During August any stand-up comedian who is worth their salt is up at the Edinburgh Fringe performing a one-hour show.

So, it is with interest that I sit down here in the south reading about what’s happening up there.

Matt Forde, who is an excellent performer and I have had the pleasure of gigging with him before, caused some upset with a tweet.

He posted saying: “Someone brought their baby to my show last night. Sadly it derailed large parts of it because they wouldn't do the decent thing and just leave when it started crying.”

This led to a sensible and reasoned discussion on social media about the correct etiquette.

I’m kidding, of course. It led to angry and insulting tweets sent to Matt from those who took the side of the baby.

As a comedian and a new father I got a call from ITV’s Good Morning Britain about going on the show to debate banning babies from comedy shows. I wasn’t sure where I stood.

The performer side of me understands what Matt was going through. A baby crying is hard to deal with. It’s not like a heckle where you can respond and humiliate the interrupter.

Even if you could say a standard heckle put-down like, “Hey. Do I come to where you work and knock the bottle out of your mouth,” the child wouldn’t get it.

There is something uniquely distracting about a baby’s cry. We evolved to find it irksome or we would have died out millennia ago by cavemen just wandering off.

As a father of a five-month-old, the fear of him crying in public is huge in my life. He will cry over very little thing. If he doesn’t like the toy he’s holding or if he doesn’t like the look of the person he’s just seen walk by he’ll start. It’s like he’s some kind of big baby.

My protective urge is to take him out of the place because I don’t want others thinking badly of him. That’s what I’d do at a comedy show. I wouldn’t want to be banned from taking him to a show, or anywhere else, but I wouldn’t want to ruin the experience for others. It’s basically wedding rules.

Of course you can take a baby but if your little gem starts making an annoying sound you take them out for a while because at a wedding you’re not the most important person there.

If we all had that sliver of respect for those around us the only crying you’d hear in Edinburgh would be from the comedians when they see their accommodation bills.