Know Your Enemy

"Corporate Whores. Morons. Illiterates.

There is so much good stuff you could use your corporate funding for, and instead, year in, year out, you make these crass decisions.

The whole thing will blow up in your face. Then, perhaps, we will see an end to your nonsense.

Your cynicism is breathtaking. Your Edinburgh Comedy God idea is banal. There are no comedy gods. Enjoy your Edinburgh Comedy Festival™."

Stewart Lee takes entertainingly violent exception to the Foster's Comedy God poll, calling upon comedy aficionados to sabotage the sorry process out of respect for "that wonderful, indefinable, mischievous, playful thing we call The Spirit Of The Fringe" by voting for Japanese performance art duo Frank Chickens.

Also on a comedy tip, I was intrigued by the prospect of The Trip, a new sitcom directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon - not least because they were very good together in Winterbottom's A Cock & Bull Story and there's a certain irony in Coogan, a man with a notoriously fractious relationship with critics, himself playing a critic (albeit of restaurants)...