Och aye, talofa

By LINDA HERRICK arts editor

Naked Samoans Robbie Magasiva and David Fane were astounded to see themselves on television in Edinburgh, where they are performing in the Fringe Festival. The Strip has just started screening on Scottish telly ... The Naked Samoan team has taken up residence in a large flat dubbed the "Samoan Embassy" in the centre of the city, and producer Caroline Armstrong reports the boys "cut quite a figure walking through Edinburgh in their Naked Samoans T-shirts and specially made tartan lavalavas. Standing head and shoulders above everyone around them, they keep getting asked if a) they are related to Jonah Lomu or b) if they are Jonah Lomu".

The Naked Samoans' Trilogy show is apparently doing well, with good audiences and a glowing review in The Scotsman, whose critic admitted to "choking with laughter" throughout. "In a show that conveys its cultural message as brilliantly and effortlessly as its gags, these Samoans can mix the comic and the tragic with the effortless bravado of a South Pacific cocktail shaker."

However, Armstrong reports that the city is so crowded "it makes doing even the simplest things extremely difficult.

"And if you're not keen on chips then cooking at home is to be recommended, as the Scots have chips with everything. One Naked Samoan ordered a chicken curry in a pub, to be asked if he wanted 'raice or chips or borth' with it. He chose borth.

"But Scottish cuisine really came into its own when two other Nakeds went to a cafe. One ordered chicken curry, the other butter chicken. Despite hesitating over the butter chicken order, the waiter swore the chef knew how to cook it. Ten minutes later, out came two identical curries, the only difference being that the butter chicken had a quarter-pound slab of cold butter plonked on top."