In Bewilderbeest, Woodley is at his coloured-sock-wearing, laptop-bashing best. He sings and mimes, and chases fish and golf carts across the stage. He occasionally calls on the assistance of an unreliable stagehand and a lighting technician with a sense of humour. All this to bewilder, stun, surprise and amuse the audience, who were all inching towards the edge of their seats, dying for the chance to leap up and join Woodley onstage. I know. I was one of them.

What makes Woodley such a mesmerising performer is not the fact that he can make fun of himself, nor that he can alter his demeanour from a child with worms to a staid grandfather in a nanosecond. It’s his ability to use everything at his disposal. Even the Roman statues at the edge of the stage did not escape his notice – he propels them two thousand years into our present day with a single technological reference.

Sell your kidneys. Auction off your kids. Do whatever it takes to get a ticket, because Bewilderbeest is the comedy show you must not miss.

Helliar is charismatic, easy to listen to, and really knows how to engage an audience. He is one of those comedians who has great potential but who is hesitant to break new ground. It would be interesting to see him stripping back the waffle and taking a shot at the grittier side of life. It’s a pity Helliar’s not game enough to go down that path. Like a television show on a commercial network, Dreamboat Tour felt as though it had been tailored to meet the needs of a particular demographic. The result was a dreamy, whimsical hour without much substance.

Next came Elis James, a quiet young man from Wales. James reminded me a lot of Josh Thomas, with his messy hair, lanky frame, strange accent, and anecdotes about him getting into – and out of – awkward situations. His set was a little disjointed, but he maintained the energy that Cook had established. He was a good storyteller, keeping the audience engaged right through to each punch line.

Finally, Carey Marx, the ‘headliner’ of the night, strolled onstage with a beer in hand. As his set progressed, his speech became increasingly slurred, and his vulgarity dispelled the relaxed atmosphere. There was little banter with the audience, and his gags had a distinctly scripted feel to them.

Despite the disappointing finish, Bulmers Best of the Edinburgh Fest is worth seeing. Cook and James are excellent, and if you enjoy crass jokes about sex, alcohol and farts you will love Marx as well. Personally, I would have preferred another thirty minutes of Cook.

One Small Thing is a balanced and well-written show, with gags that are threaded together beautifully. Hooper sings, dances, raps and uses an array of props to tell her gags, many of which focus on the lives of Hooper and her husband as they attempt to clean out their storage cage, or build a bunker in the backyard for the impending apocalypse. She is quick to whip out her iPhone and show off her ludicrously expensive curtains then later on displays a picture of her husband in an embarrassing state of drunkenness, a small thing that made her day. Everyone can relate to the rage at finding a parking ticket on the windscreen, or the tensions that arise when one person attempts to reduce the other’s collection of clutter. We’ve all been there, but Hooper skilfully turns these moments of frustration into laughter. That’s what makes One Small Thing so thoroughly enjoyable – the small things.

Like the advertising material in the dank subways of London’s Underground, posters follow the gradient of the stairs, and heavy steel beams hold the roof centimetres from your head. Each step of the main staircase has sunken bowls from the many thousands of feet that have trampled it over the centuries.

There are two late night bars at Trades Hall. Upstairs lies Bella Union Bar, a mess hall style space with a stage at one end and a bar at the other. As the green room comes off this bar, the chances of you rubbing shoulders with some big names are pretty high. This is the hangout of Tripod, Craig Wellington, Ben Payne and Lawrence Leung.

It was in this vibrant watering hole on Friday night that I met John, a jolly punter, and his intoxicated wife, Gwen. I’d already seen two shows that night and my comedy buddy had piked after the second, claiming he was still recovering from a hangover. There was about an hour to wait before the next show began.

John proudly announced that he and his wife had just managed to talk a restaurateur into giving them two free bottles of wine with their dinner. Or so they claimed. He, like many other patrons in the Bella Union Bar, was at the word-slurring stage of inebriation and was grinning like a monkey in a banana plantation.

My initial desire to move as far away from him as possible subsided as he pleasantly gabbled on unselfconsciously and openly about himself and his wife. We three got talking a bit more and eventually I explained that I had to walk around the venue to see more of the place. They leapt up ecstatically to join me in my travels. So off we went.

The smallest theatre at Trades is the TARDIS-inspired Police Public Call Box in the Banner Room, which seats about 20 and is no bigger than a standard kitchen.

In the Banner Room earlier that night, I saw Courteney Hocking: Un-Australian, a witty show combining stand-up with music and visual comedy. I got a real kick out of stepping through the TARDIS door. (As did John, who tried to open the door while there was a show on. Needless to say, he was promptly escorted back to the bar.)

Other theatres are much larger, such as the Quilt Room, where Lawrence Leung explains the excruciating and hilarious stages he’s gone through to become cool. Or there’s Old Council Chambers, which has circular wooden benches lining the walls.

