IT'S a funny old business, politics. Almost as strange as showbusiness. Which is why it didn't really surprise me to discover that Mark Steel, the most amiable Marxist on the comedy circuit, shares a public relations company with hardline right-winger and former Tory Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd.

It didn't surprise Steel either. When I caught up with him as he prepared to bring his latest touring show to the Funnybone Comedy Club in Westbourne tonight, he told me that his life is full of unlikely meetings of minds.

The last time he was in Bournemouth for instance was just a couple of weeks back for the Labour Party Conference, doing something for Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman.

"That evening I was at this Comedy Club in Manchester and the person on before me was Jimmy Cricket. I must surely be the only person ever to have worked with Jeremy Paxman and Jimmy Cricket on the same day. I really must get a proper website to record facts like this."

His current comedy tour is effectively one of his celebrated Mark Steel Lectures. Based on his book Vive La Revolution, it gives a stand-up comedy version of what he describes as "one of the most fantastic stories in history."

The human stories behind the Revolution, he says were astonishing yet somewhere between the school room and the world of popular fiction the world is left with the impression that la revolution was about nothing more than a load of people going mental with a guillotine.

"It was so much more than that," says Steel. "It was about people brought up to believe they'd do nothing interesting in life who ended up shaping society."

Steel says he likes to research the local history of the towns where he performs to explore how the revolutionary action in France impacted on British society.

"Almost every area was affected by the French Revolution," he says.

Which is where I had to tell him that unfortunately Bournemouth didn't even exist at the time. However, the piece of heathland between Christchurch and Poole upon which it would be built was a prime operating area for smugglers.

French contraband certainly came ashore here. Maybe one or two revolutionaries did too.