Tim Minchin, Ready For This? - Pleasance Grand, 9.45pm Tim Minchin just won comedy. There has been a buzz about this curiously beautiful Australian ever since he moved to the UK in 2005 and he might just walk off this year with the full if.comedy award.

First things first though, Tim Minchin is not the funniest man at the Fringe. There will be other shows that deliver more big, convulsing belly laughs, but Minchin is a dazzling performer who gives you so much more.

At the centre are his songs.

He is a borderline virtuoso pianist in the mould of Bill Bailey, flitting between styles but never showing off, and his songs are plainly very, very funny.

They are masterful in their ability to make light of quite weighty, potentially slippery subjects while absolutely nailing them at the same time. The most perfect example I don't want to spoil here, so I'll have to be oblique and say it's about the language of discrimination (oh dear, that makes it sound rubbish, trust me it's near genius).

Also see the brilliant R&B-ish If I Didn't Love You (I'd Probably Be With Somebody Else) which is "not a song about love, it's a song about maths", and a skilful nine-minute beat poem about a belligerent, deluded hippy he meets and destroys with reason at a dinner party.

He spends much of the time taking people down - Christians and a malevolent journalist for example - easy targets who are dealt with skilfully, and his between-song stand-up is just as good as his musical comedy.

In short, Tim Minchin has got star quality. Startlingly talented, his comedy is intelligent, unpredictable, sexy and occasionally hilarious. Consider the bar set.