John, Gwen and I moved downstairs to the Banner Room, which houses another bar, the perfect place for a quiet chat or a relaxing pre or post-show drink. Vintage Brotherhood of Saint Lawrence couches and peeling paintwork supply a charming ambiance. With heaters and soft lighting, this trendy hangout has the high-ceiled space of Transport and the downbeat moodiness of St Jeromes.

In fact, the Banner Room could be just about the coolest hangout at the festival. Half the room is sectioned off with heavy, pale curtains. This space is used for shows such as Ben Payne In His Yellow Ute, in which Payne uses’yes, you guessed it’a yellow ute to entertain swaths of small children and their families. (John thought the idea of a yellow ute hilarious; it was a good few minutes before he’d calmed down enough to have another swig of beer.) Jazz and blues music plays unobtrusively. Although the beverages list is limited, what is there is good and reasonably priced.

It was in the Banner Room that John began telling me his life story, which I’m certain would have been fascinating had I been able to interpret what he was actually saying. When I mentioned I’d be seeing Tripod later that evening, he and Gwen decided that they might as well see the act with me, since the only alternative they could come up with was to head to another bar.

The stage at Bella Union Bar upstairs comes to life around 11:30pm for the Midnight Trade @ The Bella Union, with a different act almost every night of the week. On Fridays, Enuff inspire daggy dancing from the audience. Many are conversing at a decibel level well above normal by the time the band walk onstage. What better moment than this to bring in some terrible twanging tunes from the 80s?

That is not to say Enuff aren’t good. They have that rare ability to dress appallingly, play terrible music, and have the audience performing the craziest, most tasteless dance moves imaginable.

The band’s act is fabulous: hot red imitation patent leather pants with leopard print shirts, bleached blonde mullets that challenge the height of the Eureka Tower, and they perform cringe-worthy music with such skill and flair that the audience are on their feet in a matter of seconds.

It’s a sight for sober eyes to see the more enthusiastic audience members putting their reputations on the line for a manic 80s-inspired dance session.

At quarter to midnight, John, Gwen and I went into the New Ballroom to see Tripod: Idioclips, and, although I had nowhere near the blood alcohol level they did, I reckon I laughed just as loudly. A fantastic end to the evening.

Jon Williams is superb as the maniacal Brigadier General Ripper who torments Group Captain Mandrake, played by Kip Williams. Think comedic versions of Kurt and Marlow stuck in a small room with a six-barrelled machine gun. The things Ripper gets up to with that gun will have you in stiches.

Oliver Wakelin plays the amorous General Turgidson, whose passion for nuclear warfare is pitted against pacifist President Muffley, played by Toby Truslove. Like Ripper and Mandrake, this pair is also stuck in a room. Instead of a machine gun to play with, they have a sexy Russian ambassador, another trigger-happy general, and the Stephen-Hawking-cross-Jim-Carey figure of Dr Strangelove.

The ticket master warns that the unpaid actors might steal patrons’ alcohol ‘ well, all I can say is there was enough vodka onstage to supply the entire audience.

Stand-up comedy acts are a dime a dozen, but a full cast of talented actors in a really affordable stage production is a rarity. Strangelove the Musical is without doubt one of the better acts at this year’s festival. And you know a comedy show’s going to be a winner when it’s been given the thumbs-up from the cast of The Chaser.

Martinez gives a brilliant performance as Roque. An amiable character, Roque is uncomfortable with his position of authority, and when he is ordered to take action against the men suspected of being double agents, his personal struggle and guilt is portrayed in all its raw and gritty truth. The desolate landscape reflects the utter isolation of the soldiers and the despondency of the locals as they trudge through their daily lives, surviving on the little hope that remains.

The Betrayal is a quiet film, with many of the cast communicating in whispers and glances. The smattering of violence is neither graphic nor horrific, but this does not detract from the harsh reality of the wartime setting. As a thriller, there is an undercurrent of violence that will keep audiences on the edge of their seats’the imminent threat of treachery is what drives this subtle and understated film. The Betrayal explores the fragility of loyalty, trust and friendship, and the tension builds steadily towards the final act of betrayal.

Through an empty picture frame, Thorn delivers an autobiography of sorts. The antics of jazz ballet teachers and the exorbitant verbosity of art gallery owners that she encountered in her youth are ‘recalled’ in a raw and deplorable truth. Thorn switches roles during her loose narrative, seemingly more comfortable with these blathering stereotypes than with herself. Each new character is revealed through the empty frame, bringing with it yet another unnerving and realistic facet of the art world.

Although Thorn is herself a great entertainer, it’s these stereotypes that steal the show. Everyone remembers the dance teacher at school whose spangled dress sense was matched only by the lurid line of lippy on her teeth. And all of us know at least one Lacan loving, latte drinking loser who is ridiculously enraptured with artspeak. Thorn has taken a mirror and shown all of this crap for what it really is. Helen Thorn is Arty Farty doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not, and that’s a rare thing in the world of art.