Edinburgh Festivals Diary: The cutest flyering team on the Fringe and Sean Connery's 'homecoming' to Ireland

However, the weather ​has undoubtedly caused problems for ​performers across the festivals. At one performance of The Truth About Trees in the relocated Assembly Box venue at St Andrew Square​, water began dripping through the roof as the puppetry show ​got underway.

“The performers looked at each other and started giggling,” said one audience member. “Then they just went on with the show.”

Flash downpours also caused a short delay at Wednesday night’s closing gala for the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Sudden rain fall reportedly caused some leaks in the Cameo cinema, where powerful closing film, Bel - a documentary about Kenyan-Scottish musician Beldina Odenyo - was being premiered.

Early arrivals initially couldn’t get into the building and heard staff muttering about potential evacuation, but all went ahead, albeit the screening began half an hour late.

The gala also included the presentation of the festival’s two main awards.

Sinda Agha’s Grief Room won the Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence Competition. Meanwhile the winner of the prestigious Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence, decided on by an audience vote and funded by The Connery Foundation, was Kieron J Walsh’s Skintown, described by EIFF director Paul Ridd as “a beautiful, funny and very moving film”.

Ten feature-length world premieres were presented at EIFF as part of the competition with the winning filmmaker being awarded £50,000 to support their future projects.

Presented by Connery’s son, Jason, the winners also receive a bronze bust of Sean Connery himself, created by sculptor Eric Goulder.

Accepting the award, Irish filmmaker Kieron told Jason it was “about time” the celebrated actor, who grew up in Edinburgh and was famously a milkman before becoming a Hollywood star, “came back home” to Ireland.

“I’ve done a little bit of research about the Connery family,” he said. “I know Sean is a son of Scotland, a son of Edinburgh, but he’s actually the grandson of Ireland.”

He turned to Jason.

“Your grandfather was a farmer from Wexford, yes?”

Jason agreed.

“I think it’s about time he came back home,” added Kieron, holding the bronze bust aloft. “You’ve had Sean for a long time [in Scotland], he’s given you 007 and all that - we also gave you Pierce Brosnan as well, so I think this is bringing Sean Connery back home.”

The cutest flyering team at the Fringe

One Fringe performer has hired a special kind of flyering team to help with audience recruitment - and is apparently yet to receive a “no”.

Ellie Ross, star of one-woman show Mrs Gary Breath, a play about modern womanhod, has employed her children Laurie and Cleo, three and five, to ask prospective theatre-goers, “Do you want to come and see my mummy's show?”

I have run into the Mrs Gary Breath team on the flyering trail and I can confirm that they are irresistibly cute.

“Raising a human for five years is an expensive long game to get free flyering but hey, it works!” says Ellie.

Mrs Gary Breath is on at Assembly Roxy.