Celebrities crop up everywhere during the Fringe. At my visit to Funz And Gamez Rebootz, the anarchic anti-kids kids’ show from Phil Ellis, QI’s Alan Davies was sat in the same row as me. Soon he found himself pulled onstage as part of a ‘pretty princess’ game, in which his son placed a frilly dress on him, drenched him in lipstick and called him Doris. ‘We don’t usually allow photos,’ shouted Ellis, ‘but in this case... ’ Innocent japes all around.

But that’s an early-afternoon show; the more scandalous heart of the Fringe can be found later on. Splashed across the poster for We Forgive You: The Confessional (a novelty hour in which people provide ‘real’ confessions for tittering hosts) was the gruelling phrase ‘I had a wank in the Anne Frank Museum’, which is less a knockabout confession and more an admission of a prosecutable sex crime. Maybe this was assembled by an undercover police squad to entrap criminals searching for a good night out. What other confessions have they received if this is the PG material on the poster? ‘I have murdered five people in the Chichester area, including a beloved town vicar’; ‘I have been abducting horses from stables across the UK and selling their meat to Birds Eye as a protein-rich alternative to beef’; ‘I am a stabber’. What larks, eh?

My distaste towards this sub-Cards Against Humanity toss is probably because I’m a paid-up member of the simpering arts and culture sector. That would certainly be the view of comic Elliot Steel, who announced on Instagram that he’s ‘banning’ reviewers from his hour because he wants to poke at left-wing perspectives and thinks he’ll be punished by the Fringe’s ‘liberal bubble’. It’s a view I’m semi-sympathetic towards (I’ve met a tiny minority of reviewers who are more interested in confirmation bias than punchlines), but overall, Steel gives short shrift to the bulk of critics who can definitely take a joke. 

Having said that, the sneer towards Oasis daring to perform during August has cranked open a class fissure between members of the arts community and fans of the Manc lads, with claims that the influx of bucket hatters would lead to traditional Edinburgh Festival patrons ditching the city entirely. Complaints about the ‘Oasis Effect’ on ticket sales aren’t necessarily unfair, but it’s become difficult to disentangle the disapproving tone of Kate Smurthwaite (who claimed that an audience of zero at her Free Fringe show was down to the pair’s supersonic reunion) from the horrid grotesques painted by Edinburgh councillors earlier this year when they described fans of the band as beer-swilling lunkheads prone to wild bouts of violence.

Given the broad demographic of people who were at the gig, perhaps portraying fans of the Gallaghers as hostile to the arts is as misguided as claiming all comedy reviewers are a pampered PC brigade who want their sensitivities indulged. All I know is that mentioning Oasis in this diary allows me to write off the exorbitant price of that ticket on my tax return. I hope Liam and Noel are proud of such a shameless concession to capitalism.