Comedy: Dominic Frisby: Let's Talk About Tax

Four stars

THE signs look good – if you're someone who just loves a pie chart or a graph. Bitcoin expert and Moneyweek commentator has both – and a swingometer. OK, it may be a circular piece of MDF with historical events from the rise of Islam in the 7th century to 9/11 daubed on it – more a spinning wheel really, but we'll let Frisby call it a swingometer given that he went to the same school as Peter Snow. Also, Frisby, a man with the reliable, practical air of someone who always ensures his spare tyre is pumped and primed in the boot, is so likeable and entertaining, you'd forgive him most things, even having a voice not unlike arch Tory commentator Quentin Letts. “This is an accent that gets things done,” he says, to at least one hoot of hilarity (mine). Indeed,

Frisby is a voice-over artist, not a Tory, or indeed a politician of any stripe. Instead, he's a kind of libertarian egalitarian, someone who wants the massive wealth gap to be narrowed while also decrying a state that effectively forces its citizens to work for 22 years unpaid through a “contract” no one remembers signing. The cost demanded of the state – or, more precisely Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, a body accountable to the Queen rather than

Westminster - has risen over the decades while the services it provides have not necessarily improved. And what's to be said for democracy when many of the things it pays for, from Trident to HS2 to Hinkley Point, are money-pits that many profoundly disagree with? “State obesity” he says, is due both to the debasement of money (an eye-watering 99 per cent in 100 years) and the ever-increasing cost of government debt (a figure so disturbing I'll omit to quote it here). If this sounds dry, it's not.

Even without the help of the Voice of Playboy and a few ribald jokes here and there, Frisby explains with punchy clarity how tax is both a significant feature of every event and every aspect of our lives, and how, if we we'd literally be much better off tearing up UK tax legislation – all 2.6 million words of it. Four times as long as the Chilcot Report, it serves as a boon for tax lawyers to help their wealthy clients legally avoid it, while ineffectively dealing with the real cause of wealth inequality – property and land. The solution Frisby proposes is a Land

Value Tax more radical than that provided for in the Green Party's manifesto – it would replace all other taxes and bring in a far higher yield. Though it's not often I agree with Douglas Carswell, Frisby should really start a campaign.

So entertaining I would sign up for a full course of lectures should such a thing exist, Frisby shows that tax is the defining issue of states and societies, and if we really want to change things for the better instead of bleating about how absurd and unfair the current pickle is, we must start with the Revenue. If only we could ever get them on the phone.

Until Aug 28 (not 15), Gilded Balloon Teviot (V14), 4pm, (60mins), £8.50 & £9.50 ( £7.50 & £8.50 concs). Tel: 0131 622 6552.