Mervyn Stutter’s pick of the fringe and what we picked from it.

If you go up to the Edinburgh festival/fringe one thing you must do early on is to get a ticket to see Mervyn Stutter’s pick of the fringe. Merv as he likes to be known has been producing his review show for as long as he cares to remember and for my money we should see this actor/comedian/singer, well I was going to say more but seeing as we don’t see him at all on TV I’ll rephrase that. We should see Mervyn Stutter on TV. He is actually on the radio but I’d not heard of him until Edinburgh.


Merv tells jokes-ish, sings satirical ditties and interviews others with shows in the fringe. He’s an old fashioned presenter, he sings songs he’s made up to parody the rich and lampoon the famous, and he’s old fashioned. Surely there’s a market for a gentler satire? There’s a market for the pick of the fringe show sure enough. We caught the final show of the run so we saw the presentations for the pick of the fringe awards.

What you get with this show is a five minute excerpt from several shows in the fringe. Then you can decide if you want to see any (or all) of them. We saw a singer, a mime artist an improv act based on Chaucer (only at the fringe!) an excerpt from a play, tap dancers a stand up comedienne and a singer from one of the venues, and it was the venue that had won the award. All were judged best in show this year. An hour and a half’s entertainment for the price of an hour and your research done for you. Great value. Which leads us to-