Did you know that William Shakespeare was one of the main shareholders in the Virginia Company?

In case you didn't know, that's the group which advocated a Protestant-expansionist policy based on subjugation and oppression of natives and British emigrant workers in America in the 17th Century.

Successful author as well as stand-up, Rob Newman calls his current act From Caliban To The Taliban.

It's a potted history of the evils of capitalist imperialism from 1609 - when a ship bound for Virginia ran aground in Bermuda - to the present day.

The story of the shipwreck was the inspiration for The Tempest and its character Caliban: The commoners, supported by the sailors, decided they quite liked the island paradise and didn't fancy the idea of working for the rich landowners in Virginia after all.

The landowners, however, had different ideas and rounded up the rebels, subjecting them to all manner of torture and executing many.

Newman deftly illustrates how Virginia became the model for all future colonialism and imperialism based on greed and backed up by violence and terror.

It's a model which is followed to this day, as witnessed by recent events in Afghanistan and Iraq. If all that sounds a little like a university lecture, in a way, Newman's act is.

He is clearly very well read and highly intelligent and has done in-depth research. The difference is that it is delivered with wit, passion and a sparkling, caustic humour.

Dressed in a suit and combat-style shirt and looking remarkably like his hero, ex-Clash front man Joe Strummer, Newman pranced around the stage adopting personas ranging from George W and Tony B to a South London gangster and a Panamanian burger vendor.

Taking up a ukelele, he even did a passable impression of Bob Dylan, sending up the fact that the protest-song icon now earns $250,000 a time playing corporate events in Hollywood and comparing that to Strummer's final gig - a firefighters' benefit.

Newman is so outraged by so many wrongs that he was apt to lose his way at times seeming unable to get all his thoughts out, such is the strength of his feelings.

Yet it is this passion and the ability to make us laugh at the madness of it all which makes him so compelling.