Edinburgh Festival 2013: Simon Evans's diary August 8 This leads to a strange and quite specific withdrawal symptom. Most comedians start life being paid in free beer and grubby notes, and the need for that kind of affirmation never really leaves us. A few days without readies being pressed into our palms and we get twitchy. The most popular "double" in London is to do the Comedy Store and the Banana Cabaret in Balham on a single night, chiefly because these are the main two clubs that still pay in cash. Don't get me wrong. All transactions go through the books. But we just love the sense of trousering a fat rolled up wad. And so a large number of gigs have set up around Edinburgh to capitalize on this urge. For many years there was only one example of this kind of enterprise - Late and Live, in the old Gilded Balloon. This was perhaps the only long-running Fringe bill which genuinely deserves to be called legendary, not least because of the fire that eventually destroyed the premises, as though by divine intervention. Pretty much every comedian would head to Late and Live after midnight and as a result, like the much-mourned consensus around 1970s Christmas Day TV viewing, many great nights here were witnessed by enough of the industry to become part of the folklore. Trying to get in without the proper accreditation was genuinely difficult. You had to prove your worth. Once in, the comics would all drink in the long, thin grubby bar which stretched down the side of the auditorium itself, separated by a narrow corridor. Meanwhile a crowd of mostly local, overwhelmingly drunk and verbal spectators would fill the main hall and watch what superficially resembled a night of club-length sets from three or four decent comics. Word would quickly reach the bar as soon as it started to kick off. When an act was simply going through the motions, playing out an established routine and being tolerated by the crowd, the bar would remain indifferent. But as soon as the mob unseated a comic, or as soon as a comic spotted a source of potential trouble and attacked it early with a disproportionate onslaught of abuse, his fellows at the bar would surge into the main room to witness the escalation of gladiatorial hostilities. These were properly exciting nights, very rarely passing without some incident worthy of discussion the next day. Acts like Johnny Vegas - who only really functioned in his proper form in a room on the verge of collapse - provided entertainment that utterly eclipsed anything you might see in a more controlled environment. My first gig there came in 1999, when as a young up-and-coming comic I had managed to secure only a mid-afternoon slot for my first solo hour and was desperate to engage with a spunkier, more belligerent audience than the tea party crowd I'd been facing daily. I got what I wanted - engagement with the enemy - and the effect was utterly exhilarating, probably the most exciting gig of my life. When I came off I was shaking in a way that I like to think every comedian, and perhaps every mountain climber, speedway motorcyclist and bare-knuckle boxer, would recognize. This not actually being Game of Thrones, there were no courtesans waiting to take advantage of my newly heightened testosterone levels, so I had to make do with the backstage eye contact from what I now could honestly describe as my peers. No one should underestimate what it meant to have an experienced comic look you in the eye backstage at Late and Live and say "Well done!" The unspoken bit? Turns out you can do this sh*t. Welcome aboard. Late and Live still exists in name but in a new location, and while it is still capable of delivering value-for-money, late-night entertainment, it is no longer the place where a comic proves his mettle before a jury of his peers. There are in truth far too many late night shows now where comics can earn a fistful of dollars - no single event captures the interest of the community like the old L'n"L. But one newish enterprise is perhaps the first in a while to capture something of that sense that comedians are flying without a net and will have to properly engage to get through. Set List Show has been up for a few years and is gaining a reputation for sorting the wheat from the chaff. Comedians take to the stage with no idea what they are going to be to talk about. A series of random non-sequiturs are projected on to the wall behind them - Hamster Holocaust, Castle of Cheese, that sort of thing - and they then have to construct, entirely ad lib, a stand up set that addresses those propositions. It is weirdly exhilarating, can get horribly sticky or breathtakingly brilliant, and there is a definite sense that you will have to reach for your steel if you are going to come out alive. Some established names have come a cropper, and some new talent risen to the challenge in style. I'll be the up there tonight, and it will be too late to take this blog down if I am exposed for the barren mind we all fear we might have developed in between new jokes. But actually, who cares? They give you a pint. And they pay cash. See you there.