Mark Watson: Flaws (Edinburgh Fringe)

This is Mark Watson's tenth year at the Fringe, and he's using that fact as an opportunity to reflect back on his career, and indeed life, in his most personal show yet.

Watson is frank from the start about the depression that he's suffered over the last couple of years; he starts and ends the show as the audience come and go with a run on a treadmill, as he's been advised to exercise more.

It's not ground-breaking for a comedian to talk frankly about their lives on stage, but Watson does it in an interesting way; focusing on all his flaws, he tells us how he’ll "do anything to please people" (even posing for a photo at the beginning), and is open about his struggle with alcohol – "I’m not sure there’s a word for it. Like a shopaholic, but with booze".

He is at once self-aware yet crushingly anxious, and takes a while to warm to the room, waiting to decide how much of his story he’s going to divulge to us.

And it’s the little stories of his struggles, as well as an eventful recreation of a Thomas the Tank Engine film premiere – it’s all true, it would take too much energy to make stuff up – that make the show a success.

His closing words sum it all up beautifully; the show may no longer be a work in progress, but life always will be.

Mark Watson: Flaws runs at the Pleasance Courtyard until 24 August

FOR MORE ON EDINBURGH 2014 VISIT WHATSONSTAGE.COM/EDINBURGH-FESTIVAL