A wee preview, by Patrick Monahan

Every comic loves the festival, even if they tell you they don’t. And every comic goes through the same process – the unwritten rule of previewing your Edinburgh show in every venue around Britain, playing every art centre to the tiniest and booziest pub in little england. The experience is always priceless. There's nothing like the look of the faces of the 70 locals in the Duck and Flipper upstairs pub room in Shrewsbury town as the host of the night says to the audience "grab yourselves two drinks cos the next act will be performing his new one hour edinburgh show!" and all 70 people give the same look of "his what show?" not realsing there's such a thing as a Fringe festival in Edinburgh and just think you're about to do a one hour stand up show in a scottish accent with a lot of Scottish-based jokes!

The greatest joy at the festival is the feeling of having two New Year’s Eves a year. On the eve of an Edinburgh Fringe, every comic has a head full of ideas and a heart full of hope and optimism. We make a wishlist of all the new things we will learn and achieve and aim to conquer.

Last year I and a fellow comic, sharing a flat, decided we'd buy a fruit blender so we could make fresh smoothies every day. We bought a bread maker from Argos because it would be more economical to make our own granary loaves, and we both subscribed to a month’s membership at the gym. We discussed how we'd use the gym every day in the mornings and afternoons to freshen up before our shows. To be honest I don’t even think the bloke who sold us the memberships worked at the gym, it was just some random bloke in a tracksuit, but we never made it in to the gym to find out).

Day three of the Fringe is like 3 January – all your dreams and goals have got lost out in the ocean of dispear. Our fruit blender had got broken by experimenting with a giant fruit and nut Cadbury’s chocolate bar, a tub of ice cream and, by accident, a TV remote control. The bread maker had turned into storage space for half eaten packs of cakes and broken biscuits. And the gym membership cards were being used as vital substitute fridge magnets to stick shopping receipts to the fridge door so we could see who owed who for half of the shopping! Comedians are the tightest people i know – they won’t even do three minutes of over time unless you get on your feet and stamp and cheer wildly for them.

I have done shows at the Edinburgh Festival every year from 2002 without a single year off and I hope to keep performing every year until I’m old as Ken Dodd (or until I have paid as much VAT as him). I’m aiming to play every venue the Fringe has on offer. That’s the main reason why you can never get bored of the place – everywhere becomes a new venue. I’ve played most places except for the bus stop on Prince’s St – I’m saving up a deposit to hire it for Edinburgh 2012 and call it “the Monahan Bus tour”. It should have a captive regular audience, even if its only for seven minutes while they wait for the no.38 to Musselburgh.

I’m doing two shows this year, a kids’ show and an adult show, which is the weirdest preparation I’ve ever had to do. It’s like training as a 400 metre sprinter and a freestyle swimmer – one minute you’re trying to run as fast as you can, the next you’re trying to move on your belly without getting snot and water in your face.

My weirdest preparation for any Edinburgh preview has to be July this year, when I did my new show Cowboys and Iranians in the sleepy fishing town (and big drinking haven) of Shoreham-on-Sea. As I was about to leave the stage a drunk bloke in the front row stood up and shouted “please will you dance with my wife, I told her this morning that I love her, will you dance with her for me?”

Before I could decide anything the crowd were all shouting “Dance with her!” so I said ok. She came up on to the stage, hammered as her husband, and we started to do the jive and other drunk dance moves (even though I don't drink) while the crowd went crazy.

The women then jumped up onto me like in Dirty Dancing where the lass puts her legs around Patrick Swayze’s chest (although the lass in the movie was about 25 years younger and twice as many pounds lighter). As the crowd howled with laughter I played along, spinning her round, until i felt a gushing hot sensation like someone had suddenly switched on a hot tap. Then, as I put her back down on the stage, the audience fell over with laughter as they saw my whole chest area drenched wet and this woman next to me, dripping from her groin.

I was a bit shellshocked, as most people are who have just been wee’d on. To save her blushes, I said: “i think that ice pop you had in your pocket has melted!” and the audience gave her a massive round of applause as she walked back to her seat.

Then, just as for the second time in the night I was trying to say good night - and take my damp shirt off - the drunk husband stood up again and shouted "will you dance with me now please?" At this point, the whole audinece just cracked up again, howling and cheering. I politly reminded him, "As much fun as all this is, it's got very little to do with my show about cowboys and Iranians. I'd love to dance with you but to be honest I'm terrified - I've just danced with your missus and I'm now covered in wee, if I dance with you I don't know if I could handle what you're going to cover me with!"

I gave him a polite cuddle and left the stage to sit on a three-hour train journey home, in a shirt and trousers covered in someone else’s urine. I’m still trying to work out if it was a successful Edinburgh preview or not.

Patrick Monahan’s Cowboys and Iranians is at the Gilded Balloon Teviot, 9:15pm, until 31 August. His children’s show is at Gilded Balloon Teviot, 1:30pm until 30 August.