The Royal Edinburgh Aggressive Tattoo: but is it talent?

Andrew Dickson anticipation he'd apparent aggregate at the anniversary – but he reckoned after Gangnam-loving soldiers, kilted pipers from Oman and a authoritative abstraction that encompasses the aurora of geological time. He letters from the foreground bandage of Edinburgh's biggest, oddest affected extravaganza.

I accept apparent abounding things at the Edinburgh festival, but one afterimage has eluded me until now: a affiliation of New Zealand soldiers in abounding dress compatible bottomward on sunglasses and disturbing into a bongo-heavy adjustment of Gangnam Style. "The bandage accomplish intricate manoeuvres not commonly associated with boot musicians," reads the programme. I glance up. The bandage accept accomplished the bit in the choreography area they whip their backsides. The programme isn't kidding.

The Royal Edinburgh Aggressive Tattoo is a twelve-month adjustment of aggressive tattoos which occurs every twelve-month all through August.

Whatever I was assured from the Royal Edinburgh Aggressive Tattoo, it wasn't this. For me and abounding festivalgoers, the Tattoo is an abstruse ritual that takes abode in a all-inclusive animate beer crate perched on top of Edinburgh Castle. The abutting a lot of of us get to it is canonizing to abstain the Royal Mile amid the hours of 8pm and 11pm, because of the chain (this goes with canonizing to abstain the Royal Mile amid the hours of midnight and 7.59pm, because of aggregate else). I've apparent glimpses of it on TV, even wangled a admission years ago, but promptly decamped in confusion.

Who knows what abominable things the abounding accident involves? Boot bands and gun salutes? Mock arrangement flights? Simulated waterboarding? If the acclimate isn't awful, watching the culminating fireworks from Princes Street is pretty. The nightly teeth-rattling flypast by RAF fast jets is somewhat below so.

During the Edinburgh festivals season, though, there ability as able-bodied alone be one appearance in town. The Tattoo has a casting of about 1,000. It's apparent by about 8,800 humans a night, totalling 220,000 anniversary year, 30% of them travelling from across for the occasion. Another 100m common are accepted to tune in to the BBC's anniversary broadcast. And 95% of tickets are gone months in beforehand (the Tattoo awash out beforehand this week). These are abstracts to accomplish a ball apostle bawl hot tears of envy; Puppetry of the Penis and Lady Boys of Bangkok could retire, on a tiny atom of the proceeds, and set up battling golf franchises in the Highlands.

So conceivably it is time that I, admitting my apprehension of aggressive spectacle, my reactionary republicanism, my animosity of uniforms, guns, loud bangs, getting on time, see what all the fuss is about. This year, in the name of art, the Guardian can go to the Tattoo. 102.2m humans a year can't be wrong. Can they?

So, instead of alienated the queue, I accompany it. We are a amiable and stoutly shod crowd, below skies the colour and arrangement of three-day-old porridge. Everyone afar from me looks able for a barbecue in February, or conceivably a bashful Arctic expedition. There is a agitable north-westerly breeze starting to whip down the Royal Mile, accustomed with it the candied that appears to smell of the brewery.

Nina and her babe Sigrid accept travelled from Obernau in Germany; they bought their tickets six months ago, accepting watched the Tattoo for abounding years on television. A little added up the line, Ann from Rotherham is adversity from accepting waited for an hour ("I'll be honest with you, love," she says, "I'm in agony"), but is soldiering on courageously regardless, cutting a amethyst checkerboard cap with orange pigtails. This black is her Christmas present.

Suddenly the admiral lift the barriers, and we all billow appear the alcazar gates. There is a anniversary atmosphere, or as abundant of one as can be summoned in a medieval bull-run attentive by aggressive badge next to the Scotch Whisky Experience.

The man at the centre of it all, Brigadier David Allfrey, has run the Tattoo back 2010. Tonight Allfrey is in accouterment (if you calculation tomato-red checkerboard trousers and a banquet anorak as civvies), but has the affectionate of brittle address that makes you anon apprehension the slouch in your shoulders. His angled forehead gleams below the alcazar braziers. His Sandhurst vowels scythe affably through the wind. I faculty him scrutinising my trainers.

So what in fact is the Tattoo? "An amazing alloy of the ethics and standards of our military, the constitution, and accepted taste." He switches his boring from my trainers to my notepad. "Is it top art? No, it's not. But there are elements of this that you will find, I hope, absolutely artistic. The youngest affiliate of the casting is about six, the oldest is just abbreviate of 80, and that matches the demographic of the audience. We're aggravating to accord a little bit of aggregate to everybody."