Strangest show at the festival? By John Fleming

I’m no stranger to the bizarre and, indeed, as I’m producing the Malcolm Hardee Award Show on 28 August, I am keen to hear of any acts which involve chainsaw-juggling nuns.

However, even I was surprised when I was talking to Dan March at the Gilded Balloon launch party about his show Goldrunner. Not because of the pictures on the flyers of his startlingly clean-cut 17-year-old younger self on a 1991 edition of the TV series Blockbusters. But because a young and highly enthusiastic young performer thrust himself between us to plug his show at the Bongo Club.

“The audience is blindfold throughout,” he told us. “I am trying to bring to Britain the Argentinian tradition of blind theatre.” Any interest from TV companies? I asked. “Yes, yes,” he replied even more enthusiastically. “A British TV company is very interested and we have a group from the RNIB coming to see the show next week.”

I looked at Dan; Dan looked at me. After the young man had left, we looked at the ‘flyer’ he had given us: a brown luggage label with a Rorschach ink blot test image of Don Quixote, the words “Bongo 2pm” and nothing else. Dan and I felt the label with our fingers to find any further information in Braille. There was none. The young man had disappeared into the crowd.

I used to set up stunts for Jeremy Beadle. I looked around for hidden cameras. Later, I checked in the Fringe programme. And, sandwiched between Don Juan in Soho and Don’t Forget To Breathe, there was, indeed, Don Quixote – Theatre of the Blind with this description: “The audience is blindfolded throughout as we attempt to stage the unstageable. Official sell-out 2007”.

I was shocked I had missed it two years ago. I would like to see it this year but I fear, in the very nature of the show, I can only fail. The Fringe can be a hard mistress.

John Fleming is producer of Helen Keen: The Primitive Methodist Guide to Arctic Survival at Gilded Balloon Teviot, 12.45pm daily, and Aaaaaaaaaarrghhh! - It's Bollock Relief! - The Malcolm Hardee Award Show, 10pm on 28 August, also at the Gilded Balloon.