Jeremy junks the junket

Get Jeremy Hardy on the subject of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and he won't hold back. 'I hate it,' he says. 'It's a junket, a trade fair, swarming with media people.

'It's so competitive - people think they're going to be on Channel 4 in three months. You can hear the cogs of TV people's brains turning as they think: "What kind of gameshow can we get from this little man?'''

Despite scooping the Perrier in 1988, Hardy is equally disdainful of such fringe benefits. 'All it did was make me an arse for a year,' he remembers.

'I've been a judge on these sorts of awards. You start listening to the tape and think: "That's not very good" and then go into the meeting and everyone talks about how fantastic it was. You're left with a compromise - the comedic equivalent of a Lib Dem.'

Politics is, of course, the life blood of his shtick. While Hardy's foppish charm may make his 'ranting Lefty' views seem more palatable to some, he has also often courted trouble.

The Guardian notoriously axed his column - supposedly because of his support for the Socialist Alliance in the London mayoral election and, in 2002, Hardy was literally in the line of fire when he made Jeremy Hardy Vs The Israeli Army, a documentary on the work of the International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank.

Although he admits he could have made the film less strident, he stands by its thrust which, in its use of polemic, is comparable to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

'I like to think that Michael Moore got his ideas from me, including Roger & Me, which predates my film by a decade,' he japes.

At this, his first appearance at the Fringe in 13 years, Hardy won't have time for the all-night drinking sessions he enjoyed in the 1980s.

He plans to spend the time working on a new Radio 4 series of Speaks To The Nation and the script for film about a corporation run by vampires. So why this flurry of activity? 'Tax bill. So please, forget what I said and do come,' he says ruefully.

Jeremy Hardy is at the Assembly Rooms until Monday. www.edfringe.com