In the clammy shadows of Cowgate I was leafleted by a chubby beauty wearing all-leather fetish gear. ‘Hi! Want to spend an hour with a prostitute for nothing?’ Yes, please. Her show The Coin-Operated Girl (Liquid Room Annexe, until 30 August), part of the free fringe, deals with the seven years she spent servicing sex-starved men in swish London hotels. One of the commonest fantasies was ‘GFE’, which has nothing to do with threesomes or gimp-masks. ‘The Girlfriend Experience’ means sex, kissing, cuddling, chatting, bickering and everything involved in a normal relationship. Her story is warm, hilarious and extremely refreshing because it reveals the sex trade as a good-natured branch of social work rather than as a nightmare of drugs, misery and violence.
The Man Called Monkhouse (Assembly Hall, until 31 August) is a superb semi-success. Simon Cartwright’s impersonation of the suntanned clown borders on the miraculous.
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