Boothby Graffoe, the comedian named after a town in Lincolnshire, is one of those people who seem to be a fixture at the Edinburgh Fringe; even though there must have been a Fringe before Boothby, it's difficult to imagine it without him now.
For this year's show, he has returned to the rather cramped surroundings of The Stand, which is designed in a way that would be more familiar to a comedy club performer than the theatre and converted church halls and lecture halls at other venues. He is once again joined by the musician Nick Pynn, who plays guitar, electric violin and Appalachian dulcimer to accompany Boothby's musical pieces, as well as acting as a foil to some of his gags and insults.
This year's show is completely new, with no songs or routines from last year's show or from his album. The title refers to a journalist who has been in gaol in Myanmar for the last sixteen years for what he has written about the government. This is a cause that Boothby has been supporting for a while, but he does not push it down the audience's throat during the show - in fact he admitted forgetting to mention it the night before.
His stories and songs touch on politics - his first song is accompanied by slides on a screen at the side depicting atrocities that various countries were involved in while still managing to be funny - as well as family life, recycling, cats, ghost trains and the World Cup. He creates people (and animals) with strange, changing accents who have bizarre conversations through Boothby's mouth before commenting that he doesn't know how to end the joke. He will tell a funny but realistic tale, and then immediately go on a strange flight of the imagination, such as when his cats are discussing why he put butter on their paws when he moved house, or Iraqis who turn into Frenchmen for no apparent reason. He also spends quite some time showing us his latest toy - a guitar synthesiser.
Songs include The Ballad of the Budgie, which is really about a stalker but does involve a budgie who comes to an unspecified but presumably nasty end, a clever song that goes through the alphabet several times and, to finish, his World Cup song Don't Let Me Down Again, which unfortunately wasn't released before the England team did just that.
Boothby is funny as ever, with some good new material and some very funny new songs and a few more insights into non-feline areas of his personal domestic life than in the past - if any of it is true.