Sunday in Edinburgh, a time for quiet reflection, mostly about where my tickets might be. Working a blag-one/buy-one system is a nice idea in principle but actually locating them while slightly hungover requires the sort of organisational skills only possessed by, well, most women. Thankfully the necessary tokens are acquired in time for what turns out to be an unexpected highlight of the whole weekend.

8pm: Mark Walker: Scorpio
Gilded Balloon

To be honest, I'd never caught Mark Walker live before and only really booked this show because (a) the times fitted in nicely (b) he's Roy Walker's son - a tenuous enough link to the Circuit Training theme, and (c) I got extremely drunk with him and another comic a few years back, to the extent that the only thing I can remember about that evening was my other half plummeting to the pavement several times on the way home. Made me laugh, anyway.

Walker, it turns out, is a force of nature: a former hard-rock frontman and member of the cast of Starlight Express, now a singing, dancing, prancing stand-up with more strings to his bow than a shopaholic Robin Hood. This isn't the easiest venue in which to grab an audience's attention as it's evident from the frequent muffled shrieks that there's something awfully funny going on elsewhere in the Balloon complex, but is he fazed? Not a jot.

This being his first Edinburgh since the early noughties Walker uses his own life story as the main thrust, pondering whether he conforms to the star-sign stereotype. It sounds a flimsy concept but does enable numerous gags at the expense of fellow Scorpios, most notably his chance discovery that one of the 20th Century's most evil men is the living spit of one of England's star central defenders (evidence). All those dance moves, songs and set-pieces, and a funny picture of a war criminal gets the biggest laugh of the night. That's showbiz.

Still, it's a tough act to follow, which we do with a man already familiar to previous perusers of this column. Justin Moorhouse is the former Phoenix Nights regular who had a decent part in Ken Loach's recent Cantona film Looking for Eric, but is still a bit new to the Edinburgh festivities. Seven is only his third Fringe show and, on the evidence of this exchange in the doorway of the Pleasance Dome, he's a bit trepidatious about the whole 'getting reviewed' business.

Moorhouse: "So who have you come to see tonight?"
Me: "I've come to see you mate!"
Moorhouse: "Oh God, no, you haven't have you?"

He couldn't have looked more concerned if I'd coughed on his kids and blamed it on swine flu.

9:40pm: Justin Moorhouse: Seven
Pleasance Dome

Moorhouse's show gets off to a false start when he bounds on, realises that the air conditioning is making far too much noise and spends a good minute persuading one of the venue staff that, yes, he really does need them to come and sort it and, no, he isn't joking - a perennial problem for comics, that.

Having to start the show all over again isn't ideal but thankfully the comic is among friends tonight. Best known elsewhere in the country for his stand-up and sitcom work, in his native Manchester Moorhouse is a bit of a face, notably due to his afternoon show on big commercial radio station Key 103. He's broadcasting it from the fest too, and has clearly enticed a few fans - the other type - up to Scotland, half the audience piping up when asked if anyone from Lancashire is in. It's good to know you can fall back on a few Bolton gags if the going gets tough.

Seven is based around the number seven - hence the expensively acquired Snow White costume stage-right - and particularly on the notion on the theory that the world revolves around seven basic stories. Moorhouse rattles through these in entertaining fashion, wandering off-topic whenever the mood takes him and launching into an occasional rant that leaves a few watchers slightly bewildered, having clearly never heard the nice man off the radio swear before.

Given the faltering start Moorhouse puts together an entertaining hour, factoring in a fair bit of audience banter along the way to keep things fresh. You wouldn't be surprised if a few of his radio followers came back for more.

Almost time to head back to reality then, but for the traditional curtain-closer to an Edinburgh weekend we take in one of the boozy late-night gigs that keep the comics in beer/drug/transsexual-hooker money during the fest, and catch a full-on comedy car-crash.

I probably shouldn't reveal which talented young comic (over the PA mic) accused another talented young comic (halfway through his set) of sleeping with his ex and not ringing her back, but the exchange eventually saw one attack the other with a fold-up chair and the latter respond with a stepladder, before the compere stepped in and drew matters to a close.

Best leave it there really.