Saturday 28th August

I am gently woken by the sun streaming in through the window of the spare room in my brother's rather nice top-floor flat next to the Meadows. After his girlfriend heads off to work and we've tucked into some absolutely-necessary sausage sandwiches, we get his old PS2 out of the cupboard to play NHL 2003 – a game we had a bit of an obsession with when it came out 8 years ago. At the time we set up two custom teams of players we knew nothing about, but liked the names of, and amused ourselves by playing endless series of games between them while making up funny back stories for each of the players. The crazy shit you do as a teenager, eh?

This morning we decide that a nostlagia series is in order, but when we plug in the dodgy old second controller (untouched for several years) it refuses to work and instead just vibrates constantly, uselessly. Unperturbed, we decide to to walk up the road to the local Cash Converters to see if they have an old second-hand PS2 controller in amongst their cabinets of pawned electrical goods. They don't, at this one, but my brother knows of a bigger Cash Converters further down the road. At this point it becomes clear that we are on something of an exciting quest – searching out an ancient artifact that may or may not even exist any more; very much a black plastic Holy Grail. The second Cash Converters is indeed much bigger, and we are delighted when we spot an official PS2 controller sitting inside a glass case, bearing an inviting £2.99 sticker.

Triumphantly I carry the controller back to my brother's flat and we play a few games of NHL, laughing as we reacquaint ourselves with the stupidly-named ice hockey players we had built an entire mythology around almost a decade ago. The game itself also stands up surprisingly well for something so relatively out-of-date in the video game world.

By lunchtime though, we need to head out to our first show of the day, which is Smith and Smith at the GRV. One of the Smiths, James, I went to uni with – and having followed his blog have been keen to check out his stand-up act for a while. Weirdly, given that we both live in London, this is the first time I've gotten round to seeing him perform, so I'm looking forward to the lunchtime gig a lot. My brother and I turn up around 1 and have a quick pint in the GRV bar before heading into the smallish room for the two half-hour sets. It's a small audience (we are two of six people) but neither Smith seems put off their stride by the fact, meaning that both come across very accomplished and confident in their 30 minute routines. James, as I had probably expected, has an academic, thoughtful approach to his stand-up, based around stories and internal monlogues – and the immediate (if possibly a little obvious) comparison I could make would be Stewart Lee. I'm not sure if this is because I've just read Lee's book, but James clearly shares the same focus on the importance of language in comedy and every line of his routine sounds crafted and considered. Daniel Smith (whom I previously hadn't heard of) is also very funny, using his set to talk about death and build his jokes around a fascination with recurring murders involving people sharing his name – meaning he gets to make a lot of “dan-” based puns (my personal favourite being “danslaughter”).

Our next show starts very shortly after, so after saying a quick hi and well done to James we dash across the city towards Le Monde, the venue for 'Fancy a Threesome', a £5 show I'd decided to take a gamble on based on the presence of Jim Campbell of the Football Ramble as one of the three comedians featured. We arrive a little early and have a disgracefully overpriced bottle of beer in the gaudy bar before being shown in to an odd-shaped theatre with two rows of seasts. This time we are in an audience of 12 – and all but my brother and I are well over 50. Two people, sat behind us are German and clearly don't speak a word of English. I'm immediately baffled as to why any of these people are here; the comedians are all obviously in their 20s; and on top of their age they turn out to be the most unresponsive audience I've ever been a part of. It becomes truly excruciating during the first act, who tries hard but gets absolutely nothing from anyone. The second, a Canadian named Pat Burtscher, is very funny though – mainly because he basically takes the piss out of the audience and seems to try extra hard to offend the weird, grumpy old people who've come to his show. By the time Jim Campbell comes on, however, he seems fairly sure that the show is a disaster and does his material almost certain that he's not going to get any response. The room is also incredibly hot – and for more than one reason I'm entirely relieved to get out of it.

We wander back up through town and head back to the Udderbelly bars around the Uni buildings. We hover by a table block and people-watch for a while. We spot Reginald D. Hunter, John Bishop (whom I've developed an intense dislike of already, mainly because his face is absolutely everywhere) and Jimmy Carr hanging around, having pictures taken and chatting to fans on their way from place to place. My brother's girlfriend finishes work and comes to meet us, so we walk over to the Pleasance Courtyard ahead of our next show at 8.30. This place, with it's twists and turns and bar tents and hundreds of venues, is what comes to mind when I think of comedy at the Fringe – and I'm already excited about seeing our third show of the evening, Gary Delaney's Purist. This is partly because his one-liner jokes always make me laugh, but also because I'm confident that the audience will be greater than 12 people, under the age of 50 and willing to actually laugh at comedy.

In the end, I don't go disappointed. Gary Delaney's is a great show, with a great audience, in a brilliantly intimate room. He breaks up his relentless joke onslaught with chattier bits that make the show really nicely paced – at one point dropping poker chips into buckets based on whether the biggest laughs come for dirty jokes rather than clean ones. Perhaps predictably, the rude jokes get bigger laughs and he closes the show with some really shocking, but really funny, material. I'm also pleased to pick up one of his 'No Whimsy' badges on the way out.

Hungry again, the three of us walk back to the Udderbelly in search of greasy burgers (and end up stuck behind a moany Australian woman who feels the need to complain that the hot chocolate she just bought from a van isn't the greatest thing she's ever tasted. From a van, love. People.