Home from Edinburgh, having had a great week in Edinburgh.

Aside from performing in a few Imps shows whilst there (more on that later) we got to see around fifteen shows. Some were exceptional. Tim Key (this years main award winner) thoroughly deserved his accolades with his show, The Slutcracker, and his friend Tom Basden's show, Now That's What I Call Music-Based Comedy, was also great. They both have a similar style, delivering what could be described (simplistically) as intentionally bad poetry (Key) or songs (Basden) ("it's not intentional", says Key, "when I sit down to write a poem, I think 'Let's make this a good one'"). Basden is an excellent guitarist, I should also note. Their material is coupled with extensive use of multimedia and some props, making the show seem so much more than just stand-up. Key ends his show attempting to cross the room, aided by the audience, without touching the floor, paying off an earlier bit. Basden litters his shows with slides on his inventions (new boys names, girls names, maths) cartoons, and other ideas (a wordsearch comprising 100 letter Y's and the word 'Patio') set to music. I liked Key's show more, because of the quality of his performance, his delivery, his interactions with Fletch the techie, but Basden has perhaps been underated this year.

I also really like Laura Solon's first show in Edinburgh since winning the Perrier in 2005. She tells a story through a number of charachter (both male and female) which she voices. The story is both good in of itself and serves to allow a number of excellent standalone sketches (the French radio interview where the presenter and the French author debate whose culture is better, England or France is a highlight, as is her Welsh call-centre lady). The performance was energetic, her delivery impeccable and she seemed just, for want of a better word, lovely.

Rounding off my picks (bearing in mind I'm waiting to see Daniel Kitson and Stewart Lee on their post Fringe tours) was Simon Munnery's 2009 AGM. For our ticket, we got an hour and a quarter in the venue, and a further hour in the pub after as he finished going through all the submitted motions, improvising responses leading into more established routines. It's incredible how much matertial he has to draw on, and style-wise, there's no-one like him ("I went swimming in the river: widths, mainly").

I saw a lot of sketch shows - the Bristol Revunions and Delete the BanJaX were really fun, especially the latter. They seemed liked good friends whose palable delight at performing together was infectious, and where bits fell apart due to exhaustion and lost voices at the end of the run, their good natured mocking of each other was pitched exactly right. One of the guys, Dan, was particularly difficult to stop watching, and his enormous personality was obvious in all his characters (both human and horse). I want to do shows with them.

The Durham Revue were disappointing - I've often enjoyed them more than their Oxford or Cambridge counterparts. Cath and I left feeling quite bored by the end, as the show ran out of ideas about halfway through. I enjoyed the Penny Dreadfuls and Pappy's Fun Club, although given the disputes over the latter between Imps, I've had quite enough of discussing its merits and shortcomings. Rich Hall was quite a letdown - it was a bit meandering, and while he's great at dealing with the unplanned bits with the audience, little of his material was as stellar as I've seen in the past.

There's more, but instead, let's talk about the Imps. I did three shows, and to be brutally honest, I didn't enjoy myself a huge amount. Part of this was being a little out-of-practice, and the problems with joining a group of people who have their own momentum. I also didn't particularly like the set lists - I find improvised musicals tedious and I don't have much more love for Shakespeare scenes either. I find them restrictive with their conventions and often too long and convoluted. I'm also not convinced the audience don't share my assessment, for all our own bluster. Quite frankly, I like short form with all its silliness and energy and gimmicks and short scenes which allow quick ideas and short bursts of insanity, and I like long form for the ability to develop ideas and characters slowly and build up layers of humour and bring back themes. Where the group currently is sits between these two, but without the positives of either.