I last visited the Edinburgh Fringe 10 years ago, and in a sense, nothing has changed. We’ve still found ourselves in a flat in a nondescript tenement, up more than 60 stairs, owing to a booking malfunction on my part, although we are a little closer  to the city centre this time. However, 10 years ago spoken word didn’t really appear on my radar. Ten years on, we were at Chris Redmond’s Tongue Fu at the Gilded Balloon Wine Bar at midnight on Sunday, enjoying a treat of poetry accompanied and interpreted by flexible and accomplished improvised funk, jazz, ad commercial backing, you name it.

The poetry was provided  by the warm-hearted and engaging Redmond himself, aided by such names as Anna Freeman and Ben Mellor, with even a cameo appearance by veteran anti-establishment hero Howard Marks, plus keyboard, double-bass and drums. It might have been beyond midnight, but with this energetic mix and mash, there was no chance of the audience nodding off. Redmond’s philosophy can be summed up by his rallying cry of “Let the pig out!”, a drumming tip to give it everything, to not hold anything back. Redmond and the night’s Tongue Fu combo of Arthur Lea (keyboards), Pat Davey (drums), and Belle Ehresmann (double-bass and champion beat boxer, aka Bellatrix) set the early tempo, a Rocky-reminiscent beat accompanying Redmond’s story of creativity, existentialism and angst: “Reading Kierkegaard while spreading Marmite on toast … dodging dogshit down the freezing lane in the nude”.

Anna Freeman, fresh from her anti-slam triumph as alter ego Aurora Firebird, entertained with some definitely dodgy eco-poetry, and later as herself demanded some “smoky jazz” to back what she described as a seduction poem:  “I have compared you to the alternatives, and I find you acceptable … I want to marry you, because it’s, like, what you do”.  Ben Mellor, who has his own show at Edinburgh,  remained baffled that his McDonald’s poem was not taken up by the company for a commercial: “Diabetes types … wheeze when they breathe types … were just waddling by.” He also made serious demands on the band, asking for a “down with the kids tune as imagined by someone who holds a fairly senior position with the Arts Council” to accompany his mocking take on someone who had once made the well-meant but overblown claim that poems might replace bullets. Mellor pondered  the “explosive force of 14 rounds of sonnets”.  There was also the charming arrival of Howard Marks, also appearing elsewhere at the festival, who wandered in to deliver a poem he called Eve, laced with Biblical imagery, and including the line: “I’m as divine as you, dear.”  Tongue Fu, whose home is at Rich Mix in Shoreditch, east London, continues at Edinburgh at regular intervals until 25 August.  Catch it if you can.   

PHOTOGRAPH: GREG FREEMAN / WRITE OUT LOUD