Edinburgh Festival - Stephen Smith makes his debut at the greatest audience show on earth

You can never tell which unknown newcomer is going to steal the limelight at Edinburgh, but I've got a very good feeling about my own performance there this year. Some sort of TV opportunity is definitely on the cards. It's funny, but ever since I was a kid, I had a hunch that I was going to make it all the way to the greatest show on earth. The Edinburgh Audience Festival: it's what every starry-eyed spectator from the sticks dreams about.

In the days to come, you might catch a glimpse of me late at night on a highlights programme and say to yourself: "You lucky bastard." And you'd be right. The drink, the women, the streets paved with discarded fliers: who wouldn't want to be a part of all that? What they never show you on television, however, is the sheer hard graft of getting into a hit show at Edinburgh, the heartache and rejection that await you every time you put yourself on the line at the box office and say: "I don't suppose you've got any returns for Johnny Vegas, have you?"

There are no prizes for coming last. Top international arts buffs have spent the whole year planning for 1,400 shows at 200 different venues during the three weeks of the event. That's 16,000 performances. Or, to put it another way, well over a million very sharp elbows.

I made my debut with an unscheduled lunchtime appearance at the Ross open-air theatre, where my improv soon had the crowd on their feet, letting me squeeze past them and take a seat out of the rain beneath an awning. As a jazz trio from Argentina went through their paces, I was privileged to sit in on a masterclass of audience participation. "We want Oasis!" shouted the man behind me. The brazenness, the wit, the precociously hospitalising intake of alcohol!

On the Royal Mile, a whooping mob surrounded a man who was waving the Stars and Stripes above his head. With my experience of street theatre, I immediately recognised a provocative critique of globalisation. But the moment I began taking notes, a young woman in a catsuit detached herself from the crowd and started telling me about a musical produced by the Dr Phillips High School of Florida. Another gave me a badge that said "I love Orlando".

With so many egos in the same place at one time, billing can be a touchy subject, and I'm afraid I nearly lost it with the festival organisers over where and when I was supposed to be appearing. I had a booking for a teatime gig at the Gilded Balloon - "Tony Ponzi Presents", a celebration in music and humour of the Bristol recording industry, of all things. (Sample joke: "You had such a dazzling smile, epileptics would fall at your feet.") But the Gilded Balloon turned out to have at least three satellite venues, as well as accommodating under its own roof any number of admission-levying stages, workshops and cloisters of comedy.

By mid-evening, when one of the hot tickets of the fringe, Chris Addison, was sharing a space with me at the Pleasance, I had got my whole theatregoing act together. Addison appeared in a linen suit and a panama hat, like one of Sebastian Flyte's special friends. He tackled the "not again" topic of English attitudes to foreigners. The good news is that his views would be congenial to many readers of this magazine. He is also dauntingly bright and quick.

For me, a highlight of the entire Audience Festival are the late-night open-mike sessions, at which leading drunks are joined by comics such as Jason Byrne and Andrew Maxwell. These guys are a terrific support to the people who make Edinburgh what it is: the hecklers, the catnappers, the unsuspecting butts of jokes. Getting a laugh is one thing, but the equation of comedy, as we show people call it, can be completed only by the brave, unselfish love of giving a laugh in return. Yes, prizes will be awarded this month, and careers launched. But let's hear it for the crowd, my fellow bums on seats.

Stephen Smith is a Channel 4 News reporter

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