Isy Suttie: My Edinburgh

Apparently, when the Edinburgh festival was conceived during the 1940s, the idea was pitched at Oxford , too. I've often wondered if that similarly noble city would be happy with the annual invasion of millions of eager punters and wide-eyed clowns, dripping with greasepaint, glitter and sweat. It must be strange to suddenly have the bus stop outside your house turned into venue 1064, and to have a merry flyerer dressed as Henry VIII at the end of your street. I chatted to a female cabbie last night about whether she liked the festival. I had asked to go to Buccleuch Street, which I pronounced "Boocleeuuurgher". A silence ensued, after which she spat: "It's Bucloo. It's English." Rather than protest, I nodded. "Silly me! Of course, it's Bucloo. Why, only last week I queued to buy some bucloo pie." I hastily threw in that my dad's from Scotland, something I keep up my sleeve in case of an anti-English tirade. Although my dad has lived in England since he was a teenager, his accent seems, if anything, to have got stronger, especially when he's in church. I threw that in, then said I was from "the north". (Derbyshire is the north in Londoners' books.) She remained unimpressed. Her answer to my original question was simple. " The Ladyboys of Bangkok are all right. You can take anyone to that show. I took my mother-in-law. I don't see anything else." For anyone who doesn't know, The Ladyboys of Bangkok are precisely that. All used to be men. The idea of attending with my potential mother-in-law is inconceivable. As far as I remember (and I did see it when I was about 20), they parade around and sing, some of them half-naked. They look beautiful – but they also look like they could knock you out with a left hook as soon as kiss you. Just saw: Colin Hoult's Inferno . A cross between The Wicker Man and The Fast Show . No one else can do what Colin does. Fantastic.