Festival diary: A back day for Oz diplomacy

Little Black Bastard is the Gilded Balloon show starring Noel Tovey, called Australia's most distinguished indigenous stage artist.

In it Tovey tells of his formative years as a young man of Aboriginal and African descent in the "racial inferno" of 1930s Melbourne. He battled sex abuse and his mother's alcoholism to become an acclaimed ballet dancer and choreographer.

A senior Australian diplomatic delegation visited the venue this weekend. They happened on Stephen K Amos, interviewing director Karen Koren on her 25 years atop the Balloon.

The visitors' cheerful opening gambit to the distinguished black British-Nigerian comic, veteran of several Aussie tours: "Have you seen Little Black Bastard yet?"

The exchange that followed produced a second round of down-under diplomacy of epic proportions - which a "mortified" Amos has vowed to include every day in his show.

Ready for a dry run

Fringe doyenne Guy Masterson's slate of one-women shows this year has delivered raves for Canadian import I, Claudia, and Long Live the King. Is Fringe success rooted in his no-fly rules on drinking?

For 12 hours before they go on stage, his acts, like airline pilots, are barred from the booze. He will go 48 hours without drinking ahead of tomorrow's one-off performance of Animal Farm. The Assembly Bar is absolutely off limits.