Taser and spit hood use by Police Scotland

Tonight is Stand Up For Freedom night, our biggest comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival, the largest arts festival in the world, in a fairly huge venue– and we’re nearly there, we’re sort of crouching for freedom at the moment.

It should be a brilliant show.  There’s the Boy With Tape On His Face – who is a really fitting addition to the bill – you can’t get more censored that someone who never speaks, and then there’s Josie Long, a personal favourite of mine as well as a host of other acts including Pappy’s, Frisky and Mannish, David O’Doherty, Rob Becket and Hannibal Buress – with a few other big names rumoured to be dropping in unannounced, as it were.

At the risk of sounding like a voice-over for a high-end supermarket, this isn’t just stand-up for stand-up’s sake, this is Stand Up For Freedom. And who’s freedom? Pussy Riot’s freedom. On the eve, of the eve of the verdict in the trial of the Russian punk band we’ll be taking a mass text action for the singers and there’ll be a “tribute act” from some of the comedians. We literally have no idea what that’s going to look and sound like, suffice to say it involves a lot of fluorescent lycra. See this pic of us in a flash mob yesterday on the Royal Mile for a taster!

Going for a song seems like a fitting way to sum up the night given that the Pussy Riot singers face up to three years in prison for singing one, and that the tickets are a real bargain. There are still tickets left for tonight’s event, so if you’re in Edinburgh, do the rights thing and cough up for freedom.