A PINT of milk costs 51p.

Body parts can be bought and sold for far greater sums. But how much would an air guitar go for on eBay? Or an imaginary friend?

Think about those last two questions for a minute, and you should realise the sheer absurdity of a market-led economy in recessionary times. Writer/performer Daniel Bye has, and has woven his findings into this quietly utopian performance lecture, which he brought to the Tron's Mayfesto season for one night only on Sunday night.

With just a power-point presentation, a chair and enough bottles of milk to give everyone in the audience a glass, Bye serves up and dissects the facts and figures behind our money-driven society before offering up an idealistic alternative which just might work.

This comes in the form of a shaggy-dog story about finding a £20 note on a train, which leads to Bye and a stranger in a Garfield t-shirt founding a free milk bar which further inspires a cash-free society to be founded in a network of abandoned shop-fronts.

Bye is an engagingly down to earth and self-deprecatory raconteur, but make no mistake – these are revolutionary ideas he's advocating in the friendliest way imaginable. They're ideas too which a lot more people are looking to as capitalism looks increasingly untenable.

I suspect that UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Maria Miller has not seen Bye's show, but perhaps she and her front-bench colleagues might wish to buy a ticket. Even better, Bye could maybe perform it in Parliament itself. Now that really would be priceless.

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