London

First of all, let’s put it on the record: Tim FitzHigham isn’t crazy. He has a habit, though, of doing unusual and foolhardy things. He navigated 160 miles of the River Thames in a boat made entirely out of paper. He rowed across the English Channel in a copper bath. These weren’t just self-promoting stunts. FitzHigham has used his mad exploits to raise tens of thousands for charities. He’s also used them as the springboard for two fascinating solo shows.

This time round, in ‘Untitled’ (Pleasance Hut), the jumping-off point is his obsession with Don Quixote, the over-imaginative and idealistic hero of the seventeenth-century novel by Cervantes. Following in the character’s footsteps, FitzHigham resolved to turn himself into a medieval knight. That’s not as easy as it might sound. For a large part of this year he lived the part – fighting in tournaments, eating only the food they ate at the time, wearing armour, living alone on the sun-baked plains of La Mancha. He also sought the necessary knighthood by making overtures to King Bob, monarch of the tiny Caribbean island of Redonda.In the show FitzHigham gives us an account of his exploits. It’s like a lecture delivered by an odd but inspirational professor. He makes strange behaviour sound normal. Everybody has a touch of Don Quixote inside them, he declares – the capacity to set off on some mad adventure. Few of us carry it through. FitzHigham shows us how. Feature continues

The Edinburgh Fringe, and indeed the world, has need of eccentrics as a counterbalance to the level-headed orthodoxy and lack of imagination all around us. In comedy this takes the form of stand-ups who simply bundle together a succession of effective gags. That’s sufficient, perhaps, for undemanding club gigs. It’s not enough for a solo show. For that we (the audience) need, at the very least, a strong sense of the performer’s personality to come through. We need evidence that the comic regards us as something more than dumb animals to be prodded into laughter. Ideally, we need the comedian to tease our minds with fanciful ideas and unpredictable observations.

There are some on this year’s Fringe who do precisely that. There could be many, but those I’ve seen include Andrew Lawrence, Andrew O’Neill, Josie Long and the indefatigable Mark Watson. Indefatigable because Watson’s coruscating stand-up show ‘I’m Worried That I’m Starting To Hate Almost Everyone in the World’ (Pleasance Upstairs), full of inventive twists and turns and linguistic virtuosity, was only one of three shows he delivered. In one of the others he’s collaborating with his audiences, over the length of the festival, to write a novel. Then, to cap it all, he’s already mounted a continuous and unbroken 36-hour performance, with just a little help from his wife and friends.

Over at the Assembly Rooms in George Street, Robin Ince, winner of this year’s TO Award for Outstanding Achievement, builds some very funny stories out of the seemingly endless run of disasters that beset his basement flat in Ealing and an unfortunate encounter up a back alley in Newcastle. But there’s a lot more to the show than just stories. His mind switches tracks so fast it’s sometimes difficult to keep up. Pithy observations rub shoulders with references to Schopenhauer. Three minutes with Ince provides more food for thought than half an hour in the company of any jobbing comedian.

Andrew Lawrence (Pleasance Hut again) has to be seen to be believed. This is a formidably funny character (let’s hope, for his sake, it’s a character and not Lawrence himself), a ginger-haired figure, like a wizened dwarf, with a rasping voice, a grotesque family background and a scornful, warped attitude towards the world. Lawrence isn’t exactly a newcomer – he’s already won the BBC New Comedy Award – but ‘How To Butcher Your Loved Ones’ is his first full-length show. It’s likely to be remembered as the dawning of an original new talent.

Josie Long, in ‘Kindness and Exuberance’ (Café Royal), is… well, she’s Josie Long – entirely herself, daft, scatty, whimsical, friendly, wholly engaging and a far better stand-up than those adjectives may imply. Finally (for this year’s Fringe reports – roll on 2007), there’s Andrew O’Neill (at the Underbelly). He seeks to persuade us that the unlikely title of his show happens to be true: ‘Winston Churchill Was Jack the Ripper’. It’s tongue-in-cheek time and it’s also real good fun. Congrats to O’Neill and to all concerned with keeping the flame of true creativity burning bright.