One of the talks I enjoyed most at last year's Book Festival was by the author of a book called Monsieur X.  I decided against buying the book at the time in favour of waiting for the paperback edition to come out.

Well now it's out and I've read it.

It's the tale of an upper class Frenchman who took on the might of the French state run betting organisation, the PMU, and made a killing, several killings in fact despite the PMU wriggling around to change its rules and the financial police sticking their noses in in an attempt to find proofs of his other little sideline as an illegal bookie to the toffs.

Now I've no interest in horse-racing or gambling but I loved the book.  It's a great story.  The author, no doubt with sales in mind, didn't reveal how Monsieur X's adventures finished and nor shall I.  It would spoil your pleasure if you read the book.

I've also just enjoyed one of last year's hit shows on the Fringe.  The good ones often come back in a reversal of the bad penny trope.  It was in Traverse 2 for the Fringe but was selling out in the much larger Traverse 1 last week.  Ulster American is a brilliant comedy in which an Catholic Irish American egotistical, over-acting, recovering alcoholic, Oscar winning filmstar has been persuaded by what he declares to be the best script he has read in a decade to come to London to appear in a new Irish play.

His meeting with the director and author is the setting.  He overwhelms the director with his intensity and physical presence driving him to declare that if Jesus held a gun to his head he would rape Margaret Thatcher with the caveat that horrible woman though she was she didn't deserve it.

When he discovers that not only does the author maintain that she and her play are British not Irish but that the hero he is to play is a Protestant bent on exterminating the Fenians, who he now discovers are Catholics he wants to abandon the whole project.

The director is equally upset by the author's insistence that the play is British and doubly upset when she admits to being a Conservative.  And he's desperate to placate the pair of them and keep the show alive.

It was brilliant and the denouement gasp provoking with an exceptionaly funny curtain line.