Edinburgh Fringe: Cabaret and variety show highlights

Various venues, throughout August

Naked accordionists. Warp-speed strippers. Bare-cheeked, er, cheek.

Sometimes it seems as if nobody in the Fringe programme’s Cabaret and Variety pages can keep their kit on.

But hang on. Here’s Esther Rantzen and, saucy as her odd-shaped vegetable co-stars on That’s Life got, she’s surely not going to resort to nudity as she recalls 50 years in broadcasting at Gilded Balloon Teviot?

Maureen Lipman hasn’t appeared on the Fringe since the swinging 60s but even if she is, as her show’s title proclaims, Up for It, the one-time Beattie of BT television commercials probably won’t be revisiting the joys of free love at Assembly George Square.

This is the Fringe, though, and people do funny things, even if they’re not always as funny as their brochure blurb promises.

Kevin Quantum, on the other hand, now he is entertaining. The magic he performs consistently leaves the people who lend him a tenner dumbfounded as he hands it back contained in an orange or in some other unpredictable article. His show, Vanishing Point, is at the Underbelly in Bristo Square from August 1 to 26.

You never know what’s coming next with Mat Ricardo, either. He might be familiar as the guy on the insurance advert who not only pulls the table cloth away – leaving the crockery, cutlery, etc in place – but also puts it back again with everything intact.

If he does this in Mat Ricardo vs the World (Laughing Horse @ City Café Aug 2-26), it will probably be the only predictable thing he does, although his knifethrowing targets mostly leave local A&E departments untroubled.

Predictable also, in a good sense, are Adele Anderson (Assembly George Square, Aug 1-26) and Kate Dimbleby (Frankenstein Pub, Aug 13-27). The former is one third of satirical cabaret act Fascinating Aïda, and that makes her reliably wry and – whisper this – a possible successor to Victoria Wood in terms of wit, self-deprecation and songs about everything that can go wrong going wrong with a capital W.

Kate Dimbleby – yes, ye ken her faither – is funny, sharp and, as her Peggy Lee tribute in her early Fringe visits revealed, a fine singer.

A darker horse might be Anya Anastasia (Gilded Balloon, Aug 126). A work in progress when she appeared on the Fringe in 2016, she also revealed singing, songwriting, macabre choreography and comedic talents that could make her latest show, The Executioners, worth checking out.

Kevin Quantum performs at the Underbelly.