It's time a Government committee, or special Bord Failte Task Force or something was set up to combat the terrible lie being bandied about cultured circles that all the Irish are good for is for laughing at. You might think I am being alarmist, but this is how an article in last Sunday's Scotland On Sunday began:

"There may not have been a meeting, but it's apparent that the Celtic nations have agreed to split popular culture three ways. The Scots got vernacular literature, the Welsh got pop music, the Irish got stand-up comedy"

Is this the land of Joyce, Beckett, Yeats, and you know, lots more, you're referring to, Mr Lappin? The land of U2?

Ed Byrne, Jason Byrne, Tommy Tiernan, Dylan Moran and The Nualas, among others, can take a bow, but other than comedy, there has been less Irish participation in this festival than in recent ones. However, yesterday Michelle Read's madcap comedy Romantic Friction, which is running at the Guilded Balloon, won a much-coveted Fringe First, after a five-star review in The Scotsman, describing it as "one of the finest and funniest plays of this festival". The Corn Exchange's A Play On Two Chairs is an old show, as is Corcadorca's Disco Pigs, but they are both playing at the Assembly Rooms, perhaps because the companies have been picked up by the festival circuit; Mirage are at the Grouse House with Relative Values and Relative Infidelity, plays addressing "the dynamics of Irish family life" and the London-Irish Lucid company is performing Conor McPherson's Rum and Vodka to some acclaim. Irish titles appear on the Fringe theatre list, like Frank Mc Guinness's Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Baglady, and Dancing At Lughnasa, performed by the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, and earnestly described to me by a Hungarian theatre scout as the highlight of the festival. It looks nearly certain that next year's festival will have a high-profile Irish participant in the Abbey's production of Tom Murphy's The Wake.