Star rating **** In his week on the Fringe, Aussie Clive James was finding Edinburgh grey. Grey - and very wet. Ostensibly here to promote his latest book, Cultural Amnesia, James spent his hour and a half on the former church altar preaching about almost everything but his own product (although there were a few satirical nods in its direction before he finally submitted to a short reading).

As a former commentator at Sydney, the Olympics were firmly on his mind: the dietary habits of record- breaking Michael Phelps was his main concern, although Chris Hoy's youthful training stadium being torn down by a certain city council was bothering him, too.

James also revealed that he found fellow author J K Rowling "hot" mainly due to her silk brocade shoes and his latent foot fetishism. M&S clothing being endorsed by Bryan Ferry was another seemingly random topic he alighted on, waxing lyrical about his smart-casual black shirt from their new Neo-Fascist range.

Since his retirement from TV work in 2001, Clive James has focused on his writing, developing his own theories about literary success (one being that Dan Brown is actually Jeffrey Archer's new pseudonym). His chosen book excerpt was a cultural reflection on Richard Burton's hairstyle in Where Eagles Dare and co-star Clint Eastwood's cataleptic taciturnity; not your usual book festival fodder.

The final, off-the-cuff Q&A session proved the most enlightening for those wanting some celebrity gossip, even if the subject of Margarita Pracatan was firmly off the agenda. Tom Cruise, Barbra Streisand and Jason Donovan did not escape unscathed but, bizarrely, Liza Minnelli and Ronald Reagan got raves from James.

Closing with his own poem When We Were Kids added a final poignancy with an obvious nod to AA Milne and a clever sprinkling of colloquial word trickery from down under - and he just made it look so darned effortless, too.