Limmy @ Edinburgh Book Festival, 22 Aug

The love for Limmy is palpable in Charlotte Square tonight as the crowd come in from the rain, pints in hand. Appropriately scheduled into the Saturday late slot of 9.45pm in the Baille Gifford Main Theatre, Brian Limond receives a hero’s welcome of chants and cheers as he makes his entrance. If the Book Festival is a slightly incongruous venue for Limmy’s unique brand of humour, then he is the first to acknowledge it, asking if people in the audience have ever been to a book event before and, if not, might therefore be wondering, 'What the fuck is this?' This may be his first event at the Book Festival, but he handles it like a pro, dispensing the need for an event chair and explaining he will take requests for favourite Vine skits to “get it out of the way” before reading from his book and doing a Q&A to discuss his “idears and stuff” (delivered in his legendary 'wanker' voice.) Que the audience wildly shouting out favourite Limmy moments with titles such as She’s Turned the Weans Against Us, one of the funniest things that I have seen at the Festival so far.

Crowd pleasers dispatched with, he can now go on to read some extracts from debut collection Daft Wee Stories, which does pretty much what is says on the cover, with perhaps the omission of the word dark. As while the surreal rambling stories usually end with a vicious and hilarious punchline, the general vibe of the writing is awkward and unsettling. The first story, The Size of Sally, concerns a woman who has multiple other Sallys inside her (“The inner Sally had been wearing the outer Sally as some kind of Sally suit”). This mind-bending “Russian doll carry-on” is like the essence of Limmy, even his short Vine videos being a joke within a joke, a knowing wink with another more knowing wink underneath.

Second story Hazy Days of Summer describes the kind of hot day where “your brain goes on holiday,” beginning with the protagonist craving summer treats such as a Solero or a can of Lilt, and quickly progresses to him confessing, “I wanted to kill the guy that murdered my Da” before he “stabbed the utter fuck” out of the Postman instead. It was “just wan of those days.”

Last story Your Shite is My Shite, a meditation of why we are alright with our own shite but not the shite of others, is the most rapturously received by the audience. At one point a gentleman sitting behind The Skinny enthusiastically repeats Limmy’s phrase “over-shat!” with glee. While admitting a deep discomfort with scatological humour, this reviewer was still hooting along with the rest of the crowd when he describes a particularly vile toilet bowl in the Oran Mor as looking like “a firework has gone off in a jar of Nutella.”

We then move on to the Q&A. Considering much of his work involves chatting into a mobile phone while lying in bed, he is incredibly confident and natural in front of the audience, even more so than seasoned Book Festival regulars. It is telling that some of the biggest laughs of the night are based entirely on eye contact, Limmy delivering a line then looking down at the floor or to the side. The mics are passed around as the fans get a chance to ask questions, and is it just us or does every young man’s voice become a bit more Limmy-ish as they address their hero ('I don’t want Limmy to think I’m a posh cunt!')? This fan love reaches an apex of cringe when one lady asks, “What is the most patronising thing somebody who doesn’t get your humour but wants to keep in with you has said to you?” (Wow, imagine those squares who don’t ‘get’ long rambles about excrement!). It’s not a mutual love-in though: Limmy keeps his brittle menace when responding to the crowd, telling a man who uses the word ‘narrative’ in relation to the book that he has made the “red mist descend.” His flippant impatience with those who stand up to report he has blocked them on some gaming or social media platform is a joy to behold. This is important in keeping his essence and appeal – it would be awful if he suddenly became humble and saccharine on the Book Festival stage. The audience laps it up of course, and a hilarious hour is had by all. It's questionable whether Daft Wee Stories will extend his appeal beyond those who are already enthusiasts, but fans will delight in this collection as more of the same mad brilliance.

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Limmy was speaking at Edinburgh International Book Festival on 22 August