The Independent’s political columnist, Steve Richards, began his audio diary of last summer’s attempt to bring “pro-politics comedy” to the stage in early June. Ahead of him lay a five-night stint at the Soho Theatre, followed by a 24-show run at the Edinburgh fringe, and the niggling suspicion that stand-up comedy might be a little more difficult than it looked from the vantage point of the third row, a way of exhibiting oneself in public that required careful planning and in which any deficiencies of material or presentation would be cruelly punished.Why was Richards embarking on this adventure, when he could have been sitting at his computer anatomising the frailties of the Coalition? His aim, he insisted, was to “bring politics to life”, to examine