It’s the Edinburgh Marathon tomorrow – fancy a lift? - Vladimir McTavish

The 2023 Edinburgh Marathon Festival took place in glorious sunshine to helped put a smile on runners' faces

Hopefully the wet weather may have cleared up by this morning. Depending on when you are reading this, I may already have run a circuit around Arthur’s Seat.

It is uncharacteristic of me to get up so early on a Saturday morning, especially after working until midnight on Friday.

I’m taking part in the 5k at this year’s Edinburgh Marathon Festival, which is being run this morning along with the 10k. I’m doing the shorter distance because it starts an hour later. That extra sleep matters!

Tomorrow, there is the Edinburgh Marathon itself, so fingers crossed for the thousands of poor sods having to run twenty-six miles. You wouldn’t want to do that in a thunder storm.

The marathon also includes a team relay, where four runners share the distance. I took part in this a few years back with three other comedians. Only myself and one other guy had done any training. The two blokes running the first two legs were totally unfit. The guy going second had been up until 2am the the night before, drinking and smoking.

I was taking the third leg and had to hang around for hours in a park in Port Seton waiting for my mate to hand over the baton. He eventually wheezed into sight an hour late.

Unlike its London equivalent, the Edinburgh Marathon does not receive endless TV coverage and consequently there are not lots of celebrities taking part.

The BBC invariably find a string of actors from EastEnders and presenters of BBC shows to stop off en route to be interviewed on Tower Bridge.

I’m always extremely sceptical as to whether any of them actually run the whole route, as I have been an eye witness to celebrity cheating.

A few years before he died, Jimmy Savile took part in the Glasgow Half Marathon. He was old and ran very slowly. I passed him three times in the first four miles and couldn’t work out how he had overtaken me. Around half-way, a camper van overtook me and stopped by the kerbside.

Savile jumped out of the back and hobbled along for about 200 metres until he passed the TV cameras and then promptly got back into the van. What a horrible individual. Good luck if you’re running tomorrow.