He's got a camera and a notepad and he's ready to blog. I can't believe it's been a year. But here I am, again, preparing to fly north for the summer, for another intense month at the Edinburgh Fringe.
It's an experience that would surely fall foul of the Geneva Convention, if we didn't all voluntarily sign up for it. Deprived of sleep, decent food and proper exercise, most participants spend their time feeling decidedly groggy, laid low by an indeterminate bug.
All contact with the outside world will be curtailed, too, in this fiercely insular environment, where all that matters is the next review or box office receipts. America's security alert could be orange or puce, and it wouldn't make a difference.
Why do we do it? Well, partly out of masochistic habit, partly because everyone else in the industry is there. But mostly, for the comedy fan, it's because it presents a unique opportunity to see comics challenge themselves. Not to get the better of a persistent heckler, or calm a screeching hen party, but to produce the best show they can in front of an audience that wants to listen.
The Fringe is the engine that drives Britain's comedy scene.
The work and sweat comics put into their shows improves the work they do year-round. If you fail to become a better comedian from 25 straight nights of your own hour-long show, then you're never going to learn.
The other reason, of course, is to be spotted.
You can't throw a deep-fried Mars Bar in Edinburgh without hitting a booker, agent or talent scout. While it's unlikely even the best of Fringe shows is ever going to make anyone a star (mention last year's Perrier-winner Demetri Martin to anyone outside the closeted world of stand-up to see what I mean), a hit will increase a comic's standing among their peers and in the industry.
For a jobbing comedian, whose glamorous life normally extends little further than small-hours Ginsters pasties in Britain's soulless service stations, the value of that kudos cannot be underestimated. For one month, the comedians are royalty.
Their position in line to the throne may ebb and flow with every reviewers' adjective, but they remain minor celebrities nonetheless.
Over the next three and a bit weeks, we'll be the Heat Magazine to this world, ¼ reporting on the hits and the flops, the parties and the bizarre behaviour that makes the Edinburgh Fringe the most exciting festival in the world. And the unhealthiest.
