Six degrees

Dario Fo, the Italian satirist and playwright (right) whose bestknown farce, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, will be performed at the Fringe Club from Wednesday, raised a few eyebrows in 2008, when he featured in the documentary Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11. The film alleges that the events of September 11, 2001 were orchestrated by powers within the United States itself as justification for declaring a war on terror. Fo's play The Two-Headed Anomaly was the basis for a recent stage show in which former (and perhaps future, surprisingly) Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi dies and has his brain fused to that of Vladimir Putin …

The trial of three band members following their guerilla performance and subsequent arrest attracted considerable criticism in the West. Convicted of "premeditated hooliganism … motivated by religious hatred", their sentence hearing saw demonstrations by both supporters and critics of the band. Former world chess champion and political opposition leader Garry Kasparov was arrested and beaten as he tried to attend the reading of the verdict. Other vocal Pussy Riot supporters include Madonna, Sting and the diminutive Elijah Wood …

In his show No Reservations, where he revels in consuming exotic ethnic dishes around the world, the chef and author declared that the unwashed warthog rectum he tasted in Namibia and the fermented shark he ate in Iceland were among "the worst meals of [his] life"; and yet he maintains the most disgusting thing he has ever eaten was a Chicken McNugget. In Portland, in the US, Bourdain shared a meal of voodoo-decorated doughnuts with "transgressive fiction" writer Chuck Palahniuk …