Without a shadow of doubt, doing last year's blog - and preparing fot this year's blog - has changed my life. Completely. No exaggeration.

My plan for this year's blog was to start writing and showing pictures back in April, but literally *on the day* that I was going to start doing this, things took a serious turn for the worse in my private life, and everything - including Edinburgh; the writing, rehearsing, and the blogging, was put on hold.

Readers of last year's entries will remember the stories of how my wife Anneliese came up, got injured falling off a window sill(!), and helped take pictures for the blog. Regrettably, that won't be happening this year as we are in the process of separating. Important as comedy is to me (and it really is), it had to take a back seat as my private life was sorted out. People who know me well have a better idea what happened, and according to them, there are 'clues' in my show this year; not just in content, but in the darker, slightly more stark style that it has adopted. However it is never mentioned openly (I had a brief chat while working on Mock The Week last week with Russell Howard about this, and felt it was down to my own comfort with how this would work). And with respect to all the parties concerned, I won't go into details on the blog either, no matter how much my PR believe this titbit of personal strife could be an absolute winner for the press. :/

So, this year, being in Edinburgh is not just a triumph of writing and preparation, it really is evidence of a battle against some fairly heavy emotional adversity. I have two days to go until my first show and I still haven't put together my slide presentation or rehearsed the links for it. I've also yet to do a preview without notes on stage. This is practically unheard of for me.

I find that performing when there's stuff going on in your head is tough, though doable; but the creative process - writing, rewriting, rehearsing; is nigh-on impossible. The temptation to write about exactly what is going on is huge, as that's what your head is full of, and the discipline to concentrate in its entirety on a completely different subject for the sake of your work had to be learnt at break-neck speed. So I was genuinely shocked when the people who know me well were enthusing so heavily about my previews and how good they thought it was - I wouldn't have been surprised if they told me it was pony. In fact, Lisa, my massively-pregnant-about-to-drop-any-second agent, was fairly sure I was going to pull this year's festival. We'll find out a month from now if my decision to stick with it was right or not.

For those of you who know me (and my wife) personally, don't worry. I'm fine, she's fine, and it's as amicable as it can be. I'm still sad about what happened, but that emotion is neatly suppressed into sections of my show and aparently, the quality of my driving. :)

Speaking of which... off we go. Here's my pile of stuff for this year's show; Once again, I'm living on my own, this time in New Town. Unbelievably, for a flat in excess of £2000 for the month, there is NO PHONE LINE and NO INTERNET! So once again, I will be attempting to hook onto a neighbour's wifi and trying not to run up a bill of £600+ for mobile phone net access. The first thing I will do when arriving - and I mean this - is switch on wifi, then go knocking on neighbour's doors and offer money and favours for hooking up on their net access for the next four weeks. What's the going rate for wireless bribery?