General grumblings on the internet last year suggested there wasn’t enough satire at the Edinburgh Festival.

But the 2010 line-up seems to have taken that on board with subject matters ranging from BP to the BNP, from cuts to wild expenses claims. It isn't all part of a satirical renaissance though, with low-quality offerings like Hung parliament: the Musical, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a Rom-Com and Obama Mia! failing to impress.

Let’s not however let the remarkable quality of political drama be marred by the largely improvised or insane. Dave Benson’s one-man show Lockerbie: Unfinished Business played the political injustice of Al-Megrahi’s release with a bereaved man’s fight for legal justice. Do we look like refugees?!, about the South Ossetia War, was another example of current affairs dramatised with haunting accuracy.

The fringe is the spiritual home for satire. Kevin Eldon of Brass Eye fame managed to make political poetry laugh-out-loud funny at his Invisible Dot performance. His timing is unmatched, as he screeches "Mao! Mao! Where are you now, Mao?" before launching into a one-minute silence for the poem Tony Blair’s contribution to world peace.

Andi Osho’s Afroblightly is also worth a mention as an hour about Great Britain and cultural identity. The levels of self-depreciation she reaches get uncomfortable, cumulating in an assessment of black female politicians. "Floella Benjamin is in the House of Lords. Really? How'd she get in? Through the round window?". Shappi Khorsandi’s The Moon On A Stick tour is similarly a waltz through Britain’s cultural hang-ups. Khorsandi’s work has much improved since her Amused Moose Soho days, ditching the political puns for tales about her family history, in particular, her satirist father who got on the wrong side of an Iranian Ayatollah.

The anger and passion lacking in much of the fringe satire could be found in Josie Long’s set. She has strong words against the Conservative Party (lapped up by the largely lefty audience) but also despairs of the failings of new labour: "Living under Labour was like hanging out with a dear, old friend who you deeply suspect has betrayed you." Better than the one-liners, however, is her impression of a friend comforting a saddened Gordon Brown.

Kate Smurthwaite has bemoaned the lack of journalists who have reviewed her show The News At Kate . But her turn as the host of the London panel game The Comedy Manifesto, at the Soho Comedy Club, along with her solo performance cannot go on ignored. Smurthwaite has all the markings of a great satirical guest, reacting to Richard Desmond’s Channel 5 takeover, government cuts and women in politics with remarkable pace.

Brown got heavily knocked at the fringe, but no match for the level of distain (and occasionally genuine anger) at the coalition government. This is where the late-night comics at Political Animal and David Mulholland in his solo show You Are Being Lied To excelled.

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