Arthur Smith had always spurned any attempt to give him a prize for his years of good wheezes at the Fringe. But when, last year, the if.comedy awards offered the gravel-voiced national treasure their Panel Prize, he finally relented.

Arturart, a series of spins on art and conceptual art in a four-storey Georgian townhouse, was a brilliant shambles, with Smith footing the bill out of his own pocket. So that's why he accepted the award? “Yeah,” he says, “it came with four grand.”

This year he's back with Arturart 2. There will be audio guides: “People will be asked to do things like wave their hands in the air, which will really alarm those people who don't have an audio guide.” There will be CCTV cameras, as he satirises the surveillance society, “though that's now rather been adopted by David Davis,” he notes sadly. There will be comical art by arty comedians: Harry Hill, Stewart Lee, Tim Vine, Jo Brand and others.

And there will be a new, businesslike effort not to lose too much money. He'll have small Arturart items to buy, priced between £4 and £7, as suggested by his marketing supremo - “Well, a friend of mine I had one chat with about it on the phone.”

Smith sees the Fringe as his R&D department: “It's a chance to surprise people. The technical standards can be less than rigorous, but your ideas have free rein. More or less everything I've ever done has started there. Edinburgh is about playing the long game.”

From Aug 2, Institute of Arturart, www.arturart.com; 0131-226 0000