A trade show? A university? A holiday?

I'm on the flight home from three nights, two-and-a-half days at the Edinburgh Festival. Time enough to catch up with lots of friendly, albeit pallid faces and to see a selection of shows. I went up looking for inspiration. I'm not sure yet whether I found any.

I've just finished Joshua Ferris' wonderful novel about life in Chicago advertising, Then We Came to the End. He has a phrase that sums up the Edinburgh experience beautifully: -

Amnesty was a gift, but oblivion was terror.

I'm obviously still trying to understand the entire Festival palaver, hence this procession of strange multiple choice titles.

The only way that Edinburgh ever made sense to me as a participant was as a trade show. Regardless of the industry a successful trade show requires an epic list of necessary factors that still aren't sufficient without the luck you need to meet the buyer you need in amongst the 2400 other sellers.

Wherever you are on the comedy food chain the person who can get you to the next level is undoubtedly somewhere in the city right now. All you have to do is get them to see your show and nail the gig the night they do. This is far harder than you'd think: posters, fliers, reviewers, even audiences all need to align to achieve this. The late night bars echo with acts lamenting that they haven't been reviewed, or that the agent was one of only three punters who turned up that night, or that all of the externals were in place but due to fatigue or illness or whatever the performer just didn't find the funny on stage.

Not everyone agrees with my Trade Show definition. Plenty of acts see the Festival more as a Comedy University ('CU Jummy'?). A chance to perform in as many as a hundred shows and to watch and drink with other comics. These people wear fatigue like a badge of honour. For a month you can make your mistakes openly. Hide in plain sight. For the last few years I was happy taking this 'university' approach but if you never intend to graduate then after a while you're just the kinda creepy older guy still hanging around campus.

The final option is to treat it as a holiday. Band camp for adults. Drop a few thousand quid on a month in Scotland instead of the Seychelles and good luck to you.

Whatever the motivation Edinburgh is wet, cold, tiring, entirely indifferent to your suffering and thus perversely addictive. I'd like to think I've another show in me.

2011 anyone?