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All the world's the Edinburgh Festival

Scotland's capital in August is quite simply an endurance contest, luvvies. Naturally, you'll have been in training for some time if you're popping over to Edinburgh for the world's biggest arts festival.

But afore ye go, ask yourself these questions. Do you have what it takes - Tamagotchi, bitten blue nails, inability to hold a conversation with a grown-up, ability to make one beer last between four for three hours - to make it as a festival groupie? When someone invites you to yet another party at Club Mercado to mime to Abba, will you be able to face another thousand cigarettes and a bouncer in a headset shouting 'I dinnae give a toss!'? Festival victims will hire flats for GBP800 (about HK$10,000) a week, buy mohair tartan g-strings and/or balloon animals and spend the entire four weeks in queues.

Survivors will still have enough energy at the end of it to trek halfway out of the city to see music acts such as New Zealand lecturer John Cousins' seven-hour show a few years back in which his pee ran down a series of tubes and dripped on to drums and cymbals.

Every year, one million visitors battle through not just the International Festival (August 16 to September 5) and its lower-brow, bigger sibling, the Fringe (August 9 to 31), but the growing number of festivals running at pretty much the same time: Jazz and Blues (July 31 to August 9), Film (August 16 to 30), Books (August 15 to 31) and the Military Tattoo (August 7 to 29).

Thousands of performers arrive: those who can't shop for a packet of crisps without sticking up a flysheet and who are still saying 'it'll improve', with only two nights to go, and those who camp out in Arctic temperatures all month but who can still go clubbing and belt out Super Trouper without breaking down.

And the locals stop moaning (briefly) about the government and start greeting (Scottish for whingeing) about every hotel being packed with foreigners and particularly with that unspeakable other race, the English.

You will know the locals by the fact they are not carrying mobile phones, handbills or notebooks. They're the people who haven't bought tickets to Miss Lou Lou's Tap-Dancing Extravaganza With Mr Steve, who look blank at the mention of Phil Cool, the ones with blockbuster videos tucked into their bags.

It's a popular urban myth in a city that thrives on them that the 500,000 residents rent their flats out for enormous sums of money, take Caribbean cruises on the proceeds, and - most scurrilous of all - don't attend.

The truth is locals provide more than half the box-office takings - and the festivals are big earners: GBP136 million last year, sustaining more than 4,000 jobs.

For those who fight their way through the crowds on Princes Street - the main thoroughfare - without someone offering to teach them how to swallow fire, the first place to head for is the International Festival's Market Street ticket office.

If you are wise, you will already have booked (www.go-edinburgh. co.uk for all the festivals; fax: 44 131 473 2003; telephone: 44 131 473 2000).

You can order a brochure on the Web site, too. Tickets for the festival's 170 performances this year will be snapped up quickly. Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic are already virtually sold out, as is Luc Bondy's production with the Royal Opera of Verdi's Don Carlos.

But you can still see The Royal Opera's British premiere of a new I Masnadieri, directed by Elijah Moshinsky. There's a retrospective of choreographer Hans van Manen, including a world premiere, New Work, featuring the Dutch National Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater with which he was closely associated.

Other highlights are America's Pacific Northwest premiere of George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream; and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe performing the complete symphonies of Sibelius conducted by Paavo Bergland.

Spaniard Calixto Bieito directs the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company in Life is a Dream, and Eugene O'Neill's great unfinished manuscript, More Stately Mansions, has been adapted for the stage.

The tradition is that 50 seats for most festival shows are kept for sale on the day. But if what you want to see is sold out, and you don't have the energy to queue from six in the morning, don't despair. The Fringe is where the real buzz is.

All over the city, diehard actors will be performing in draughty church halls happy just to be there, while the three big Fringe venues - the Assembly Rooms, the Gilded Balloon and the Pleasance - will be defending themselves as usual against charges of choosing shows for lucre potential, rather than artistic value.

Nick Cave, Spiritualised and PJ Harvey are nearly sold out. Comedian Paul Merton is booked solid. Big-name comedians book up fast, as do theatre shows at The Traverse.

But there are 16,141 performances of 1,309 shows by 9,810 performers this year. A performance will begin every two minutes. You stand a fair chance of finding something to see. Some shows don't even allocate tickets until the day of performance.

What not to miss this year? Chekov's Three Sisters turned into a gay musical, a world premiere of Labels by Louis de Bernieres, Arnold Wesker in town to direct his own Letter to a Daughter, comedienne Clare Summerskill's show What Lesbians Do . . . On Stage, America's hip-hopsters Cool Heat Urban Beat and Fringe Sunday when a cast of thousands is out in Holyrood Park by the Palace.

Asian audiences will know Hong Kong Youth Arts Festival's Who's Afraid of Monsters, and might recognise Japan Experience, Etoko Dance Company, dancer Shakti, or The Lady Boys Of Bangkok.

The booking office on the medieval Royal Mile won't post tickets abroad after August 1, but you can book in advance (e-mail ad [email protected]; fax: 44 131 220 4205; telephone: 44 131 226 5138). You can't book tickets for the Fringe on-line yet.

As if that welter of events is not enough, the city's infrastructure also groans under the weight of the four other festivals in August. The transport system doesn't even begin to cope.

John Huston called the Drambuie Film Festival 'the only festival worth a damn'. Steven Spielberg's ET was premiered here. Last year more than 350 films were screened, including 18 world premieres and 49 UK premieres.

Last August, you would have been one of the first people in the world to see The Full Monty, Gary Oldman's directoral debut Nil by Mouth, Ma Vie en Rose, Mrs Brown and Wilde. And you could have been seen with Sean Connery, Michael Caine, John Hurt, Kylie Minogue, Judi Dench, Mike Leigh and/or Lawrence Fishburne.

This year's Jazz and Blues Festival opens with a mardi gras in the medieval Grassmarket and moves on to treats like B. B. King in concert, Diana Krall, Courtney Pine and top tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton at the Cotton Club.

The Books Festival attracts international authors and hot new talents to 400 events in a tented village ranging from the antique mirrored splendour of the Spiegeltent Cafe to shady spots beneath trees.

This year you could mingle with the likes of Fay Weldon, James Ellroy, Iain Banks, Jonathan Dimbleby, P. D. James, Nick Hornby, Thomas Keneally, Rosamund Pilcher and Jeanette Winterson.

The Military Tattoo is one of the most stirring spectacles you will ever see, transcending the cliche that it is. Military and pipe bands have been parading under floodlights against the dramatic background of the illuminated castle for more than 40 years.

But cultured, cosmopolitan and well heeled as the festival city may be, the unspoken truth is that some of the best theatre you'll see all month is the city's panoramic views and dramatic skylines.

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