as Phil Kay and Reginald D Hunter – but I can't help thinking that late-night gigs are becoming a dangerous form of standup. At one of mine, a drunk woman asked me for a fight because she refused to believe I was Scottish; and I've read a couple of reviews suggesting that, in the battle between comic and audience, the audience is winning.
It all poses the question: how drunk is too drunk for a comedy show? Answer: for the audience, anything over half a pint; for the comedian, anything over half a bath. Which is fine if you still have your youth, the constitution of an ox and the bank balance of a Conservative cabinet member. I'm 37 and have none of the above.
Alcohol, you see, makes comics brave and crowds belligerent. The average audience member would never normally barge into someone else's workplace and shout "You're shit at your job" at them. But they do in comedy. Last year, I was MCing a gig, and a very drunk man shouted at a lovely new act: "When do you get funny?" The act left devastated.
I stepped in. I used words that I didn't know I knew. I quoted philosophy, literature, Lady Gaga. I destroyed him. He was a shell of a man when he left. Only afterwards did someone tell me he was from the BBC. I waited in the car park for hours. He never came.
