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large sub-species of the performers in Edinburgh, but at least most of the twats at the Fringe are interesting ones. You might not have a great deal in common with someone who eats his own penis while standing on his head and playing the ukulele, but you’ll probably have something interesting to talk about. It definitely beats going to Alan’s office summer party, as I did earlier this year. Were it not for an intriguing half hour with Amanda, Alan’s rather frisky boss, it would have been a total washout.
    The most fun thing about the Fringe is, of course, the evening, when all the best partying takes place in a series of large, interconnected marquees called the Spiegeltent. I can still remember clearly the first time I went there, as an eighteen-year-old; it was as if I had wandered out of the normal, mundane world into something magical. Swing bands played on raised, misty stages. Girls in bright dresses twirled below. Champagne corks popped. Cigarettes, or something stronger, flickered like glow worms in the dark. Everywhere there were beautiful, smiling people; the gentle, murmured undercurrent of a festive atmosphere which occasionally burst into louder, more raucous approval when a band started a song we recognised or finished a set we’d particularly enjoyed; the sights, the sounds, the smells, even, of people having a good time.
    This
, I thought,
is where I belong
.
    That, at least, was how I felt the first eleven times I went there. This year – exactly a week after Lisa’s wedding – was very different indeed.
    It was the final day of my trip and I’d spent a pleasant enough afternoon torturing students before meeting up with my old friend Claire in the evening and taking her out for dinner – or,to be more accurate, letting her take me out for dinner. Claire is something called a management consultant, although she appears neither to manage nor consult anything or anyone. Still, she has more chance of her credit card being accepted than I do. Her dad used to play football with my dad so we first met when I was ten and she was eight, lost touch, met again at drama school (which she came to briefly after studying finance at university) and have been good friends ever since. She gets on very well with the others, too.
    Claire and I had ‘a moment’ once, of course. Which male and female friends haven’t had a moment? But ours was mercifully brief and almost entirely without consequence. It lasted about thirty seconds; a lustless half-minute of drunken snogging at our drama school’s Christmas party before collapsing into giggles, each telling the other that their technique was dreadful. It was about as romantic as I’d imagine (not that I have imagined it) kissing Alan or Matt or Ed would be.
    If anything, Claire and I became even better friends afterwards because we’d got that awkward will-we-won’t-we? moment out of the way early on. We’d try to set each other up with our friends while always joking that we’d marry one another if we hadn’t found anyone else by thirty-five. Our friendship often felt like a proper relationship, but without the responsibility, the angst, the guilt trips, the phone calls, the annoying friends, the expensive presents and the sex which starts disappointingly, becomes briefly exciting and then fades into infrequent, bored familiarity. And before I’m accused of misogyny, that point about the boring, familiar sex was first made by Claire, not me. She’s a realist – an amusing, filthy, cynical, kind-hearted realist – and that’s why we hit it off.
    This particular evening we were getting on well as usual, catching up on the gossip from Lisa’s wedding (Lisa had never liked Claire, whom she’d viewed as a threat, so hadn’t invited her) and discussing which one of our friends would be next. Claire, who had always had something of a soft spot for Ed,thought he and Tara would be