“I’m off to clown college because it’s cheaper and more accessible to go to Paris and study with a master than to do an arts festival in my home town.”

Charlie Vero-Martin, actor, comedian, writer and improviser, is on stage with a basket with googly eyes.

He is called Mr Basketcase. It is 2am on a Monday morning.

Neither of them can afford a month in Edinburgh for the Fringe.

So this is just a fleeting visit to the stage of Alternative Comedy Memorial Society, the best late night show around.

Vero-Martin isn’t the only one wondering if the Fringe, in its current form, is unsustainable.

It’s a refrain you hear as often as you see posters for badly timed Boris Johnson musicals.

But it’s still the place people feel they have to be, even if it means selling one of your more important organs to pay the greedy landlords.

My Sunday ended, as mentioned, at ACMS, watching a man (the exquisite Rob Duncan) with a plastic baby strapped to his chest.

It began 13 hours earlier, in a karaoke booth with Sharlin Jahan and four rival audience members.

Two of them were from the Faroe Islands, and seemed both confused and extremely turned on by Jahan’s repeated demands that they love and validate her.

She’s a wonderful performer, and gives everything regardless of how many punters understand English.

Jahan is working out what her debut hour will look like next year. Whatever happens, I’m pretty sure it won’t be in a tiny private singing box.

The Awkward Silence loom and gurn at me from the wall of a late night kebab shop in the Old Town, their sketches within sketches within madness forming one of the best shows around.

But today’s comedy duo of choice is Thick ‘n’ Fast. Their show, General Secretary, tackles extremely serious issues — climate change, the global economy, and supranational power — extremely stupidly. And I love them for it.

Talking of politics, I have time to catch comedian-of-the-moment Jen Ives and her brilliant show about being trans and keeping one’s sense of humour under severe provocation from some of the worst people in the world.
 

And then, after bumping into many wonderful comedians and remembering why, despite everything, the Fringe rocks — I end up where we started, after midnight with ACMS.

Here, we are truly spoiled, like at the ambassador’s reception but with more clowns.

Sally Hodgkiss is dressed as a magician, intentionally gets our names wrong, and demands balloon animals.

Joz Norris has forgotten what his character is supposed to be like and can’t stop laughing behind an enormous fake beard.

The evening lurches towards its conclusion with hilarious faux-stunted duo The Lovely Boys — think Dick and Dom with a brain aneurysm — lead the audience on a merry dance and, I suspect, membership of a disturbing cult.

It’s a brilliant dawn after a brilliant night; it’s just sad that so many performers will be gawping at their bank balances next month wondering if it was all worth it.

Box office: (0)131 226 0026, https://tickets.edfringe.com