Meanwhile, in The School of Whoredom (written around 1535), the satirist Pietro Aretino applied all the canny cynicism of the Renaissance self-help manual to the oldest of professions. Existing fans will merely want to know why Hesperus chose to “correct” Jane’s famous original spelling: Love and Freindship.Incisive parody also drives two other titles in this batch. Jonathan Swift’s fabulously poker-faced Directions to Servants dresses up tips on household sabotage and subversion as a below-stairs advice book. The 15-year-old Austen’s parody of the epistolary novel is, among other delights, the sharpest spoof of ChickLit ever penned. A handy edition of Jane Austen’s glorious teenage skit Love and Friendship (written in 1790), with an essay by Fay Weldon, would be enough to justify the mission of this imprint. Here is a perfect excuse to ignore new-season nonsense in favour of recently unburied treasures.

The list so far offers 70 compact gems (100 pages or so), with introductions from leading authors: Louis de Berni?s on Chekhov, Germaine Greer on Shelley, Simon Schama on Hawthorne …The latest half-a-dozen Hesperus titles (each priced at £6.99) strike me as its strongest selection yet. It chose as a motto et remotissima prope: to bring the far near, which it does superbly. Whoever actually owns the companies, the values and practices of Corporate America have taken root in British publishing.
In this bullying climate, it becomes a huge relief to read and recommend not flashy new works, but feisty old ones. Last year, Hesperus Press launched with the admirable aim of presenting short and often forgotten classics from Europe and America in elegant paperback editions. Reveal anything about these miracles of literature before the appointed date, and the publishers reserve the right to boil you in oil (just for starters …).

Thus the purveyors of sweetness and light pile illogicality on to incivility. Such bold brags now arrive together with snarling threats from legally binding embargo agreements. This is the time of year when publishing houses bombard the media with boasts about the wonders of their autumn catalogues These days, however, late summer holds a fresh terror. I swear I saw a performer with the same name a couple of years back who had something interesting to offer, but it must have been a different fellow. It’s back to teaching, then, for this David O’Doherty, but those classrooms, at least, packed with bad lads a-kipping and girls a-fawning, will adore him.Venue 14, 8pm (1hr) to Monday (0131-226 2151). About halfway through the set there’s a sudden rash of decent one-liners which threaten to stir the crowd, but it doesn’t last, and we drift back into a relaxing snooze soon after.

But David O’Doherty, an Irish fellow of indeterminate age (ie, we know he’s in his twenties, but he resembles Nicolas Cage enough to make the point moot), has come up with so little this year that not even his cute smile and easy manner can compensate for the sheer lack of coherent material in his set

Oh, dear. Sometimes it’s a pleasure – for those of us who are reasonably secure about ourselves – to watch a performer whose charm is his defining characteristic. Oh, dear. Rough-edged, batty and clever, it’s an antidote to all that is anodyne about the corporate comedy world.Venue 23, 9.45pm (1hr) to Monday (0131-556 6550). Hough and Woods take on the roles of three quirky double acts, which they then pit against each other in a Fame Academy-style competition. It’s all silly voices, well-executed parodies and shambolic sound effects. Their desire to explore is stronger than their desire to please – which is an admirable characteristic, though one that’s as likely to produce bewilderment as belly-laughs.For those in on the joke – and I count myself among them – it’s deliciously absurd entertainment.