Fans of the Edinburgh Festival have a genuine fondness for the Gilded Balloon. It's not just the venue's impressive record for "discovering" new comedians, nor just that they - alone among the major venues - are actually run from Edinburgh. No, this special relationship was forged in flames, on the cold night when the catastrophic Old Town Fire destroyed the GB's original Cowgate home.

The 2002 blaze was the greatest in living memory and, though no lives were lost, was nothing short of a tragedy. 150 people fled their homes; an irreplaceable library went up in flames. And the Gilded Balloon lost their venue, their offices and the accumulated memorabilia of seventeen years. Yet the GB triumphed in adversity - re-opening, amidst a flood of support from a nostalgic Festival crowd, on a new site the very next year.

These days, the resurgent Gilded Balloon runs out of a single, massive building on Bristo Square. As its reputation suggests, the GB line-up's focussed on comedy - but don't overlook the impressive theatrical strand which runs through its programme too.

Venues in the Gilded Balloon chain