The Independent Recommends: Comedy

SURPRISINGLY, this is the first time David Baddiel and Frank Skinner (right) have performed on a live stage together - and, considering they have no script, it is going well. (I'm sure the fact that tickets only cost two quid helps no end.) In Get Back to the Very Essence of the Fringe, they write up on a board topics suggested by the audience. Once a subject has been discussed, they put a line through it and it can't be brought up again at the Festival. The very first subject to be crossed out? Football.

Cabaret Bar, Pleasance, Edinburgh (0131-556 6550) 1.30pm

Incarceration in a Tennessee penitentiary may not seem like an obvious subject for comedy, but in the skilful hands of American stand- up Rich Hall (posing as high-security prisoner Otis Lee Crenshaw), it is turned into the subject of a wonderfully bizarre set of country and western songs.

Studio Theatre, Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh (0131-226 2151) midnight