A king's naked ambition

It's 8am in a New York coffeehouse and Mike McShane is literally full of beans and raring to go. But then the Whose Line Is It Anyway? star has been raring to go ever since he read Fatboy, an over-the-top Americanised version of Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry's 19th-century surrealist satire about a tyrannical king in charge of hoodlums.

'It's loud, it's scatological, it's inventive, it's funny,' says the larger-than-life Kansas-born actor, though he could just as easily be describing himself. 'And the great thing about my character is that he's all about appetite: he just lives to eat, kill and f***.'

Written by John Clancy, director behind multi-award-winning Fringe successes Americana Absurdum, Horse Country and Cincinnati, Fatboy is a send-up of the base nature and naked ambitions of world leaders, which receives its world premiere in Edinburgh.

'There's this pretence of reason and negotiation which I think is a bit reflective of the Bush administration right now - this sentimentalism combined with an attitude of "f*** you, I'll do what I want". And while the piece isn't telling you guys anything about America you don't know, or haven't thought before, it's not so much what it's saying as how it's saying it.'

Not so much what you say, as how you say it was, of course, the signature trademark of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the hit improv comedy series that turned McShane into a household name in the UK as well as the US.

Now happily settled in LA, McShane is making his first Fringe appearance in almost ten years. And, with his old Whose Line? sparring partners Paul Merton, Jim Sweeney and Steve Steen also in town, he's looking forward to 'having a laugh and a drink and playing some poker' - though there are no plans to let McShane's Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves co-star Christian Slater join their circle - 'I think I'm a little out of Christian's betting range,' he chuckles.

Fatboy is at The Assembly Rooms until August 30 (not Tue). www.edfringe.com