Unusually for the end of the Fringe I was feeling in no rush to get out of Edinburgh. There have been years when I have had the car parked up outside the venue and shot off into the night as fast as humanly possible. But although a little weary I didn't feel sick of the Fringe this year and would happily have stayed in town a few more days. I was certainly planning on doing so tonight, as the Stand were having an end of Fringe party and in any case we weren't yet packed.
So I was a bit disconcerted to get a text this morning telling me I had to vacate the flat today. I still had a show to do for starters. Luckily after some frantic texting and phone calls it was agreed that we could stay here one more night - I had been half thinking of staying until the end of the month and spending some time in Edinburgh going to galleries and the new National Museum.
It was the perfect end to the Fringe Podcasts today, with possibly my favourite guest of all, Adam Buxton. We both have plenty of experience of chatting away with someone else with no script or idea of where we're going and so I hoped this might be a good one, though there's always the danger that we'd end up talking over each other as we'd never done anything together before. But we slipped into an easy rapport - maybe we should do a radio show together or something - though as the two naughty elements from our respective duos I think we managed to egg each other on to say things that might have been best left unsaid. After seven or eight of these shows I wondered if I had set myself an impossible and exhausting task - to do this pretty much daily - but the more I have relaxed into it (and almost the less I have prepared) the easier they have become. I will actually miss doing these. And I think there's a very good chance that I might be back for more next year. Adam Buxton is a modest and charming man, every bit as lovely as he comes across on radio and stage. If you haven't listened to any of these yet and you have a day to spare
get them here or on iTunes.
I wore my crown throughout, but decided it was time to end this stupid nickname once and for all (and curses to whoever it was who started spreading this - I am just a regular guy) and I handed my title over to the winner of today's competition. Though I almost forgot and she bullishly insisted on getting the crown. I think she will be an autocratic and cruel tyrant. But fate chose her.
It still didn't feel like everything had ended after the show, but perhaps another weight had lifted as I felt I had enough energy to go for a swim for the first time in almost a fortnight. And though shows were still going on in some venues as we walked around town this evening it already felt like Edinburgh had returned to normal. Plenty of acts were tweeting about being home already. Everyone seemed delighted to be gone. But perhaps because I haven't overdone the partying I was still happy to be here.
This has been a great Fringe for me. I perhaps took too much on by doing the Radio 4 show as well as two shows a day, but I am very pleased with the way all of the shows turned out.
Hope you can make the tour which should have at least another 30 minutes of material. Thanks to all those of you who came to the show. The SCOPE collection for Edinburgh and the preview gigs the month before it looks like topping £11,000 (£7000 of that from Fringe audiences - pretty much a pound per person). If tour audiences are as generous then I am confident that we can hit this year's £50,000 target.
So all in all a successful Fringe. Now for two weeks recovery time. Will I succumb to the usually inevitable post-Fringe lurgy? At the moment I feel surprisingly fit. If a little fat.
