GREETINGS from the PBH Free Fringe in Edinburgh, where, since I’m staying with ace political songwriter Calum Baird and his partner Ellie in Polmont, 20 miles away, I have a daily commute to work for the first time since 1980. Train to Waverley, 30 mins or so, then an enormous lung-busting climb up the Fleshmarket Steps, across the Royal Mile, down Niddry Street to my home from home Bannermans Bar at the junction with Cowgate. St Cecilia’s Hall, where I’m doing my Early Music Shows, is just before it on the left.

Bannermans is the absolute epicentre of the Edinburgh metal/punk/indie scene, my ideal venue. I’ve done it for years, there’s Citra pale ale on at my request and the staff are absolutely lovely. My last shows are today at 1.30 and tomorrow at 4pm, with an extra show alongside Calum Baird and Elsie MacDonald at Leith Depot tonight, then it’s home to Robina. Having an absolutely lovely time, the gigs are going well and the city is rammed, even now the Oasis hordes have departed.

The Free Fringe has reclaimed the original spirit of the Fringe by making at least part of it accessible to all, and founder Peter Buckley Hill tried to take things further at the Fringe Society AGM last Tuesday with a motion that would have made the distribution of sponsorship funds and grants a lot more equitable. The clever and combative comedian Kate Smurthwaite spoke in support, as did I, with a simple quote from Scottish songwriter Edwyn Collins: “Rip it up and start again”.  We didn’t win, but it was a shot across the bows: the pay-to-play Fringe is totally unfair to grass-roots performers and things have to change.

I’m now relaxing a bit and starting to see other people’s shows alongside my 4pm Bannerman’s slot. Here are a couple of reviews.

The first is the most utterly batshit thing I have *ever* seen *anywhere* at the Fringe in (I think) 18 stints here starting in 1982, so that is saying something!

A large poster next to Bannerman’s announced “THE FORESKIN DIARIES: Ron Low’s quirky musical monologue about forced genital cutting and foreskin restoration.” Niche, obviously. But definitely my niche.

As someone who reluctantly said goodbye to my foreskin seven months ago, aged 67, for very good medical reasons, I had to go.

Ron delivered a series of keyboard-based ditties on the evils of circumcision and, well, the delights of growing your foreskin back using a device he has patented called the TLC Tugger. I’m not making this up. Google it. Apparently 56,000 men are using one.

Imagine a slightly deranged American John Shuttleworth singing a selection of songs about his knob. We were instructed to sing along to the words on the screen. We did. It was completely nuts. And at the end I added a coda. “Recurrent balanitis, no! That’s why mine simply had to go.” Don’t Google that.

It’s at Bar 50 in Cowgate at 6.30. Up to you.

Literally 10 minutes later I was listening to Kate Smurthwaite’s tales of polygamy and racism on French beaches and invitations to take magic mushrooms with Katie Hopkins on live TV. Kate is a countercultural force of nature, a scourge of the right and a very clever woman who makes me very glad I’ve been gloriously monogamous for over a quarter of a century. She’s got four shows, I undeservedly recommend going to see any of them. You won’t be disappointed. A legend of the Free Fringe.

And finally. Isn’t it strange how a media owned and controlled by right-wing billionaires only started to rant continuously about “small boats” to the virtual exclusion of everything else after Labour got into power? (The fact that they have been an utter travesty is irrelevant in this context).

And isn’t it strange how climate change, an existential threat to our species and the planet, is being pushed lower and lower down the agenda by all sides even as its scorching, drowning, suffocating threat manifests itself in ever greater force in front of our eyes?

Rhetorical question obviously.

Enjoy what’s left of the summer.

Ron Low: Tickets: freefestival.co.uk 
Kate Smurthwaite: Info: katesmurthewaite.co.uk