Like a long-married couple, the minor performer and the Fringe start to fall out in week four as those endearing Fringey idiosyncrasies turn into irreconcilable differences.
One such annoyance is the extraneous noise invading every venue. Take, for instance, the jolly sea shanties of Potted Pirates, performing next door, that come floating in just as the detective poignantly has sex with his office furniture in Zimbani.
Or the tortured screaming that the performers of Wisecrackin' Mindsqueezin' Behemoth have had to incorporate into their opening routine. In my own show, memories of my long-lost fiancée are, as often as not, voiced to the thunderous clatter of bottles as the Gilded Balloon empties its recycling bins. It is very, very difficult to keep an audience inside your own reality when the outside world makes its presence so abundantly clear. It's like trying to observe the three minute silence on Blackpool Pier.
Around about now we all start to remember the things we had forgotten and forgiven about last year: The way people answer the question "How are you?" with "Four stars!"; the fact that inner-city Edinburgh is unable to feed itself in August (the queues at Tesco Metro on a Saturday night are longer even than Tim Minchin's); the lack of basic courtesy - or humanity - observed by security staff at 3am. Our flat has no more loo roll, the toilet seats have fallen off, the sinks won't drain and nobody has yet found a place to recycle the mountain of flyers, pizza boxes and wine bottles. The avocadoes I bought on day one (must stay healthy! Must go the distance!) have turned into snot-filled husks, sitting on my shelf like promises betrayed. The fridge reeks.
My venue, meanwhile, now has its own paddling pool, and much of the lighting is no longer functional. Paying punters walk past a mopping crew as they file in and, despite the staff's unquenchable cheer the place has all the atmosphere of a hospital during the Ted Heath years. The way things are going, the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary will be a Fringe venue like everywhere else next year, so it's as well to get used to it.
• Liam Mullone: In A Dead Man's Hat is at Gilded Balloon, 6.30pm, until 25 August
