Edinburgh Festival Day 1: Apparently ..

THE EDINBURGH Festival is the year's biggest PR bunfight with all the companies that promote tomorrow's TV faces jostling for position. Rupert Gavin of Incidental PR was so pleased with his company's early progress that he threw an exclusive party for his employees and the acts that they represent. He decided to hold his bash in the Assembly Rooms Club Bar at the weekend, a not unreasonable place to make a song and dance about yourself as it is the favourite watering hole for promoters, bookers and journalists at the Festival. However, he took the unusual step of not issuing a single invitation to the press.

As Mr Gavin's prime schmoozing targets staggered by the Assembly Rooms bar for their habitual nightcap on the way back to their hotels they were told, by embarrassed Assembly Room staff, that Mr Gavin was entertaining and they would have to drink elsewhere. An anti-publicity coup if ever there was one.

AN UPDATE on the mysterious fire at the Playhouse Theatre. Fruit-and- flame juggler Paul Morocco is claiming that he started the blaze while rehearsing round the back of the theatre. Circus manger Jim Rose, who has been shocking the country with his stomach-turning freak show, says he would have started it if only he'd been in Edinburgh at the time.