This should have been a delight. Starting at Underbelly, visitors are supposed to get a solo tour of Central Edinburgh that becomes an exciting adventure.
Unfortunately, after a late start and meetings with, inter alia, a balloon clown, a criminal in an ancient Volvo and a lawyer, the guiding message failed to arrive on a mobile phone.
Your critic was left stranded on the Royal Mile for ten minutes and, after being given an emergency number by one of the actors, was told to go to the next stop, met a down-and-out and once again was abandoned, this time forever.
On returning tired and frustrated, I asked the controller what I had missed but since she refused to answer, the rest remains a mystery.
The moral of the story is that these shows must be carefully choreographed and visitors monitored. Otherwise, they will very reluctantly decide that this represents a nightmare experience - and it didn't even rain!