To move Devon and earth

Cyderdelic are Beetle and Su, a pair of eco-warriers from Devon, whose goal is to replace capitalism 'with something nicer'. Are they for real?

Oh dear, they're arguing again. Su and Beetle, Devon's leading eco-warriors, are having another heated debate, this time over the form the music in their latest show should take.

"I write the modern stuff," confides Beetle, the sleepy-eyed dancehead of the pair. "Su writes all the poncy stuff."

"It's not poncy, man," his perpetually aggrieved partner protests.

"He wants to do all this puppet-show stuff," says Beetle in disgust.

Su is having none of it. "It's agitprops, like the ones that incited the Russian Revolution. Plays are the way to put forward The Message [it's always 'The Message' for these two]. Your way is just 'doof, doof, doof, doof'." He crudely mimics house music's four on the floor bass drum. "Then give 'em a few pills and let 'em dance."

"Yeah, and that breeds unity," says Beetle. Touché.

Cyderdelic are back. Last year, despite their claims to have turned up expecting a music festival (and frankly, their production values were way ahead of most comic hopefuls, with banging sounds, dynamite visuals and onstage pill-popping), they just didn't get The Message across to enough people. But after the events of the summer, Beetle Smith (farmer's son), Su Long (adopted child of the owners of The Magic Wok restaurant in Exeter) and the perpetually silent Frogger (origins unknown and unguessable) are riding the zeitgeist to fame.

But these are risky times for anti-capitalist fighters. They've been present at the May Day march, Seattle, Gothenburg and Prague. But the murder of a protester, and assaults on sleeping activists in Genoa have raised the stakes.

"It does," agrees Beetle. "And we were supposed to be there."

"Don't even go there, mate," urges Su. "We'll look like idiots. Just leave it."

Beetle continues. "We were going to go cos we go to them all."

"Don't!" Su pleads.

Beetle cracks. "We went to Geneva by mistake, and there weren't much going on there. It was nice. Expensive though." Su's head is in his hands at this point.

Cyderdelic do get things a bit confused at times, such as their disgust at President Bush's rejection of "The Coyote Agreement" and Beetle's insistence that Chairman Mao once said that "Power is a big gun". Even when corrected (it was surely "power grows from the barrel of a gun"), he stands resolute and, frankly, alone. Su prefers his Chinese grandfather's aphorism "The world is a great big onion and pain and fear are the spices that make you cry."

It's Su too who holds to Mao's revolutionary theory of indoctrination backed with firepower. Beetle is more Gandhian in his approach. "Obviously we want to smash up the government big style, but in a non-violent way."

Su demurs. "But we need guns man. If you're going to be a revolutionary you need guns."

For the indoctrination process they use balloons emblazoned with the message "Queen Mum Hurry Up And Die", as shown by Frogger, their loyal factotum and DJ. ("He did too many pills back in the Summer of Love," they explain.) "The balloon's playful," Su explains. "But the kids will get the message early. That's going to get it into their heads."

Their key manifesto point "Overthrow Capitalism and Replace It With Something Nicer" has become a familiar sight at rallies, their huge banner appearing on Newsnight and even being lauded as "Quote of the Week" in the unlikely arena of the Daily Mail. Which brings its own problems. "We're trying to keep a low profile, and there we are on the six o'clock news eating veggieburgers," says Beetle, ruefully.

Times are changing though. The pair seem surprised when two women at the next table during our lunchtime pub conversation are all for direct action, agreeing that the revolution will soon be upon us. (Actually it's one woman's boyfriend who thinks so, but it's a start.) Then there are all the politicians coming out in favour of legalising marijuana, a subject close to their hearts.

"It's weird now. You've got all these Tories saying 'oh, we have a smoke'," says Beetle. "One of them said he used to put it in his pipe."

"We say legalise dope. Tony Blair just says nope," they chorus.

"Our mate Lazy Liz needs it cos she's got ME," says Beetle.

"I can't understand that. She's lazy enough as it is. If she smokes a reefer, how's that going to help her?" argues Su.

"Queen Victoria used to smoke it," announces Beetle.

"Do you reckon the royals do it these days? How about Queenie?" asks Su.

"Yeah, she does."

"What about Charlie?"

"I don't think he does."

"No, I mean d'you reckon she does Charlie? She's got the money for it," Su ponders. The subject turns to GM crops.

"There's organically grown food, and there's genetically modified, and some people don't know the difference," pontificates Su.

It's even been suggested that Cyderdelic aren't real and that their Devon accents are oddly imprecise. At one point I swear I hear the words "The characters are stupid, not the message". Perhaps it was an acid flashback. With their sporadic run-ins with the law, unhappy about their literal "Stop The Traffic" stunts and seriocomic boycotts of McDonald's and Starbucks, they're true pranksters in the great tradition of Sixties American radicals such as Abbie Hoffman and Paul Krassner. Laughter will stop the war, man.

Cyderdelic are at the Pleasance, Over the Road, venue 33, to 27 Aug