festival eye

Who says that political comedy is dead? Living Marxism magazine is asking Fringe-goers to vote for the Diana Award, named after the Princess of Wales and destined for the show that best embodies the concept of victimhood. Laugh? We almost read Das Kapital and committed ourselves to the recollectivisation of the agro-industrial complex.

On the subject of prizes, the gong for this year's most foolhardy comedian goes to James Stephen III from Los Angeles, who is performing nightly at the Assembly Rooms. A classically trained pianist, he offers to play pop songs requested by the audience, but was stumped on day one by a demand for something by that little-known Mancunian outfit Oasis. It wasn't that he didn't know their repertoire, he'd just never heard of them at all.