The People’s Princess takes centre stage in Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story, premiering at the Street Theatre soon.

Rather like another hilarious Edinburgh Fringe hit recently seen here, Garry Starr’s Classic Penguins, this Diana show hits well below the belt and the production is proudly advertising (it’s probably untrue like most of what’s in the play) that The Guardian complained it contained “too many penis jokes”.

The brainchild of comedians Linus Karp and Joseph Martin, it quickly establishes the facts that Prince Charles and Princess Diana were married, featuring the big wedding and that phone call between Charles and Camilla. 

But just as quickly, it jumps away from reality, preferring to create a what-if scenario which shows Diana as the gay icon she became. 

Karp plays Diana speaking to us from the afterlife, glass in hand elegantly out of control with weapons hidden in her “revenge dress”, while Martin live-voices cardboard cutouts of Charles and Camilla. 

Thanks to modern technology, other celebrities appear by video, notably Geri Allen as the Queen plotting Diana’s downfall, Zina Badram as God and the Broadway star of Dianna the Musical, Jeanna de Waal, appearing as an alternate Diana, a la Marvel.

As well, the audience gets to plan an active part. Some are given new names; others are drawn in physically. Be very afraid.

I caught up with the Swedish-born Karp by WhatsApp to London just after he and Martin had returned from the US touring another one of their shows, Gwyneth Goes Skiing, about actress Gwyneth Paltow (another princess) having been sued for skiing into a retired optometrist in 2016. 

“That was a very, very ridiculous case,” Karp opines, adding, “I love ridiculous. I like to live as ridiculously as possible.”

And not just that. 

“I’d love to be a cat,” he says in reference to another Edinburgh smash hit from his fecund imagination, How to Live a Jellicle Life: Life Lessons from the 2019 Hit Movie Musical Cats. You get the idea. 

Karp tells me he’s lived in the UK since 2013 and has perceived a strong sense of comedy throughout England.

“I feel that people have a sense of humour here more than in some other places.” 

“Of course, there is a Swedish sense of humour, but Swedes can be very unfunny and people are quite seriously fond of humour in the UK.”

“We take stories that aren’t funny and make them funny,” he says of his own brand of comedy. 

Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story is probably a good example of that and as a famous gay icon, the star is a fitting vehicle for his favourite kind of queer comedy. 

Besides which, the mother of his partner, Martin, is a big Diana fan, so wherever they go, they try and buy her Diana merchandise as presents. 

Of course it’s all for fun and Karp as Lady Di, is seen speaking to us from the other side, presumably heaven, dressed to the teeth, swishing around her wine, donning a tiara, everything you’d hope for.

“Diana did have a role to play in the queer community,” Karp says. “We celebrate her as a queer icon and a groundbreaking activist who took HIV patients by the hand and hugged them.

“That was long before my time, but I know how she affected the queer community… people who worked for HIV-related charities tell me how powerful Diana’s role was, so this is seriously ridiculous comedy.

“Comedy is always based in reality – if you can make people laugh, then you can talk to them.”

Diana: the Untold and Untrue Story, The Street Theatre, February 27.