United States of England: There's really no point, is there?

At some point between the apocalyptic thunderstorms that have been lashing Auld Reekie, this year's Edinburgh International Festival Fringe officially kicked off, bringing exciting and diverse entertainments from around the world to our sleep little corner of Scotland. Also, Jimmy Carr.

Let's not forget the most important people in all this: London's Britain's cultural intelligensia who have decamped north en masse to sample pints of ale in Rebus' local, soak up the atmosphere in the world's first City of Literature and get in the way of the locals. The annual occupation more or less renders any coverage we'd be offering on the festival season irrelevant, except for those occasions when lame punning and excessive sarcasm are required, so we're just not going to bother.

A couple of hints, though, for the festival rookie - Spiegeltent is so 2005, all of the good parties are flat parties and you're not invited, and, whatever you do, don't heckle Daniel Kitson.

If you need us, we'll be in the Assembly Rooms Lane Bar.