Actor Steven Berkoff is to perform a world premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe about the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

Berkoff, 64, who lives in Brighton, plans to give a solo performance at the Assembly Rooms, entitled Requiem For Ground Zero.

He is expected to read an epic poem for almost an hour.

In June, we reported how Mr Berkoff had been deported from the United States for overstaying his visa by a day five years previously.

He was detained by immigration officials after they discovered the overstay on their records.

The actor had been due to give a lecture at a festival in Michigan but was instead placed on a flight back home.

At the time, he said: "An overzealous immigration officer, desperate to make his mark on the world, discovered I had overstayed the period of my visa in 1997 by 24 hours.

"Unbelievable as this may seem to humans who are half-civilised, this trivial infringement was enough in the post-

September 11 hysteria to give this lowly clerk with a gun holster the right to play God."

A spokeswoman for the theatre and film actor said he had penned his new work shortly after September 11 but, after a number of refinements, the Fringe would host its first public performance.