FORMER Edinburgh slam champion Cat Brogan was apologising on Monday for having to read some of her poems at Other Voices: Spoken Word Cabaret at the Banshee Labyrinth.  “I’m doing an MA at Goldsmiths and as a result I’m not allowed to rhyme anymore,” she explained.  As any performance poet will tell you, it’s the rhyme and beat that help you remember the words.

THE Banshee Labyrinth is home to a number of events in the PBH Free Fringe part of the festival. Labyrinth is right: the series of cellar-like performing spaces resemble catacombs. I have no idea whether this is true, but MC Fay Roberts, in a resplendent outfit, informed the Spoken Word Cabaret audience that the shadowy cave we were occupying was once a torture chamber. Fay's event, featuring a host of female spoken word names daily except Wednesdays, at 2.50pm, included on Monday Jess Green, Stephanie Dogfoot, and Danni Antagonist, in addition to special guest Cat Brogan.    

AS I’ve already made clear, it’s 10 years since I was last at the Edinburgh Fringe, and there have certainly been some changes in that time. For one thing, Fosters and Strongbow now seem to be on tap everywhere, almost to the exclusion of any other choice. Progress comes in many shapes, I guess.

ONE thing you will be told about Edinburgh is that you keep bumping into people unexpectedly, until eventually it becomes expected. At the Banshee Labyrinth I encountered an ex-colleague from my former days as a newspaper sub-editor.  I had no idea he went in for this kind of thing. Andy Bodle was in Edinburgh as part of the group Stand-Up Tragedy, and looked in on the Spoken Word Cabaret on Monday to deliver an open mic offering called Cometh the Hour, about losing your virginity to the wrong person, and of years spent with his “flag at full-mast”, which he sang impressively as a sea shanty. You dark horse,  Andy. Greg Freeman