Thursday was a red-letter day for Edinburgh Festival enthusiasts - as, amidst great fanfare, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe unveiled its 2007 programme.  It will be a busy weekend for the very keenest Fringe-goers, who now have a few days to trawl through the largest-ever Festival brochure before the box office opens on Monday.

With all due deference to the International Festival - which opened up ticket sales way back in April - it's the Fringe launch which really heralds the start of the Festival run-in.  With less than two months to go until the annual extravaganza begins, the release of the printed programme offers the first true insight into what's on offer this year.

Perhaps inevitably, it's another record-breaking year for the Fringe, with more than 2,000 separate shows clamouring for attention across over 250 venues.  It all kicks off at the start of August, and ends on Monday 27th - by which time they'll have packed more than 1.5 million ticket-holders into some 31,000 performances.

The sheer scale of the undertaking makes it hopeless to try to summarize the programme: comedy, theatre, music, dance and the visual arts are all as well-represented as always, with venues ranging from the intimate (a park bench on Calton Hill) to the enormous (an 8,000-seater comedy fling at the Tattoo site near the castle).  Like everyone else, we're struggling to digest the mass of information released yesterday - but we'll let you know our initial thoughts over the next week or two.

Getting the programme

This year's programme weighs in at a hernia-inducing 288 pages, despite the fact that each show gets just 40 words to sell itself.  It's free to collect, either from the Fringe Office on Edinburgh's High Street or from selected branches of HMV nationwide (here's the list of them).  Alternatively you can order it for delivery from this web page - though there's a £3.50 fee to have it posted out to you.

You can also browse the full programme on the Fringe web site.  Paging through 2,000 shows is a daunting prospect, though, and the online route is perhaps best reserved for when you have something specific to search for.

As we remarked earlier this week, for most shows there's no particular rush to get your tickets in; but if you're keen to be at the head of the queue, you have the weekend to scan the listings before booking opens on Monday.  The easiest way to book is here online, and you can also call the Fringe box office on 0131 226 0000.