Brian Ferguson’s diary

What’s been most missed in Edinburgh this month? It’s been very off without a late-night fanfare of fireworks from the castle esplanade, the city centre has been looking a hell of a lot better without posters on fences on every second street corner, and it’s been easy to stroll down the Royal Mile without being handed a flyer.

But now the thing keeping me awake at night is wondering how comics are coping without hecklers in their lives, given that their gigs are confined to the virtual world.

I hadn’t given it too much thought until I ventured out for what, to date, has been my only “live” experience of the festival season.

Funshine on Leith is a collaboration between Invisible Cities, the social enterprise which trains up people with experience of homelessness to become guides to their own city, and the Leith Comedy Festival, which has had to put plans for a launch later this year on hold in the face of the pandemic.

Part of the fun on Paul Stewart’s whistle-stop tour of some of Leith’s best-known haunts, which run until the end of the month, is watching the street life unfold around you, particularly around the “Sticky Vicky” statue at the foot of Leith Walk, outside the Central Bar, and en route through the Kirkgate Centre and the neighbouring graveyard.

Paul admits he has become