Edinburgh Festival

Five years of IVF and love going down the tubes and a sex life reduced to cold rooms with plastic cups. What have I learned? You can't make an omelette without...

Hard-hitting German comedian Paco Erhard returns with his edgiest, most personal show yet. No holds barred and hilarious, Worst. German. Ever is a show about travels, sex, drugs, mistakes, adventures, tears and just how crap he is at being German.

Japanese duo Gamarjobat return to the Fringe this year to celebrate a decade since their Edinburgh breakthrough with Boxer.

Kids' TV presenters Dane and Shavid are just having a little technical problem, and it's totally not your fault kids. Actually, those audience members don't look too much like kids....That's probably for the best as we descend into the murky yet hilarious world of dodgy dock-side dealers of performance art, a reversed bad language filter and an 18-rated, gore-filled version of The Brady Bunch in the comic duo's quest to get through their kids show in one piece and entertain their older than expected live audience.

Comedy rockers The Axis of Awesome make their return as a trio to the Fringe after a couple of years away, much to the delight of a packed out and highly vocal audience at the Gilded Balloon

As celebrities start appearing at Downton Abbey, cultures clash and eras hilariously collide. This brilliant parody takes in many other popular TV shows and celebrity voices to help the cast of Downton save the estate from financial ruin - again!

After a sell-out run in 2013 and hot off the back of their Radio 4 debut, BEASTS return to Edinburgh with a brand new hour of inspired silliness. Drunk on the power of last year's success, the quarrelsome trio have decided to break free from the shackles of the group and go it alone. But restricted to only one venue and one hour, can they really squeeze in all three spectacular solo shows?

A bumbling, charismatic London Mayor challenges his enemies to become prime minister. But will his comic and colourful past destroy him?

Inspired by changeling myths and the poetry of WB Yeats, Human Child is a blazing fantasy adventure story that mixes theatre, puppetry and live music for children from 8 to 80.

Dr Austin, expert on the undead and head of the Zombie Institute for Theoretical Studies is offering his expertise to Fringe-goers in two shows this August. An investigation into the brains of those who eat brains, Zombie Science: Brain of the Dead is about the neuroscience of the pop culture favourites, mixing the theory with plenty of comedy.

She's back! Britain's first female prime minister stars in a drag comedy musical extravaganza like no other! On the eve of the vote for Section 28, Maggie gets lost in Soho and accidentally becomes a cabaret superstar, but will she change her mind about the homophobic bill before it's too late?

YouTube sensation Christina Bianco and cabaret star Velma Celli present a selection of your favourite pop divas in 60 minutes. Through humour, versatile vocals and impressions they'll honour these timeless divas, presenting familiar hits in ways you're unlikely to have seen or heard before!

Winner of the Blue Peter Book of the Year, Private Peaceful is by former Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo, award-winning author of War Horse. Private Peaceful relives the life a young WW1 soldier awaiting the firing squad at dawn.

Something is wrong with Wednesday Addams. Gomez and Morticia are desperately worried about their daughter; the charming little bundle of malice has lost her taste for death, darkness and torture. She is behaving like a demented Disney princess. Where did they go wrong? Surely she hasn't fallen in love with someone ... normal?

The Scottish Enlightenment Project, playing for only three nights at Summerhall, is a performance of a work in progress created by the National Theatre of Scotland and Brooklyn-based the TEAM. A meditation on Scottish national identity, particularly in contrast with that of America, it is centred around the story of two old friends from Glasgow, one recently returned from London and one still living with his mother, who reunite and head out on a road trip with an American woman they meet in a bar. Their story is interwoven with scenes demonstrating the influence on their ideas of national identity by the main thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly James Macpherson (of Ossian fame), Adam Smith and Walter Scott.

A far right protest in the Scottish town of Dumfries inspires this tale of a young man caught up in a world of skin heads and racist violence. Presented by Electric Theatre Workshop, Blood Orange is an often confrontational piece of theatre, utilising the aesthetics of clubbing to create an hour that barely gives its audience or performers time to breathe as it hurtles along.

A show has been cancelled at the Edinburgh Fringe after vocal protests from leading cultural figures, reports suggest.

Sh!t Theatre/Escalator East to Edinburgh present Guinea Pigs on Trial in its World Premiere at Edinburgh Fringe 2014.

Milk Presents/Escalator East to Edinburgh present SELF SERVICE at Edinburgh Fringe 2014.

Menagerie/Mercury Theatre Colchester/Escalator East to Edinburgh present SWIMMING by Jane Upton. BONES writer returns to the Fringe with a show that is very close to home.

The latest alter-ego of performance artist Caroline Smith was researched with British birdwatchers - and now Rita, a show bird from a bygone era, is hellbent on turning the archetype of the twitcher on its head. Dressed in elaborate Great Crested Grebe plumage, Smith questions what happens when a bird runs the show and the label of 'human' no longer applies.

Have you ever felt undervalued? Ignored? Overlooked? Award-winning comedy writer/performer Lizzy Mace presents a series of oddball characters - from the fourth bear in the Goldilocks story to the disgruntled children's TV presenter and her psychopathic sock puppets - giving each of these endearingly awkward underlings a voice.

Jane Fonda is one of the most controversial anti-war activists in American history. On 18 June 1988, in a little-known event, Fonda confronted a room of hostile Vietnam veterans in Waterbury, Connecticut, who were boycotting the filming of her movie Stanley & Iris, co-starring Robert De Niro. The true story of what Fonda actually did and how her actions helped end the Vietnam War has never been told before.

The long walk to the remote control. The stale taste of a bagel. The low battery on your mobile phone. With 140 characters or fewer to fill, everyone has a problem that needs solving in our unforgiving first world. Using tweets, songs and physicality, this original piece of new writing based on the hashtag phenomenon explores the moral dilemmas of the new world.

What sets Morgan and West apart from other magicians gracing the Fringe this year? According to the men themselves, "Better waistcoats, better facial hair....and time travel!" As seen on ITV's Penn and Teller: Fool Us, the eponymous double act are Victorian gentleman magicians, evoking not just a sense of awe for their tricks, but also their keen comedy, as they bring a sense of a more civilised age to a modern audience.