Dominic Frisby: Let's Talk About Tax

That’s the problem with the Fringe these days: all these comedians coming up from London and doing shows about tax. Honestly, all they think about is money.

Actually that isn’t too far from the truth in Dominic Frisby’s case, as he’s a character comic turned financial guru, which must be rare: just filling in the self-assessment makes most comedians start to hyperventilate.

Frisby positively relishes stat chat. In fact he has a radical manifesto in place, suggesting that we should scrap the current tax system and start all over again. Dressed in a jaunty vintage accountant suit—lots of checks—and utilising an array of handmade graphs and even a tax wheel of fortune, he’s come to Edinburgh to soft launch a revolution, of sorts.

The comic’s calculations make for grim reading when it comes to Britain’s national debt, and he offers a simple tax-related solution for how to sort it. Unfortunately that solution comes right at the end of this informative hour, in a very hot room, so he may just need to run it past us again.

Not that this is a dry show by any means. The jauntily-dressed host utilises a megaphone and soapbox to express his more polemical thoughts, and a special "gag" microphone to throw in politics-related funnies. It won’t be for everyone, of course, and it’s clear that he’s talking to a fairly niche sample here: how many other audiences around Britain, when asked, would respond overwhelmingly that we should all actually pay more tax? Even Frisby was thrown by that one.